Thomas L. Friedman on Sunday published an op-ed he titled, “The Thread Connecting Trump, Putin and Netanyahu,” which was so outlandish and chock full of unabashed antisemitism, he couldn’t run it in his own paper, The NY Times, but ran it instead in Israel’s Pravda wannabe, Haaretz.
Arguing that “The Israel We Knew Is Gone,” Friedman recalls telling his fellow Upper-West Siders following the November 1, 2022 victory of Israel’s right over a bizarre coalition of anti-Arab, anti-Haredi, leftist, and Muslim Brotherhood parties: “You did not go to Camp Ramah with these people. Your family did not vacation in the Catskills with these people. Your parents did not meet these people on their last UJA tour to Israel. They are to the right of the far right. But now they have positions of real and central power.”
Turns out, Friedman’s livid hatred for us, the folks on the right, is identical to the hate we receive from the violent crypto-fascists and anarchists on Israel’s highways, in its airport terminals, trains, public institutions, and in front of coalition members’ homes at five in the morning: We are not like them.