by Shira Miller
Thomas Friedman has been a thorn in Israel’s side for several decades. He recently penned a horrific article entitled, “This Israeli Government is a Danger to Jews Everywhere.”
The truth is that Thomas Friedman has had a long-standing anti-Israel bias all his life.
Thomas Friedman wants you to believe a convenient fiction: that he was once a supporter of Israel whose views changed only after witnessing Israeli actions in Lebanon. This carefully crafted narrative, which he peddled in his book “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” is demonstrably false. The truth is that Friedman’s hostility toward Israel dates back at least to his college days—long before he ever set foot in Lebanon.
The proof of Friedman’s deception lies in his own actions as a student at Brandeis University. In 1974, when PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat made his infamous gun-toting appearance at the United Nations, the Jewish community of New York organized a massive protest rally. While thousands of Jews stood up against a man whose hands were dripping with Jewish blood, where was young Thomas Friedman?
He was signing an open letter denouncing the anti-Arafat rally.
Consider the timing: This happened mere months after Arafat’s terrorists had perpetrated two horrific massacres. In April 1974, they slaughtered 18 Jews in Kiryat Shemona, including eight young children. Just weeks later, they murdered 27 more Jews in Ma’alot—21 of them children. The blood of these innocents had barely dried, yet Friedman chose to defend their killer and attack those who protested against him.
This wasn’t the action of someone who loved Israel. This was the action of someone who, even as a college student, was already aligned with Israel’s enemies.
What follows is a rebuttal to his latest anti-Israel missile in the NY Times..
1. On Israel becoming a “pariah state” and source of antisemitism
Friedman’s claim: Israel’s conduct in Gaza will make it a pariah state and engine of antisemitism rather than a safe haven.
Rebuttal: This reverses cause and effect. Antisemitism has existed for millennia before Israel’s founding. The spike in antisemitic incidents after October 7th began immediately – before any Israeli military response – with celebrations of Hamas’s massacre. Blaming Israel for antisemitism absolves the actual perpetrators of hatred and bigotry. Moreover, Israel remains the only guaranteed refuge for Jews facing persecution, as demonstrated when it evacuated Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen, and the former Soviet Union.
2. On Israel having “destroyed Hamas as an existential military threat”
Friedman’s claim: Israel has already neutralized Hamas militarily and should withdraw.
Rebuttal: This is demonstrably false. Hamas still holds over 100 hostages, continues firing rockets, maintains tunnel networks, and controls significant military infrastructure. Premature withdrawal would allow Hamas to rebuild, as happened after previous conflicts in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021. The October 7th massacre itself occurred because Israel allowed Hamas to maintain power after previous “limited” operations.
3. On the feasibility of an “international/Arab/Palestinian Authority peacekeeping force”
Friedman’s claim: Israel should agree to be replaced by international peacekeepers.
Rebuttal: Historical precedent shows this doesn’t work. UNIFIL forces in Lebanon have failed to prevent Hezbollah’s massive armament. UN forces fled Sinai in 1967 when Egypt demanded it. The Palestinian Authority has proven unable to control even the West Bank effectively. No Arab nation has volunteered troops for Gaza. This proposal is fantasy, not serious policy.
4. On civilian casualties and “moral stain”
Friedman’s claim: Israel shows “utter indifference” to civilian casualties, creating irreversible moral damage.
Rebuttal: Israel maintains one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in modern urban warfare, despite Hamas’s systematic use of human shields. The IDF employs roof knocking, SMS warnings, and leaflet drops – measures no other military uses so extensively. Hamas deliberately maximizes civilian casualties by operating from hospitals, schools, and residential areas. The moral stain belongs to those who use civilians as shields, not those trying to minimize casualties while defending against genocidal terrorism.
5. On the March 18 airstrike
Friedman’s claim: Israel “knowingly violated” agreements and killed 300 people including children.
Rebuttal: This misrepresents the incident. Intelligence indicated senior Hamas commanders responsible for October 7th were present. The high casualties resulted from Hamas’s deliberate placement of military command centers beneath civilian areas. Every civilian death is tragic, but the legal and moral responsibility lies with Hamas for embedding military targets among civilians, not with Israel for targeting legitimate military objectives.
6. On “revenge” versus strategic objectives
Friedman’s claim: The war has become about revenge and Netanyahu’s political interests, not security.
Rebuttal: Preventing Hamas from repeating October 7th is the definition of a strategic security objective. Hamas leaders have publicly vowed to repeat such attacks. Leaving Hamas in power would guarantee future massacres. This isn’t revenge – it’s the basic responsibility of any government to ensure such attacks cannot recur.
