Friedman votes for niceness, still doesn’t get it

Fresnozionism.org
08 August '10

Tom Friedman made some friends when he wrote this:

But there are two kinds of criticism. Constructive criticism starts by making clear: “I know what world you are living in.” I know the Middle East is a place where Sunnis massacre Shiites in Iraq, Iran kills its own voters, Syria allegedly kills the prime minister next door, Turkey hammers the Kurds, and Hamas engages in indiscriminate shelling and refuses to recognize Israel. I know all of that. But Israel’s behavior, at times, only makes matters worse — for Palestinians and Israelis. If you convey to Israelis that you understand the world they’re living in, and then criticize, they’ll listen.

Destructive criticism closes Israeli ears. It says to Israelis: There is no context that could explain your behavior, and your wrongs are so uniquely wrong that they overshadow all others. Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too. Destructive criticism only empowers the most destructive elements in Israel to argue that nothing Israel does matters, so why change?

But I am not buying it.

Certainly it’s a breath of fresh air compared to the rotten stench emanating from Oliver Stone, Philip Weiss, Max Blumenthal, Naomi Klein, and all the rest — including Friedman’s NY Times colleagues Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof. But Friedman, although perhaps a better human being than the others mentioned, still advocates policies that derive from a deep naivety about the intentions of the Palestinian (and other) Arabs.

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