I just copied and pasted this because it is classic Thomas Friedman stupidity and lying. Below it are some good online reactions of readers, to it, however.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Mideast’s Ground Zero
comments (313)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 6, 2009
The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”
That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.
WHO OWNS THIS HOTEL? The struggle for hegemony over the modern Arab world is as old as Nasser’s Egypt. But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has deftly used military aid to both Hamas and Hezbollah to create a rocket-armed force on Israel’s northern and western borders. This enables Tehran to stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will and to paint itself as the true protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Arab regimes.
“The Gaza that Israel left in 2005 was bordering Egypt. The Gaza that Israel just came back to is now bordering Iran,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. “Iran has become the ultimate confrontation state. I am not sure we can talk just about ‘Arab-Israeli peace’ or the ‘Arab peace initiative’ anymore. We may be looking at an ‘Iranian initiative.’ ” In short, the whole notion of Arab-Israeli peacemaking likely will have to change.
CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.
Why? Because nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers. Because nothing would set back a peace deal more than if Hamas’s call to replace Israel with an Islamic state became the Palestinian negotiating position. And because Hamas’s attacks on towns in southern Israel is destroying a two-state solution, even more than Israel’s disastrous and reckless West Bank settlements.
Israel has proved that it can and will uproot settlements, as it did in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket attacks pose an irreversible threat. They say to Israel: “From Gaza, we can hit southern Israel. If we get the West Bank, we can rocket, and thereby close, Israel’s international airport — anytime, any day, from now to eternity.” How many Israelis will risk relinquishing the West Bank, given this new threat?
SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza, Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and, second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.
Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.”
Obama’s great potential for America, noted Indyk, is also a great threat to Islamist radicals — because his narrative holds tremendous appeal for Arabs. For eight years Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have been surfing on a wave of anti-U.S. anger generated by George W. Bush. And that wave has greatly expanded their base.
No doubt, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are hoping that they can use the Gaza conflict to turn Obama into Bush. They know Barack Hussein Obama must be (am)Bushed — to keep America and its Arab allies on the defensive. Obama has to keep his eye on the prize. His goal — America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision. That’s what will serve U.S. interests, moderate the three great struggles and earn him respect.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on January 7, 2009, on page A27 of the New York edition.
COMMENTS:
Tom, your book on the Sabra and Shatila massacres was very fine and inspiring, but the same rigour is lacking in your comment on Gaza.
It is not acceptable when a massacre of this scale is occurring to obscure or ignore the horror with this sort of lofty, geopolitical analysis.
We are talking here about a pogrom, inflicted by the Jews upon the Palestinians. And unfortunately, it's only the latest in a long list of pogroms, and they persist only because commentators such as you, Tom, refuse to look the thing clearly in the face and call it what it truly is.
Robert Fisk in today's Independent UK makes the compelling analogy with the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He also clearly itemizes the israeli lies used to minimize or undermine objections to these pogroms.
The worst lie, of course, is that one is anti-Semitic to oppose Israeli in any way, shape or form. That tired and abused fiction no longer has any currency in Europe, although it is trotted out with regular frequency in the United States, and is still used quite effectively to silence media doubts.
Just to be clear, it is not anti-Semitic to object to Israel rounding up 1.5 million people, half of them children, in a confined space, and then bombing and butchering them block by block.
And it is not anti-Semitic to question, when contemplating this long list of appalling Israeli pogroms, whether Israel is actually fit for sovereignty, or whether the US funding upon which it is entirely dependent is a wise investment given Israel's spectacular failure to live in peace alongside its neighbours in accordance with the binding peace deal achieved more than 25 years ago (Jimmy Carter, Oslo, UN Resolution 242).
It is also not anti-Semitic to wonder what on earth the US media thinks it's doing "reporting" on a massacre in a way that assumes some sort of equivalence between 4 Israelis killed over 8 years from Hamas rocket fire, and 650 people blasted to bits in little more than a week.
There is an shameless, endless parade of Israeli apologists on US media, mouthing endless unchallenged lies, such as the fiction that Hamas broke the cease fire.
It did not. Israel broke the ceasfire. Twice.
And what about the fiction that this is part of the "war on terror?" Israel would have us believe they are fighting Hamas on behalf of all of us.
It is not. Israel's narcissistic rage has nothing to do with anyone except themselves. But unfortunately for the rest of us, Israel's claim that this is part of the "war on terror" guarantees that we all will share in the suicide bombings that will follow as surely as night follows day.
That is why it is essential that the lies have to stop. It is also why the US media has to start doing its job properly.
And it is also why the international community has to contain Israel, and enforce a little more respect - through consequence - upon both Israel and its champion, the United States.
The Israeli and US leaders responsible for this should be referred to the International Criminal Court.
Israel's funding must be cut, and Resolution 242 enforced, by states other than the United States if necessary. Enforcement of 242, including withdrawal from all occupied lands, must be a condition of Israel's continued statehood.
If this does not happen, Israel and by implication the United States can expect to find that all other Western nations decline to participate in any way, shape or form in continuing the fiction that the state of Israel deserves their support.
Because it very obviously does not.
— S., New York
Avi Shlaim has a piece in the Guardian today called, "How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe." Comparing the same events in that article with their descriptions by you, Mr. Friedman, is like comparing black to white or wet to dry. In fact, they are directly opposite.
To your contention that the regional hegemony is Iran, he says it's Israel. To your contention that Hamas "overthrew the moderate Fatah", he says Hamas seized power to thwart a Fatah coup of a unity government that elected majority Hamas had set up with Fatah, but Israel refused to recognize. To your contention that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, he says they repeatedly said they would; but only inside pre-1967 borders. To your contention that this is about a struggle between radical Islamists and modernists, he contends there has been more than a little Greater Israel and a contention within Israel over the true goals with respect to Palestinians.
The two pieces are so far apart that only one can be right on the facts, Mr. Friedman. He has names and dates. You have only the standard stock phrases. If they'd come from a political entity, one would have called them 'talking points'. What do you know of Israel's National Information Directorate, Mr. Friedman?
— ondelette, San Jose
There are two Ground Zeros, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Applying that title anywhere else diminishes its meaning and treats those events lightly.
— Alan, Japan
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