Tom Friedman has finally reached his limit. The Gaza slaughter is turning Israel into “a pariah state,” so it’s time for the war to stop, he says. The massacre of journalists and other civilians at the Nasser hospital did it.
Friedman says Gaza is tearing apart the Jewish community and the Democrats. “It is … going to rip apart many, many synagogues around the world… between those who feel the need to stand with Israel, right or wrong, and those who simply can’t stand this Israeli government’s awful behavior in Gaza.
“It is also going to rip apart the Democratic Party, between those who are afraid to defy the influential Israeli lobbying group AIPAC, for fear of losing campaign funding to their Republican opponents, and those who just can’t stand it any longer.”
Friedman is right on both counts, though he’s got the wrong attitude.
Yes, the Jewish community is f***ed for as far as the eye can see – and it should be. Israel’s racist aggression is at last dawning on the Jewish mainstream. Young Jews are shocked and determined to find out — How-and-why did generations of the leading Jewish organizations support the false idol of Israel through cycle after cycle of ethnic cleansing? Nothing will save the Jewish community from this accounting for another generation or two. It’s about time
As for the Democratic Party– we need the Democratic Party to defeat Trumpism. But the Democratic Party is also f***ed as far as the eye can see.
For good reason. There is a cancer on the Democratic Party, its blind advocacy for Israel, and nothing Zionists, even liberal ones, say about the occupation will fix that. Polling shows that the base hates Israel (and so do lots of other Americans). The party bosses love Israel.
Kamala Harris’s bent-knee support for Israel in the midst of a genocide clearly played a role in her loss last year. This was proven by Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in the NY mayor’s primary in June, up against $25 million in Cuomo’s warchest, when the assemblyman mobilized an army of the young because he was unafraid to say genocide and apartheid.
The Democratic Party is screwed until it can
- Denounce genocide
- Stop avoiding the word apartheid
- Stop squelching the moral voices of the party with false antisemitism charges.
- Give a space to the overwhelming majority of Democrats who hate genocide, and to the Palestinian voices such as Noura Erakat and Mahmoud Khalil, or Jewish voices like Medea Benjamin and Norman Finkelstein who say Israel is behaving like Nazis.
The Democratic Party is screwed so long as it accepts AIPAC at any level. It is screwed so long as liberal media take Israeli lies seriously. It is screwed so long as Tom Friedman and David Brooks refer to a racist war criminal as “Bibi” and their editors and hosts think that’s OK.
The party is screwed so long as it cannot make the simple moral declaration that American arms must not be used to murder brave journalists and starving children.
The great moral voice of the left at this moment is Rachel Accurso, the children’s entertainer Miss Rachel. Because she will not shut up about the maiming and killing of civilians, and she does not care about her career. She has made viewers of PBS News Hour cry the world over by showing us the beautiful children hurt by our bombs. We must lift her up.
Our bombs. Democrats in Congress need to start saying just one ounce of what Marjorie Taylor Greene said about American-funded genocide on social media the other day.
“If America was being bombed day and night because of something horrific our government did, and many innocent Americans and American children were being killed and traumatically injured, and we begged for mercy, but the rest of the world said, ‘Americans voted for their government so they deserve it, their government is bad so all Americans are bad, therefore this is what they get and must be done’ And the world was silent to our suffering And our cities and homes were bombed and turned to rubble. And our infrastructure was destroyed, no farms, no grocery stores, no more organized society. And no one helped our injured and hungry children. How would you feel? What would you think? What would you do? This is what is happening to Gaza where in spite of what we have all been told, many innocent people and children are being killed…
“[E]very U.S. tax payer is contributing to Israel’s military actions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with. And I will not be silent about it.”
Yes—Greene has said hateful things about Muslims. But she honors the humanity of Palestinians in a way very few Democrats are able to do. Why? Because of the money they get from the Israel lobby, as Friedman says.
Shame on these racist corrupt Democrats. They should be following the leadership of Miss Rachel, who day after day is putting herself on the line for the sake of children starving to death thanks to American weapons.
Then they’d have a political party again.
We need some clarity and leadership among liberals:
If you are going to talk about the horrors of the West Bank – as Ira Glass did for an hour on This American Life — and not say the word “apartheid” once – a word every human rights organization has said — you are useless. (If the Dems had listened to Jimmy Carter on apartheid nearly 20 years ago rather than shutting him down, the genocide would not be happening.)
If you are going to say that the killing was tolerable so long as Israel backs a two-state solution – you are just being racist. (“Palestinian civilians are being killed by the dozen almost daily as the inevitable spillover” of a “just war for Israeli survival and an attempt to produce a better Palestinian partner in Gaza.” — Friedman)
If you are going to offer apologetics for genocide, you are useless. “As I’ve said before on the show, there is no country in the world with a capable military that would not have responded to something like October 7 with unfathomable force” – Ezra Klein. This is the argument the Myanmar government makes against the Rohingya.
If you are going to talk about the horrors of Gaza and not call for an end to American weapons for the genocide, then you are useless.
This has to be the bare minimum. Stop arming war criminals who kill children. Americans will sign up for your party. Ask Mamdani.
While we’re at it, let’s honor the campus protesters. They put their futures on the line, and some paid with their Ivy League degrees, for a simple principle: we don’t want our institutions to support a genocide. Stop smearing them as antisemites.
If you can’t stand up for children and journalists in the bomb sights, if you can’t separate your politics from a genocide because the Zionist community has given you big campaign contributions, then you are deservedly screwed.
There’s only one way to move forward, in dignity and the light.
Thanks to Donald Johnson, from whose notes I cribbed insights and lines.