Hey, tribe.
Since my last missive, columnist Thomas Friedman has written yet another maddening article for the New York Times. I know that in his prime, Friedman was a formidable intellect sweeping every prize in sight, but his stances on Israel are so disconnected from reality that I find myself marveling that he is paid to write these delusional takes.
Consider his opening:
Israel today is at a strategic point in its war in the Gaza Strip, and there is every indication that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to choose the wrong path — and take the Biden administration along for a very dangerous and troubling ride. It is so dangerous and troubling that Israel’s best option, when all is said and done, might be to leave a rump Hamas leadership in power in Gaza. Yes, you read that right.
To understand why, let’s look back a bit. I argued in October that Israel was making a terrible mistake by rushing headlong into invading Gaza, the way America did in Afghanistan after 9/11. I thought Israel should have focused first on getting back its hostages, delegitimizing Hamas for its murderous and rapacious Oct. 7 rampage, and going after Hamas’ leadership in a targeted way — more Munich, less Dresden. That is, a military response akin to how Israel tracked down the killers of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and not how the U.S. turned Dresden into a pile of rubble in World War II.
Where to even start with this fakakta nonsense?
It took Israel SEVEN YEARS to track down and kill the nine perpetrators of the Munich Massacre.
It took America A FULL DECADE to kill Osama Bin Laden.
There are more than 20,000 Hamas operatives. Is Friedman out of his mind? Israel is supposed to pick them off one by one and let October 7th go otherwise unanswered?
What about the $2.6 billion, 400-mile network of terror tunnels beneath every inch of the Gaza strip, that are meant in part to allow Hamas to pop up beneath Israeli kindergartens? Is Israel supposed to ignore that?
Focus on getting the hostages back first? How? How does Friedman manage to be unaware that Hamas doesn’t want anything besides every Jew wiped out of the entire region?
This is an enemy ready and willing not only to die but to sacrifice endless generations of their children and their children’s children to the single-minded goal of purging every Jew from what they believe, with a fanatical conviction, is rightfully 100% Islamic territory.
During the last two days, the IDF killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who were themselves Hamas operatives — along with four of Haniyeh’s grandchildren.
In one of the most remarkable clips I have ever seen, Haniyeh is learning this news — of the death of his 3 sons and 4 grandchildren — while in the midst of a hospital tour, when an associate of his shows him the headline on his phone.
He nods, closes his eyes for a moment, and says: “God rest their souls. God have ease on them.”
The associate puts a hand on his back and asks: “Shall we end the visit?”
Sounding mildly suprised and reproachful, Haniyeh replies, “No, why? Let’s continue.”
Later that day, he expressed gratitude to God for the honor of his children and grandchildren dying as martyrs to the cause.
How do you negotiate with that? How does Friedman or anyone else fail to understand it’s not possible?
The west insists on projecting onto Hamas the desire for a Palestinian state when Hamas makes it clear, as explicitly as it can, every day and in every way, in posts and interviews and rallies, that it does not seek a Palestinian state but only to purge the region of every Jew.
If that is an entity’s ONLY goal, and they will sacrifice literally ANYTHING to get it, then no negotiation is possible.
Now Hamas has made it clear that it would release the hostages in exchange for an insane list of demands that includes, but is not limited to, the release of every Palestinian prisoner in Israel. Let’s just consider for a moment the message that such an exchange would send. That message would essentially be:
Go ahead and slaughter Israelis at will. You’ll always be able to arrange the release of all those murderers later, by setting our children on fire and raping our girls and committing the most atrocious massacre imaginable and taking some of our people hostage at the same time.
Can you imagine anyone arguing that incentivizing Hamas in this way is the best course of action?
Now let’s also imagine the implication of Hamas staying in power. The whole world just saw exactly what Hamas would do if it could gain entry into Israel. The whole world has just seen evidence of all Gazan aid money being embezzled for terror.
So what will ever be different once Israel withdraws and leaves Hamas in power? Israel will be forced to continue its restriction of Gazans’ freedom of movement and its blockade of the Strip. And the next time a massacre like this happens, which Hamas has explicitly promised it will, the world will once again cry out: “Well, what did you expect? You won’t let these people be free!”
Friedman’s piece is emblematic of a trend that’s preoccupying me mightily these days, one I want to write about in a lot of depth next week.
I imagine we are all familiar with the horseshoe theory of political ideology — that is, the idea that the far ends of the political spectrum — which you’d think would be as opposite to one another as it’s possible to be — actually begin to converge.
But my own conviction at this moment is that, in the U.S. at least and possibly throughout Europe as well, the horseshoe comparison is too benign.
