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28 Kislev, 5783 - December 22, 2022 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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OPINION
NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman's "Expert" Predictions about Israel

by Yitzchok Roth


3

Some say that it is not advisable to take the New York Times seriously — because who in the general public actually reads newspapers. Notwithstanding, the public does relate to this very well read newspaper which can certainly compete with the radical Israeli Leftist paper Ha'aretz, if not with its massive readership, at least with its political positions. Thus it is hardly surprising that that anti-Israel - and one can almost say, anti-Semitic - paper is actually owned by a Jew, and many of its columnists are Jews as well, and that it deals extensively with the State of Israel and Jews. Indeed, one of its leading correspondents is Thomas Friedman, a Jew.

A weekend editorial which was based on Friedman's columns and which projected him as "one who has closely follows Israel issues for the past four decades," presents him as an expert on Israeli matters who believes that Israeli democracy is in danger.

In response, Reporter Ariel Kahana of the Israeli paper Israel Today created a long balance sheet of Friedman's past forecasts about what is going on in our area and how those forecasts turned out in fact. It shows that not everyone who follows closely what takes place here also understands what he is seeing.

For example, two decades ago, Friedman wrote that then new president of Syria, Bashar el Assad, was "liberal good news for peace." He predicted that Bashar would sever ties with Iran and revive his country's economy. Not many years passed before Assad did the opposite: he invited Iran to help him murder almost half a million of his country's citizens .

The Times newspaper backed the "Arab spring" and anticipated that the Middle East would stand up for democracy.

A decade ago, Friedman wrote against Netanyahu and predicted that he was about to collapse. Five years ago, he opposed transferring the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and predicted a gloomy future if it was relocated.

Not to forget that he was convinced that the Palestinian issue was the root of all the friction in the area, when the "Abraham Accords," which completely ignored the Palestinians, sent him reeling in shock.

Furthermore, the Times, Kahana reminds his readers, hid the most drastic crime against humanity, the Holocaust, from them even though its columnists were fully aware of what was taking place in Europe. Not to forget that it was opposed to establishing a Jewish state.

In short, this paper is all the way to the Left, is malicious, slanderous, and if this columnist is writing against the new government, it is the best proof that it will rise and be successful.

 

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