Thanks to Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer for telling us about Tom’s recent lecture gig with the IDF general staff. (HT: As’ad Abu-Khalil.)
Pfeffer writes,
- Friedman gave a lecture last week to a number of members of the IDF General Staff. He spoke to them about his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries.
Friedman visited Israel and the territories last week and published a two-part column on the situation in the territories after most IDF checkpoints were removed and Palestinian security forces moved in.
Friedman met personally with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi during his visit, and spoke to the deputy chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Home Front Command and the head of the planning branch.
Someone tell me why anyone should consider this guy a “neutral observer” of matters Middle Eastern?
Someone tell me whether him behaving like this is quite okay by the New York Times– sort of par for the course for the way they expect their very handsomely columnists to behave?
Someone tell me why anyone in the rest of the Middle East would even agree to meet with this guy, given that he sees his role as being a snoop for the Israeli generals?
(Also, just as a point of fact, I think Pfeffer is quite incorrect to write that “most” IDF checkpoints have been removed from the occupied territories– just as he/she is incorrect to leave out the term “occupied” in that designation.)
Any army which values the opinions of this shallow brained and vulgar court jester is doing its enemies’ work for it.
The idea that Friedmann, whose entire output demonstrates that he has nothing of interest to say, might have made some interesting observations in Arab countries is untenable.
The question really is why anyone reads his stuff. The IDF obviously flatters him but at what cost?
Helena, it might be useful if you were to critique Friedman’s column “Green Shoots in Palestine 11” – NYT August 8.
An excerpt:
“These N.S.F. troops, who replaced either Israeli soldiers or Palestinian gangs, have been warmly received by the locals. Recently, N.S.F. forces wiped out a Hamas cell in Qalqilya, and took losses themselves. The death of the Hamas fighters drew nary a peep, but a memorial service for the N.S.F. soldiers killed drew thousands of people. For the first time, I’ve heard top Israeli military officers say these new Palestinian troops are professional and for real.
“The Israeli Army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, has backed that up by taking down roughly two-thirds of the 41 manned checkpoints Israel set up around the West Bank, many since 2000, to stifle Palestinian suicide bombers. Those checkpoints — where Palestinians often had to wait for two hours to just pass from one city to the next and often could not drive their own cars through but had to go from cab to cab — choked Palestinian commerce. Israel is also again letting Israeli Arabs drive their own cars into the West Bank on Saturdays to shop.
“You can feel the movement,” said Olfat Hammad, the associate director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, who lives in Nablus and works in Ramallah. “It is not a burden anymore to move around to Ramallah for business meetings and social meetings.” Nablus recently opened its first multiplex, “Cinema City,” as well as a multistory furniture mart designed to cater to Israelis. Ramallah’s real estate prices have skyrocketed. ”
He has been in Ramallah just recently. But as I recall you reported similar attitudes after your trip earlier this year. It appears there has been more improvement? You could also comment on his first column “Green Shoots in Palestine 1”, where he interviewed Fayyad and described him rather as you did.
Perhaps you too could get a gig addressing the IDF? We’d all like to see that!
Helena,
You and I don’t normally agree but on this we are in agreement, although maybe for different reasons. It’s his support for the US invasion of Iraq and his host of other failed prophecies that he should be ignored.
You’re right, Helena. Anyone who goes to report his discoveries to the IDF, wears his allegiance on his sleeve.
I had a good laugh, by the way, with bb’s “These N.S.F. troops … have been warmly received by the locals.” The laugh of course was not that Friedman said it – to be expected – but that bb believed it. He is wonderfully innocent.
No Alex, I don’t believe either way. But Helena’s friends in Ramallah seemed quite pleased with the improvement in law and order earlier this year. What I am interested in knowing is how many of the checkpoints Helena observed then have been removed?
… or disingenuous.
Not at all. Don’t like taking anything at face value. Wouldn’t take Friedman as the last word on what is going on in the WB, for instance. For all H’s bias, she has the ordinary Palestinian perspective.
“Wouldn’t take Friedman as the last word on what is going on in the WB, for instance.”
