Friedman has been despicable for decades. His support for Israel has always been 100 percent conditional on it meeting his delusional moral standards. And the same goes for American Jewry. John Fetterman, a gentile has more moral clarity in his pinky than Friedman has in his whole bloated body.
I stopped listening to Friedman decades ago and stopped relying on the alphabet soup of Jewish orgs for just as long. We learned that the only thing they care about is to perpetuate their own power privilege. Sometimes, just sometimes, you really do need to stand on your own 2 feet and not wait for someone else to save you.
I don't care why Trump is fighting antisemitism on college campuses, I am glad he is. The democrats certainly didn't do it. The democrats perpetuated it. I don't need moral perfection in Israel or in an ally who fights antisemitism, I just need them to believe I and my children are human beings entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
The meltdown by Friedman and the left is proof enough that whatever Trump is doing as far as antisemitism is having the requisite effect. If it does nothing else but to make sure universities will think twice before allowing genocidal Jew haters to occupy important places in their hierarchy then good.
“But the Palestinian Authority can be a partner. So if there is going to be an Israeli invasion of Gaza to try to destroy Hamas, it has to be paired with a political initiative that empowers and helps to strengthen that Palestinian Authority so we can forge, as Victor put it, “a settlement that provides all sides with something they can live with. Otherwise, sooner or later, we will be right back in the same situation — only worse. That was the true lesson of the Yom Kippur War.”
Is Friedman “radical chic”? Is he “gauche caviar”? Is he simply dangerously naive?
Is he just spoon feeding his loyal readers with what they want to hear?
He’s a self hating Jew afflicted with terminal #TDS. There is no real connection between him and the organized Jewish community. I certainly have never heard of any. However, he is an example of how the organized Jewish community has adopted a position of privilege where in they believe that their own Jewish affiliations are essentially based on the political aspirations of the Democratic Party. There has never been a president as sympathetic and helpful and concerned and supportive of the Jewish community both here and in Israel, then Donald Trump. The possibly exception to this, of course would be Harry Truman, who lent his support and squelched his antisemitic anti-Jewish elite state department when he lent his support to the establishment of a state of Israel. Thomas Freedman is mostly left-wing claptrap crying about Donald Trump, and this is just another vehicle with which to do it. The writer of this article truly is likely also a victim of TDS except a lower grade as he repeats the lies of Charlottesville as if it was the truth And proffers the statements of JD Vance with regard to the AFD party in Germany.
The apologies of the Germans, for the atrocities of the Nazis have long been hypocritical and insincere. It has resulted in a sort of perverted acceptance of the Muslims into Europe as a way atoning for participation in the murder of 6 million Jews. All one needs to do is go to Germany and look at the various memorials and museums with regard to Jews to see that this is true. It is another example of what Dana Horn titled her book regarding the fact that people love dead Jews, and are completely indifferent and hostile to live ones.
This article is a slam on the organized Jewish community and Thomas Freedman, but it can’t help itself in asserting that Donald Trump is a closet antisemite who is using the plight of the Jews in America and Israel for his own benefit or as some sort of political benefit to himself. The organized Jewish community, it’s nothing more than the Jewish auxiliary of the Democratic Party. They are blinded by their own privilege to sit at what they consider the grown-ups table with the non Jews. And to try to get money from our bloated federal bureaucracy, which is now in the process of cutting them off as well as other entities which should not be receiving federal money. These agencies don’t even refer to themselves with words that reveal their Jewishness. They use letters in the hope that non- Jews miss the Jewish part. As for example ADL (The Anti-Defamation league which was established to combat antisemitism and has long left that task in the dust in order to oppose Donald Trump.). Then there is an organization called:. HIAS (Hebrew immigrants aid society.). It’s a major goal in life is aiding Muslim immigrants to the United States and when they’re not doing that are supporting illegal aliens, wherever they can and using laundered federal money to do it.
And don’t get me started on the JUF which thought that an appropriate response to blatant antisemitism by the mayor of Chicago and physical attacks on Jews, could be handled by harshly worded letters to the editor and back door, sycophantic meetings with the Mayor’s office.
The organized Jewish community care nothing for Jews or their Jewish college students and others who are under attack by the Jew haters of the Ivy League who loved the Jews as long as they were fawning Democrat victims and hate them now because they have fallen in love with new victims: Gaza, foremost, illegal aliens, and keffiyah wearing thugs who want to murder Jews.
The hope of the organized Jewish community and people like Thomas Friedman is that when the antisemites do start murdering Jews, they will spare them because they were the good Jews, the Democrat, Jews, the Jews, who wore symbols of Judaism and committed blood libels against their own people. I hate to break it to you, Tom and all your other privileged Jewish idiots. Should that time ever come the antisemites will not know the difference between you and me. They didn’t last time and that’s how we lost 6 million Jews many of them as secular as you. And many of them participants in their own organized Jewish community who collaborated with Nazis in order to save themselves. How’d that work out?