What I believe I’m seeing in the West bears more resemblance to a long-necked vase than it does to a horseshoe.
That is, it has become my belief that the centrists are represented by the bottom of the vase, but the majority of each side is closer to the other side in every way but the particulars.
The Tea Party was once the lunatic fringe of the Republican party. Then it became the Republican party and finally it came to represent roughly half of American voters, to the point where Trump could win the White House.
Similarly, I believe the far left was once the lunatic fringe of the Democratic party, and it might not yet be as far gone as the GOP, but in my opinion, it is inexorably heading in that direction.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the left-leaning media, and I will say much more about that in the days to come.
For now, I’ll introduce this stance with just two media clips.
The first is an absolutely amazing excerpt of a PBS interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Do you remember when I said that, when you’re dealing with an Israel-hater, it very often takes little more than a single question to expose their total lack of knowledge on the topic? This point is illustrated perfectly in the following clip:
Like countless other people, AOC is accusing Israel of occupying Palestine and yet she has no idea what she means by this. She stands against Israel but she does not know why.
Now, this is not a high school kid who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow but is shouting slogans at a protest because it’s the cool thing to do.
No. This is instead one of the most influential political figures on the left, a wildly popular Congresswoman.
Since this was early in her Congressional career, by now she has presumably learned — after humiliating herself on TV — how to frame her position convincingly. But I think it’s important to remember that she formed her opinion before being able to defend it in any way and without even knowing what she meant by what she was saying on television.
The second clip is a tweet from yesterday, by Marc Lamont Hill, host of Al Jazeera English’s UpFront and a news correspondent at BET (Black Entertainment Television).
So just as patently guilty white men have long gotten away with murder in a white supremacist society, simply by virtue of being white, here Hill asserts that although O.J. Simpson was guilty of murder, and a monster, his acquittal was correct in a racist system. So in this context, he very much resembles a white supremacist, but with the races reversed.
What does it mean when prominent and influential figures on the left are this wedded to identity politics at the expense of any knowledge on a topic, as in AOC’s case, or any conceivable measure of fairness, as in Hill’s? To me, it means that extremist, identity-based ideology is replacing any expectation of responsibility, justice or expertise from our civic leaders, our scholars or our activists.
I will say much more about this soon. In the meantime, as we go into Shabbat, I want to leave you with a current prescription for our community’s well-being, as expressed by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue in NYC, in a recent episode of the podcast Unholy.
She urges us to observe the following three practices:
1. Gemilut hasadim: acts of loving kindness. Rabbi Buchdahl talks about her first trip to Israel after October 7th, where she saw countless Israelis performing outsized acts of devotion to each other. She suggests that we can cultivate a deep sense of resilience and strength by performing gemilut hasadim for our own Jewish community and I have definitely experienced this within my own life, especially since the war began.
Shabbat: Rabbi Buchdahl also urges us to create some form of Shabbat for ourselves. She remarked that she herself could not have survived the last 6 months without the renewal that Shabbat offers us. Again, I have taken the same nourishment and sustenance from my own Shabbat since starting this column in the wake of the massacre.
Awe and wonder: finally, Rabbi Buchdahl recommends setting aside time and space to experience awe. This can be cultivated virtually anywhere: on a walk, in nature, within an experience of any art form, or by doing anything that inspires us. She mentions that scientific studies have shown that regularly experiencing awe makes us more grounded, loving, generous, selfless — all the characteristics one would hope to cultivate within a spiritual practice.
Okay, fam! I hope you all have an absolutely beautiful weekend. I will be back with you on Monday.
Chazak v’ematz. Shabbat Shalom. Am Yisrael Chai.
It makes me nuts when people with zero training in military strategy act like they know better than well trained folks on the ground.
I’ve been arguing that the horseshoe metaphor is too benign as well. For one thing, a horseshoe is strong. The extremism we’re seeing is bound to break the system itself, and this is why I favor an image less robust than a metal horseshoe.
I like your vase and need to think more about it; glass, as a more fragile material makes sense.
I’ve been thinking of a rubber band that gets stretched so far from the middle, it snaps in half as the two ends (the two extreme ends) get launched into the same place—that of obliteration.
I think of the Aristotelian mean, how the middle is defined by the outposts, but in my metaphor, the extreme outposts are so overextended, they no longer determine the “center” but break the whole thing.
The horseshoe emphasizes the “same-place-ness” that both sides end up in—extremism & fascism—and while this is true, I think it’s too benign an image b/c it doesn’t account for the inevitable break of the whole damn thing itself.