No one in their right mind would take that overblown, self-important windbag as the last word on anything.
“For all H’s bias, she has the ordinary Palestinian perspective.”
if you only understood how richly ironic that statement is!
T. Friedman, he is not the only “Israeli Heart and Mind” who visited Arab countries sadly the corrupted bad kings sheiks being received in a royal Saudi tent or in a Jordanian palace or mingling with Israeli “terrorist experts,” or encountering admiring fans.
T. Friedman spends a lot of time romancing the Saudis. He invited by Abdullah of Saudi Arabia when he showed Thomas Friedman’s Feb. 17 New York Times column to outline his vision for Arab-Israeli peace: Arab states would offer full diplomatic relations to Israel if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories to its 1967 boundaries.
Do not read me wrong I am not in any way defending the corrupted ugly kings and sheiks or their regimes. It has appeared to be most of those who are attacking Saudi regimes and Arabs, they worked and welcomed and made one life opportunity of their wealth from working in Saudis and Gulf countries, most if not all are Israeli Hearts and minds.
The list long, like Scott’s friend “A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF SAUD” and others like Jean Sasson.
However let’s not forgot another one just like T. Friedman , Noah freedman so proud setting his project of “Nation Building” in Iraq during Sheikh Paul Bremer III, Iraq was different, that’s why the Shock and Awe was well designed to bring this state and the society been slaughtered
So HC can go mingle with terrorists as part of her journalism and work for CSM, but others can’t get close to anybody. The degree of leprosy of her contacts is far worse than giving a talk to IDF brass.
I smell professional envy here and little else.
Titus’s comment to HC above reminds one of the proverbial;
“When a stupid man is saying something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty to so declare it”.
Good point Titus! Of course anyone associated with the creepy saudi/exxon/boeing mouthpiece Middle East Policy Council also has zero credibility as a “neutral observer” of matters middle eastern, especially someone who wears her israel-hatred on her sleeve, whose website is overrun with anti semites and other assorted whackos. some peace activist.
Some chicken. Some neck.
Friedman a credible journalist/author or not ?
Let us pose the question- specially and in light of the 2006-2008/2009 wars on Lebanon and Gaza, what is the IDF role ? what are they defending? are they an Offensive force or a defencive force ? what is their goal ? who are they serving ? are they a patriotic force ? and for whom are they fighting for what ?
I beg an answer.
In South Africa we know Steven Friedman. This T Friedman, we do not know.
World Peace we can relate to. WP, your questions are good. The IDF/IOF serves Imperialism. Their rationale is in line with the irrational, degenerate, philosophy of Imperialism: post-modernism. Your categories are clear-cut, WP. The IOF attacks your categories. By the time they are finished (that’s wrong: they have no finish) you are not supposed to know up from down, or whether you are Arthur or Martha. Settlers? Settlers have been expendable forever. Probably since Xenophon. Their days are numbed.
“if you only understood how richly ironic that statement is!”
Same with Amira Haas. She is my very very favorite journo and I have been reading her for years.
Friedman is a disgrace along the lines of Judith Miller and should be summarily dismissed.
No if’s but’s or maybe’s.
He does not get to shill for the Israeli’s and then expect to be treated with a trace of credibility.
World Peace, the IDF is defending Israel against Hezbollah, which crossed the Lebanese Israeli border, kidnapped two of its soldiers and attacked Israel with missiles, ie acts of war. If anyone has an irrational degenerate philosophy its theirs (the post modern war without end on imaginary settlers in south lebanon.)
I beg your pardon Angela. I think you have misunderstood. I do beg your pardon. One must be so careful. Let me go over it again. The settlers are expendable to the Imperialists. I mean all the settlers, of course, not just the West Bank ones. They are not expendable to the colonised, but to the colonising power. That is the way it is and it will become clear as time goes on.
World Peace IDF killing “Palestenians carrying white flags” in self defense.
Definitely antisemtic acts!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooAm8YTUCUI
Oh my gosh! Hizbullah crossed the lebanese-Israeli border and captured two on-duty Israeli soldiers and sent a large number of not very damaging against Israel!