So the writer of this post slanders Donald Trump because in his heart, he is also afflicted with TDS. But Donald Trump, the grandfather of three orthodox Jewish grandchildren, who, along with his father supported Jewish institutions all over New York City, and the state of New York, is a genuine supporter, an ally of the Jewish people who is using his political capital and the power of the federal government to defend them. The least you can do is stop with the Charlottesville nonsense, which you should know by now is nonsense and say thank you.
Thomas Freedman is a hopeless sycophant to leftism. In writing this article you are correct about him, but you should re-examine your underlying lack of understanding about the efforts of the Trump administration directed by the President, in their unabashed support of the Jewish people.
He just spoon feeding his loyal readers, himself included, with what they want and need to hear. That has been my perception of Jews like him since October 8. It's not a ruling class necessarily - it's a class of people whose entire world view is curated, carefully by the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, etc. That is what they have in common. I am not personally acquainted with many Jews in the ruling class (as described here). The Jews and other liberals I know that are blind to the dissonance between their stated ideals and the actions and people they defend in the name of those ideals have been blinded successfully by these entities (and overtaking them in number, will be those who are now children being indoctrinated in our schools to hate America, Israel, and Jews (literally)). They know they can't afford to think differently about the antisemites and remain in the worlds they inhabit. Some do see, can see the hypocrisy, have seen it and left those worlds, even before Oct 8 - as one of those, it's been an odyssey of loneliness but I've found much better things, much better people (including writers) to admire.
Oh yes, that completely benign organization, the PA, who never had a pay for slay program, who doesn't print all text books for Palestinian children in both the WB and Gaza. Whose president never wrote an anti-Semitic, anti- Zionist, "social science" doctorate in the Soviet Union -- on the connection bw Zionists and Nazis. Yes, the PA is perfectly wonderful.
Sounds like Thom didn't get Palestinan memo from Oct 7th.
Entebbe Zionism That is an Israel they can support.
The Jews of Manhattan can’t stomach a full blown war against an enemy whose sole objective is the massacre of Jews and the destruction of Israel; in practice not theoretically. They have taken the sick Hamas propaganda hook. line and sinker.
Here is the brilliant military advice offered by Thomas Friedman in his oh so clever NYT column of October 16, 2023.
“If Israel were to announce today that it has decided for now to forgo an invasion of Gaza and will look for more surgical means to eliminate or capture Hamas’s leadership while trying to engineer a trade for the more than 150 Israeli and other hostages whom Hamas is holding, it would not only avoid further traumatizing its own society, as well as Palestinian civilians in Gaza; it would also give Israel and its allies time to think through how to build — with Palestinians — a legitimate alternative to Hamas.”
Since then the IDF. Mossad and Shin Bet under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu,
the all time worst leader of Israel according to Thomas Friedman has crushed Iran, Hezbollah. Hamas and the Houthis.
Mene mene tekel uparshin. Am I dreaming or are you describing a court Jew from Hapsburg Spain? Friedman like Blinky, Mayorkis or Biten’s AG Meritless Garland all JINO’s. This shit makes me crazy.
The last two Oscars ceremonies were another example of privileged Jews forsaking their brothers and sisters in order to ingratiate themselves with an antisemitic elite.
It was disgusting to hear some of them voicing anti-Israel opinions in their speeches while refusing to show any solidarity with the hostages or condemnation of Hamas.
Friedman has been writing this garbage since the early 1980s when he was stationed in Israel as a NYT correspondent . He is an apologist for anti Semitism of ala Schumer and a self hating Jew of the Bernie Sanders variety
Really excellent piece. It’s one of the most distressing and frustrating phenomena of the past year and a half: all of these highly-placed Jews in government, academia, the media, etc. going absolutely limp the moment they’re most needed. We’ve all been watching in horror wondering “why aren’t they DOING something??”
And worst among them is Jonathan Greenblatt, who flew the ADL into the side of a mountain. All the celebrity-studded gala fundraisers, the lunches with (actual) big shots, the lockstep allegiance to the woke DNC, and what did it get him, for all his servility and sycophancy? Total abandonment.
A little late for that, I think. When you spend 10 years shitting on this country people tend to remember that. And returning to reason and principle now looks awfully opportunistic.
I never liked Friedman from the title of his book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree.'
The title implicitly supports the anti-Israel Palestinian Arab's posturing as the sole Indigenous group and at the same time frames Israel as some kind of frivolous and extraneous American branch plant, and he achieved all that in just the title.
