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April 8th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Thomas Friedman just wrote a column about Israel for The New York Times that says the Palestinian issue doesn’t matter. “[T]he Arab-Israel conflict for Israel… has largely disappeared,” he says. Israel is in the same boat as the U.S., building a diverse “idealistic” country in the face of rightwing trends.
This approach by the leading foreign affairs columnist is significant. It shows how liberal Zionists are responding to the bad news Israel got in January, being labeled an apartheid state by a leading Israeli human rights organization, at a time of “mounting recognition” of this fact internationally.
Liberal Zionists and the New York Times have ignored the apartheid charge. They don’t seem to care that an organization led by Jews has designated Israel an apartheid state so long as nobody who matters– American government officials– cares about it.
Here are Friedman’s observations about Israel. His big idea is a liberal Zionist staple, America and Israel are in the same boat.
Their defining external threat of the second half of the 20th century — the Cold War for America and the Arab-Israel conflict for Israel — which had a huge binding effect on both nations, has largely disappeared, and nothing remotely as compelling has come along to cement national solidarity.
The fact that half of Israel/Palestine’s population has no rights is nothing to lose sleep over when you’re thinking of big ideas. Friedman can’t bring himself to mention Palestinians, or the occupation.
Israel’s most important demographic tipping point, though, is not the one you think — i.e., not just with the Arabs — it’s with its exploding ultra-Orthodox Jewish population…
[G]overnments… have to keep mortgaging Israel’s future to the ultra-Orthodox for short-term political gains….
Israel is a robust democracy just like America, with a rightwing problem.
In short, to thrive in the 21st century both America and Israel need to define anew what it means to be a pluralistic democracy — with big, idealistic aspirations — at a time when their populations have become so much more diverse.
A big idealistic country. No mention of the fact that Israel is now under investigation by the International Criminal Court for its illegal settlement project.
Tom Friedman has said that his job entails promoting Israel. He was explicit about that in remarks to the 92d Street Y in 2019:
Israel had me at hello. Whatever you think folks– don’t worry. In times of crisis, I know where I will be. When the Jewish state is under threat–
But I worry about– I’m 66, I’ve been the foreign affairs columnist [at the New York Times] for 21 years– what about the next generation? Will the next foreign affairs columnist– we got David Brooks, we got Bret Stephens, we’re all sort of the same generation, one that socialized in a different era– Will they [the next foreign affairs columnist] get that buzz when they see an El Al plane landing in Beijing? That’s what worries me.
And his ignoring the apartheid charge follows in a long pattern of ignoring bad news for Israel.
But his indifference here to Palestinians is a sad reflection on liberal Zionists. It suggests that their endorsement of the two state solution is a fig leaf. If there is no threat to Israel and people don’t raise a stink about the Palestinians, they are happy to do nothing to change the status quo.
Israel’s apartheid regime is under more and more pressure. B’Tselem said in January that the country maintains an “apartheid regime” of “Jewish supremacy” between the river and the sea. While in the London Review of Books, Nathan Thrall called out liberal Zionists for enabling apartheid by promoting a “delusion,” that there is one regime of democracy on one side of the Green line and a “provisional” military occupation “somewhere outside the state” –when actually all state institutions have supported the conquest and settlement of Palestinian land for decades.
It will be interesting to see how J Street counters the new awareness of Israel’s conduct at its conference later this month. It has maintained that apartheid is an unfair description of the occupation, and has noted the apartheid charge in a “by the way” manner.
h/t Donald Johnson.
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