Emissary Of Night | ليلى: In which Tom Friedman says that Biden and Congress should stop "debasing" themselves on Israel and that Israel should "accept Hamas’s key demand" which is to "totally end the war now and withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the return of all Israeli hostages.".

In which Tom Friedman says that Biden and Congress should stop "debasing" themselves on Israel and that Israel should "accept Hamas’s key demand" which is to "totally end the war now and withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the return of all Israeli hostages.".

Opinion | American Leaders Should Stop Debasing Themselves on Israelwww.nytimes.com You have to wonder if American “friends” of Israel have any clue about the nature of Israel’s government.

Friedman is widely regarded as one of Biden's favorite columnists and a regular recipient of private calls from the president himself.

Never thought I’d find myself hoping that a president would take advice from Tom Friedman

Of the mainstream op-ed writers, he’s been surprisingly clear eyed since Oct 7. Stopped clock and all that. But I share your discomfort.

Weird how an op-ed guy proves useful & knowledgeable the moment people start talking about something he's actually reported on & has reliable sources for (this real expertise does however make his Iraq War cheerleading even more criminally foolish)

Definite case of 9-11 derangement there, which I’m not particularly keen to forgive

One can understand it while not accepting it, I guess.

god don’t let him talk to biden about tech or trade or something, but biden could do a lot worse than friedman on this as the punditocracy goes

But then Friedman has been playing this tune for a while now with little discernible effect on Biden's policies.

Friedman often is less an advisor ex officio and more of a megaphone for Biden after-the-fact, but I think he does inform Biden's mood

Yeah, and I know that Biden reads the physical paper, but didn't the NYTimes do major redactions of a Friedman article from last October that basically endorsed sanctioning the Israelis? I even checked the internet archive myself, and was blown away.

Jesus, when you've lost Tom...

The last 8 months have been a bit of a bizarro world where Tom Friedman of all people is the only mainstream writer calling it even remotely correctly. I'm desperately hoping Biden gets a clue soon.

It's not exactly something new. He made his name as a reporter in Lebanon. I don't like him or his opinions but to his credit he's always been comparatively better about Israel. There's a bit of a Nixon going to China effect as well.

I think his coverage on Lebanon was uh...un-nuanced. However, there is a Robert Fisk (💀) anecdote that he stood looking at the crater left by the barracks bombing, and his only comment was "the scale of it!" As someone who is bad at appearing human in moments of crisis, I empathize.

Yeah, he's been surprisingly clear-eyed on this from the jump.

As a result the NYTimes has made sure to edit his columns at least once, to make them much more inane.

and in accepting this, Israel would be getting off lightly.

There are frankly major problems with this editorial--referring to the status quo ante as a "total Israeli withdrawal and a stable cease-fire" ignores the reality of Israel's blockade of Gaza and control of much of Gaza's arable land as ongoing acts of war, for example--but yeah. Significant column.

Friedman has been remarkably clear-sighted about the Gaza assault from the beginning. It's shocking to find myself broadly agreeing with him because I dismissed him as an overhyped dolt back during the Iraq War.

Wow

And they should stop selling the country to the super rich...but they won't do that either

atoning for his "suck on this" re: 911. these days, somewhere down in that tom friedman consciousness of umpteen taxi drivers, he's come upon good insight.

yeah maybe he actually did speak to a taxi driver and it set him straight.

The Mustache of Understanding is... good?

Let's not go crazy here

speaking as a Mustachioed Man,

Netanyahu doesn't care about the hostages; they are just a convenient excuse for another major land-grab. Israel chose expansion over security decades ago.

What a time to be alive

well, when even Big Tom gets it right

Yeah, now I’m confused. It’s like the Little Dipper suddenly moved in the sky.

I was trying to remember if I was thinking of the wrong Friedman or the wrong Tom or what. I get pundits mixed up a lot. I think I used to be personally acquainted with a completely different Tom Friedman, which doesn't help.

I know Friedman best for the Friedman Unit, which helps me remember he’s dumb.

I have visceral memories of thinking "well this is stupid" when he endorsed MBS the first time, two months before the Hariri Incident and eight months before Khashoggi.

At the same time, I remember "From Beirut to Jerusalem" as 50% dogshit/at points pretty racist coverage of Lebanon's Civil War, 25% "Ze'ev Chafets ripoff" 25% "very sympathetic and humanizing coverage of the First Intifada" He did do a 6-page spread in the NYTimes on Sabra and Shatila.

Now, did he do it because he felt like the Israelis had "betrayed him" by doing that? Yes.

Friedman!

Just make Hamas release all the hostages, why has no one thought of this before

I'll just leave this here...

And, of course, that sock puppet knows full well that they keep offering to release the hostages but the genocidal apartheid state refuses to accept them. They only want to commit more genocide.

From the drop, Israeli media treated them differently: no "redeeming the captive." These recent allegations that they intentionally targeted civilians day-of only reinforce that. www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-...

UN finds at least 14 Israelis likely intentionally killed by own army on 7 Octoberwww.middleeasteye.net New report documents repeated use of so-called Hannibal Directive in which abductees were killed to prevent their capture

I also think it is Israel getting into a new "The Searchers" way of thinking of things: in addition to being a liability, having too many people come back from extended captivity is bad because they've been "polluted" by their time with the enemy.

If that was John Wayne playing himself he’d have killed Natalie Wood.

Alright, maybe crossing a line of sorts, but I think Noa Argamani is Natalie would. You can have one of those. You can't have dozens of them, particularly after the bombing sets in like it has.

Never thought I'd find myself on the same side of anything as Tom fucking Friedman

What

Wait, is this guy related to the Tom Friedman that writes about the Middle East in The New York Times?

Wow. They lost Tom Friedman.

That doesn't sound like him

Does someone have a gift link?

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