… But as Titus or was it Vadim said, to take this statement at face value we have to be Martians with no knowledge of history.
If we did have even a cursory knowledge of history we’d know that for 22 years, 1978-2000, the Israeli military not only “crossed into” Lebanon but also brought large segments of it under military occupation… that in Israel’s 1982 assault on Lebanon that was part of that longer occupation, 19,000 Lebanese and Palestinian residents of Lebanon were killed; that in 1993 and 1996 Israel similarly launched large-scale and mega-lethal military assaults on Lebanon; that throughout the occupation it ran the notorious Khiam prison/torture center along with its SLA proxies; that it abducted and assassinated numerous political leaders during those years; that even after the near-total withdrawal of Israeli troops from lebanon in 2000 it still held a non-trivial number of Lebanese civilians in its prisons purely as hostages. Yes, contrary to international law it had even taken these people out of the occupied territory and into its own territory….
So oh my gosh, there was an antecedent history and a reason why Hizbullah sent a squad into Israel to capture the two Israeli soldiers– and indeed, after the maelstrom of death that Israel unleashed onto Lebanon in that summer of 2006 finally came to an end, Israel negotiated with Hizbullah the exchange of the Lebanese hostages it still held for the (as it turned out) mortal remains of the two captured soldiers who had been badly wounded before they were taken as POWs.
Of course, Israel could have negotiated that deal without launching the maelstrom of violence; or indeed, it could have released its illegally held Lebanese hostages at any point prior to July 2006. But no. Instead, Israeli commanders were determined on a “salutary” war against lebanon.
Angela, you brought this up. It is actually off-topic.
Journalists meet generals all the time, they are called interviews. I’ve seen interviews of Pakistani, Iraqi, Israeli, and American generals.
And what is wrong with telling them “his impressions of his recent visits to Arab countries”?
How is that snooping?
Well, Michael W, perhaps you cannot see the difference between an interview where the journalist asks questions and the interviewee provides answers; and a lecture, or briefing, by a journalist to military officers, where the journalist is providing information and answering questions.
To most people, I would guess, the difference is rather clear. But you have a valid point to the extent that the marginal difference between one kind of action and another in journalism may not seem to “cross the line”. I mean, in this case it is very clear that the man Friedman has crossed the line, whatever you, W, may think about it. But sure, there are other situations where the difference is not so clear. Which is one reason why journalists pay close attention to such matters.
I think it is easier to understand the journalists’ point of view on the likes of Friedman when you think of actual full-on spies in the newsroom, as there have been in the past and surely still are. They are a danger to their colleagues. They undermine the relationship with sources and the integrity of the journalism. All journalists who are not spies must naturally tend to loath the spies in their midst. They are sensitive to what is acceptable and what is not. Briefing generals is outrageously unacceptable! A journalist can’t do that! Get with it, Michael W!
Domza,
I think you are confusing your own words with what actually happened. You said, “Briefing generals”, which sounds like he’s giving them enemy locations and positions. What he actually did was tell them his impressions of Arab countries which he visited recently, like what they think of Hamas, Iran, Fatah, and Israel. I really doubt whether an Arab would mind Friedman telling an Israeli general that he doesn’t like him.
Yup. Some of them call it “Human Terrain Systems”.
Angela, you brought this up. It is actually off-topic.
Actually “world peace” brought it up. Maybe you have her killfiled? I wouldn’t blame you!
I mean, in this case it is very clear that the man Friedman has crossed the line, whatever you, W, may think about it.
This is utterly ridiculous. Friedman “relaying impressions of the situation” in Gaza is tantamount to spying how? Helena also “relays impressions” of the situation in Gaza to the entire world on her website. Is she a spy?
domza buddy you need to breathe deeply and consider what you write before you write it. You sound like a real bozo.
Excuse me for my ignorance, Kipper. As a South African, your slang is not all that familiar with me.
Bozo?
Would I be correct in thinking that you are a “Tea Bagger?”
Or are you just playing silly-baggers?