Friedman, The Compleat Idiot

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri May 14 00:00:41 PDT 1999


Unbelievable. Even his Israel commentary sucks. It's like he was replaced with a pod in 1986.

Below is his latest. On his absurd idea that Yahoo has enlarged the consensus for peace, nothing need be said; the real question is whether anything can be salvaged of a process badly skewed in the first place, but good and truly run into the ground by Bibi.

But as for his insider's remarks on why the interior ministry has become the focus of the Israeli campaign, he's entirely missed the boat. He interprets it as evidence of normality and unity. In fact it's evidence of exactly the opposite. An unprecedented war has broken out between the "Russian" Jews and the "Oriental" Jews, i.e, Jews that originated from Arab countries in the Middle East, like Morocco. Both groups hate the Ashkanasi establishment, and both of them are pretty fervent in their hatred of Arabs, and on that basis have been in uneasy alliance. But the leader of the Oriental Jews, Ariel Deri, was convicted just before the campaign on corruption charges. He says it was all a trumped-up case by the establishment, and his followers mainly believe him. But he couldn't run for office while convicted, and his party (Shas) is still too much his creature to dump him, and so it went into the campaign kind of rudderless.

Enter Natan Sharansky, famous in the US as a Soviet dissident, and for some years the fairly conservative leader of the Russian Jews in Israel. He decided this was his big chance: he was going to aim to replace Shas as the third biggest party, the kingmaker. So he emphasized the differences between the two groups. The Russian Jews look down on the Orientals (aka Sephardim) because they don't know from the Ballet and they don't read Tolstoy. The Sephardim look down on the Russians because they aren't religious, they don't speak good Hebrew and they spend all the day their nose in the Russian papers. And the big bone of contention is the Interior Ministry. Why? Because it controls housing, and it controls immigration, among other patronage goodies. It's been a Shas preserve, and not only have they gotten more than their proportional share of the goodies, but one of they ways they've done it -- adding on religious restrictions to qualifications for low cost housing or child care or citizenship in the first place -- have irritated the hell out of the secular Russians. So the Russians want that ministry, and they've made this goal the focus of their campaign, most notably in a series of commercials with the snappy slogan "Nash Control or Shas Control?" with Nash being the Russian for Our. All of Israel has been scandalized -- or at least pretends to be scandalized -- by the new frontier this marks in tribal infighting in a country where everyone is supposedly the same ethnicity. But all agree that the masterstroke of the Barak campaign is that he endorsed it -- even though Sharansky prefers Bibi -- and that he's gained two Russians for every Sephardim he's frightened off.

Now try and find any of that in this Friedman article. 17 years ago this guy was just a maven on Israeli politics. I am just nonplussed by the complete implosion of his mind into tripe. Do you think because he now occupies such heights? This article is something you'd expect from someone writing the local beat for the New York Post.

Michael

May 14, 1999

FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The Accidental Peacenik

F or the first time in Israel's history, its upcoming election is

about who will control the Interior Ministry, not the Foreign

Ministry. It's about what kind of Israel, not what size of Israel.

Although he didn't set out to do this, no one is more responsible for

this shift than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By reluctantly

embracing the Oslo peace accords and grudgingly advancing them through

the Hebron and Wye agreements, he broke down the historic wall between

Labor and Likud voters when it came to the peace process. It is no

longer just Labor that is ready to deal with Yasir Arafat, and Likud

that shuns him as a terrorist. It is no longer Labor that is ready to

accept some kind of Palestinian state while Likud rejects it.

Thanks to Mr. Netanyahu, there is now a loosely unified core of 75

percent of Israelis ready to proceed with the Oslo accords toward a

Palestinian state of some size or other. With that sort of consensus

in the middle, who cares who controls the Foreign Ministry?

Unfortunately, though, Mr. Netanyahu did not knock down the wall

between Labor and Likud on the peace issue by synthesizing the two

sides. He actually knocked that wall down by backing into it, while

all the time telling his hard-core religious-nationalist supporters

that he was not abandoning their cause. It may have been that the only

way to bring the majority of Likud voters into Oslo, without

triggering a civil war, was by Mr. Netanyahu winking, nodding, lying,

blaming everything on Labor, the Ashkenazi elites and "the leftists,"

and constantly bashing Mr. Arafat, whether he was living up to his

commitments or not. Plenty of Likudniks wanted to be lied to as they

accepted the inevitability of Oslo -- and he accommodated them by

embracing Oslo while constantly denouncing those who delivered it.

And therein lies the greatest irony about Bibi Netanyahu: He brought a

whole new segment of Israel into the peace process -- but he stayed

out of it himself. That is, he never wanted to take ownership of it,

and he still doesn't. Bibi struck important deals that legitimized Mr.

Arafat as a peace partner, but he still runs against him in this

election. In 1996, Bibi won because a majority of Israelis were

overwhelmed by Oslo, the Rabin assassination and the blowing up of

Israeli buses. But thanks, in part, to his own real success at winning

better Palestinian security compliance, a majority of Israelis now

accept Oslo. In other words, thanks to Bibi's having routinized the

peace process, many Israelis want to get on with it, finish it and

look to the future.

But instead of leading that parade, Mr. Netanyahu is shying away from

his own accomplishment and running instead on the past. He repeatedly

runs TV ads showing the Israeli buses that were blown up in Jerusalem.

Because he refuses to embrace his own peace process, he is incapable

of painting any positive vision of the future. His campaign

advertising is virtually devoid of any hope, and when you can't give

hope, when you cannot educate, when you cannot articulate people's

aspirations, when you cannot unify, you cannot lead.

I just received two E-mails from friends in Israel that sounded

identical themes, although neither knows the other. One was from a

religiously observant friend who lives in the village of Zichron

Yaacov, Victor Friedman (no relation). Victor wrote: "Even people who

hate the left, and can't imagine voting for Ehud Barak, are tired of

the kind of political and social atmosphere created since Bibi came to

power. The lying, trickery, corruption, divisiveness, incitement --

people don't like it."

The other was from a Jerusalem-based writer, Laura Blumenfeld, who

wrote that Israel today is suffering from "Multiple Israel Disorder --

Bibi thought he could hold onto power by dividing everyone up into

squabbling tribes. He was wrong. The shot that killed Rabin was like

the starting gun on the race between factions. But after three years

of bumping and biting each other's necks, people are tired."

By breaking down the divide between Labor and Likud on peace, Bibi

created the opportunity for national unity in Israel as never before.

But by doing it in such a divisive fashion, he has also created a

longing for national unity as never before -- a longing that he seems

unwilling and unable to satisfy. On Monday we will find out if Bibi

can survive Bibism.

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