7. On diaspora Jews needing to speak out
Friedman’s claim: Diaspora Jews must criticize Israel to save it from itself.
Rebuttal: While dialogue is healthy, Friedman ignores that diaspora critics often lack crucial context about security threats Israelis face daily. They don’t live under rocket fire or face the threat of infiltration tunnels. Moreover, international criticism of Israel is already deafening – what’s lacking is criticism of Hamas’s war crimes and use of human shields.
8. On pilots’ moral objections
Friedman’s claim: Pilots’ refusal to serve represents moral clarity.
Rebuttal: While individual conscience matters, these pilots risk undermining Israel’s security by publicizing internal dissent during wartime. Their letters may be well-intentioned but provide propaganda victories to Hamas and potentially endanger their fellow soldiers still fighting. Military effectiveness requires unity during active operations.
9. On proportionality
Friedman’s claim: Israel’s response is disproportionate to October 7th.
Rebuttal: Proportionality in international law doesn’t mean tit-for-tat responses. It means military actions must be proportionate to the military objective – in this case, eliminating Hamas’s ability to repeat October 7th. Given Hamas’s stated intentions, extensive tunnel networks, and rocket arsenals, a comprehensive military campaign is legally proportionate to the threat.
10. On requiring Palestinian voices against Hamas
Friedman’s claim: Pro-Palestinian voices should denounce Hamas.
Rebuttal: While this is Friedman’s one reasonable point, he undermines it by spending 90% of his article attacking Israel rather than the terrorist organization that started this war. Where is his full-throated condemnation of Hamas’s use of human shields, its theft of humanitarian aid, or its explicit genocidal charter?
Conclusion
Friedman’s article exemplifies a troubling pattern: holding Israel to impossible standards while minimizing the unique challenges it faces. No other nation would be expected to tolerate a neighboring terrorist entity that conducted a massacre of 1,200 citizens. No other military faces enemies who systematically use human shields. And no other democracy has its very existence questioned when defending itself.
The real moral stain lies not in Israel’s self-defense, but in the international community’s failure to hold Hamas accountable for its war crimes and its use of Palestinian civilians as human pawns. Until Hamas is eliminated or surrenders, Israel has both the right and responsibility to continue operations to protect its citizens from future October 7th-style massacres.
Friedman’s claim that Israel’s Lebanon operations turned him into a critic is not just false—it’s a calculated lie designed to give him credibility as a “disappointed friend” rather than what he actually is: a long-time adversary masquerading as an objective journalist.
In that same 1974 period, Friedman told The Brandeis Justice campus newspaper that his professional goal was to work at “the Middle East desk of the State Department”—presumably to have a platform to impose his anti-Israel views on U.S. policy. When that career path didn’t materialize, he found another route: journalism.
As a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon, Friedman maintained the pretense of objectivity. But in his book, he finally dropped the mask, boasting about how he “buried” Israel’s military leadership by blaming them for actions taken by Lebanese Christian militiamen against Palestinians. The fact that he won a Pulitzer Prize for this exercise in bias says more about the prize committee than it does about Friedman’s integrity.
Most disturbing is how Friedman has resurrected age-old antisemitic tropes in his columns. The medieval image of Jews as puppet-masters controlling world leaders finds new life in his writings:
In February 2004, he wrote that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had “George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office…surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists.”
In December 2011, he claimed that the standing ovations Prime Minister Netanyahu received in Congress were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
In November 2013, he accused American lawmakers of being “willing to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.”
These aren’t the words of a friend offering constructive criticism. They’re the words of someone trafficking in the oldest and ugliest stereotypes about Jewish power and influence.
The evidence is clear: Thomas Friedman didn’t become critical of Israel because of Lebanon. He was hostile to Israel from his college days, when he sided with child-murdering terrorists over their victims. His entire narrative of being a “former supporter” is a fabrication designed to lend false weight to his attacks.
For decades, Friedman has used his prestigious platform at the New York Times to advance views he formed as a radical student—views that led him to defend Yasser Arafat while Jewish children’s blood was still fresh on the ground. That’s not journalism. That’s not honest criticism. That’s a betrayal of both professional ethics and basic human decency.
The next time Friedman poses as Israel’s disappointed friend, remember 1974. Remember the children of Kiryat Shemona and Ma’alot. And remember who Thomas Friedman chose to stand with when it mattered most.
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