by Gerald A. Honigman

 

 

     And I'm no right-winger.

 

     While he sits--on that rare occasion when his boss isn't paying for his travels around the world (careful Tommy...despite your frequent Arab derriere kissing, with your last name, you'd better remember Danny Pearl)--in a home probably farther away from his New York Times office than the State of Israel is in width, Friedman loves to take other Jews to task for wanting something beyond a 9-mile wide rump state status imposed upon them in 1949 by a United Nations more concerned with limiting Arab losses than halting their initial aggression. That's how Israel got those pre-'67 armistice lines--not borders--that have served as a constant invitation to 300 million Arabs who surround it to sever it in half. The U.N.'s Ralph Bunche, the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, had plenty to say about this. So did Lord Caradon, Eugene Rostow, and other architects of Resolution 242. I wonder if Tommy ever read them? It certainly doesn't appear so.

 

     Let's get something straight. It's not Israeli annexation of all the disputed territories that's at issue here--despite how Friedman constantly twists the truth--but justice's demand that the travesty of the Auschwitz lines imposed upon the Jews in their sole state at long last--as U N Security Council Resolution 242 called for--be rectified. Israel isn't looking to rule over millions of Arabs, and he knows this. Yet this is what Friedman dwells on and how he chooses to present Israel's case. There are a few choice words describing those who indulge in such things. Read my mind...

 

     Any 22nd Arab state--and second, not first Arab one created out of the original 1920 borders of Palestine (Jordan created from the lion's share in 1922), should not be born at the expense of the minimal requirements for some sane semblance of security for Israel's Jews. Nations (which dwarf Israel in size and power) habitually conquer, acquire, and manipulate territories often hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of national security. Think Panama or the Falklands War for just a few examples. Only Jews are expected to forsake even minimal needs in these regards. That's what the issue regarding the territories is really all about. Reading Friedman, however, you'd never know it.

 

     Poll after poll taken among Arabs repeatedly show that the size of Israel is not the issue. The very existence of a Jewish State on what Arabs claim to be purely Arab patrimony is. Arabs fought three wars with Israel before the latter was ever in the disputed territories. Friedman knows all of this, as he knows that his buddy, Mahmoud Abbas, got elected running on a platform calling for Israel's destruction--but by "more acceptable" means. Blown buses bring bad press. Yet Tommy chooses to paint Jews in search of a fair territorial compromise with those who delight in disemboweling their children merely as extremists.

 

     Listen to a typical Friedmanism from one of his latest op-eds, "Rooting For The Good Guys":

 

     "...This withdrawal is a threat to the Jewish religious nationalists. Their goal is not peace, but to conquer Israeli society with their messianic vision and biblical map..."

 

     He devoted about 85% of that article to this theme and the rest--the last two paragraphs--to addressing the Arabs.

 

     A few years back, he took great pride in his claim to be the originator of the so-called "Saudi Peace Plan." This also tells you where Friedman is coming from. That "peace (of the grave) plan" called for a total withdrawal of Israel to the Auschwitz lines and a "return" of millions of Arabs (most of whom never lived in Israel) who have been raised on Jew-hatred and canonizing those who blow Jews apart to the Jews' lone, rump state. Half of Israel's Jews were refugees from "Arab"/Muslim lands--but without some two dozen other states to choose from. Friedman should have to live with such neighbors in his own back yard...or perhaps have to take an Egged bus to work.

 

     As just one of many other examples of "justice"--Friedman style--listen to his advice to some thirty million truly stateless Kurds, whose best chance at independence was sacrificed after World War I on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. While I'm not a wealthy author and New York columnist, my work on this subject was published in a heavily Nobel Laureate-sponsored academic journal, the Fall 1981 Middle East Review, and can be found on recommended reference lists of leading universities all around the world--including Paris' famed Science Po...Not bad for someone who had his academic career nipped in the bud because his politics differed with the tenured chief honcho who used one set of lenses for the scrutiny of Israel and another for the study of the neighborhood in which it exists.

 

     Here's Friedman on the Kurds' quest for their share of justice. He stated in the March 26, 2003 New York Times that they should be told point blank...

 

      "...What part of ’no’ don’t you understand? ...You Kurds are not breaking away."

 

    While Tommy and professors such as the one described above laugh at or belittle the needs and aspirations of others in the region, both he and they are tireless proponents of the demands of the Arabs themselves for the creation of their 22nd state. While he gives a few sentences of lip service regarding Arab extremists--even though, unlike Israel's own few real "extremists," those of the Arabs are in the clear majority when it comes to not conceding rights to others--he allows Israel no wriggle room in dealing with the fragile realities of its pre-'67 existence. Jews as perpetual victims are what his kind of "liberals" demand. And for those who do not know, the '67 Six Day War  began with an Arab blockade of Israel--a clear casus belli--and other hostile acts as well. That's how Israel wound up in the disputed, unapportioned (not purely Arab) lands of the original Mandate and elsewhere...fighting yet another defensive war for its very life.

 

     Liberals (as well as other fair-minded folks) are not supposed to just shed tears over victims but are supposed to want to see a long term resolution to their victimization. Perfect justice doesn't exist anywhere among the realm of man, so Friedman and his ilk should not demand it in terms of the Arab-Israeli dispute either.

 

     This being the case, the basic needs of the sole state of the world's longest victimized people--the Jews--should not be subjected to the treatment that those like Friedman constantly subject it to.