Speak for yourself Friedman. I love Israel for the Jewish history, Hebrew language, the pioneers who drained the malaria swamps and built the roads, the communities who held on by their fingernails for centuries. I could go on.
Thank you. He wasn’t. He was talking about the statue controversy. He said clearly neo-Nazis should be utterly condemned. If you can find it, go watch the whole video of what he said.
I decided that all these people were useless at least 20 years ago. During the Bush 43 years, I went to luncheon of Jewish leaders where the speaker was from AIPAC. She babbled on about their relationships with Congress critters, all of whom were Democrats. I asked why she did not include Republicans, who after all were the majority in Congress at the time. As a 3rd generation Jewish Republican, it seemed to me that you would want to cultivate all sides but all I got in response was blather. I realized then that they were only comfortable in a one-way conversation with their own side. The whole lot of them don't get my donations and frankly can go pound sand.
Oh, interesting that you'd think so - it doesn't really ring true to what I've seen. For one thing I do believe AIPAC has been very effective in gaining political support for Israel, more than other similar entities (not sure how to describe them). And they have not pushed for the types of things ADL (or Dems of course) do - neither their newsletters nor action items. AIPAC has never seemed to be apologists for woke ideology or "progressive" (regressiveness) or anti-semites as ADL and Dems have seemed to, to me. It was frustrating to hear Jews attack AIPAC especially at a time when others were demonizing it as a way to demonize Israel and its supporters. Of all our enemies why pick on AIPAC? Anyway, thank you for your perspective - I'll keep it in mind.
Decadent and depraved are the very words I use to describe Palestinians and their western supporters. Friedman deserves everything you say about him. But there are many Jews who think he is a lovely person. Go figure.
Hannah Arendt famously and controversially said in "Eichmann in Jerusalem":
"Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had been really unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and half and six million people."
Watching the liberal Jewish leadership these days makes it hard to argue with the truth of her statement.
Eh… I think Arendt’s views on Israel were such that she would be pretty well aligned with, say, Friedman. Obviously she wasn’t an anti-Zionist, but she was quite critical of the most extreme Zionists and even more moderate Zionists, particularly with respect to (what she saw as) their disregard for Palestinians.
One of the beauties of today's world lies in the fat that Friedman and his ilk are losing audience rapidly to the point where they will not be relevant. While it is not happening at the pace I would like, it is happening. With you and other sources (writers and actual videos not shown on TV), the truth is coming out. The fact that Trump won the popular vote despite legacy media being 100% negative proves this. This piece is instructive and I will share with my Jewish friends who still cannot see the light.
Friedman as a college student was part of a short lived organization called Breitbart that had fantasies of a two state solution and in his writings has always despised anything traditionally Jewish or an Israel willing to do what is necessary to protect itself .
Friedman has been despicable for decades. His support for Israel has always been 100 percent conditional on it meeting his delusional moral standards. And the same goes for American Jewry. John Fetterman, a gentile has more moral clarity in his pinky than Friedman has in his whole bloated body.
I stopped listening to Friedman decades ago and stopped relying on the alphabet soup of Jewish orgs for just as long. We learned that the only thing they care about is to perpetuate their own power privilege. Sometimes, just sometimes, you really do need to stand on your own 2 feet and not wait for someone else to save you.
I don't care why Trump is fighting antisemitism on college campuses, I am glad he is. The democrats certainly didn't do it. The democrats perpetuated it. I don't need moral perfection in Israel or in an ally who fights antisemitism, I just need them to believe I and my children are human beings entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
The meltdown by Friedman and the left is proof enough that whatever Trump is doing as far as antisemitism is having the requisite effect. If it does nothing else but to make sure universities will think twice before allowing genocidal Jew haters to occupy important places in their hierarchy then good.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Israel’s Worst Day at War
Oct. 7, 2023
“But the Palestinian Authority can be a partner. So if there is going to be an Israeli invasion of Gaza to try to destroy Hamas, it has to be paired with a political initiative that empowers and helps to strengthen that Palestinian Authority so we can forge, as Victor put it, “a settlement that provides all sides with something they can live with. Otherwise, sooner or later, we will be right back in the same situation — only worse. That was the true lesson of the Yom Kippur War.”
Is Friedman “radical chic”? Is he “gauche caviar”? Is he simply dangerously naive?
Is he just spoon feeding his loyal readers with what they want to hear?
Round 1 is a TKO by Benjamin Kerstein
Exactly!
"A settlement that provides all sides with something they can live with"
Was that the successful formula for dealing with Nazi Germany during and after the war?
Ask Chamberlain. Appeasement never worked.
He’s a self hating Jew afflicted with terminal #TDS. There is no real connection between him and the organized Jewish community. I certainly have never heard of any. However, he is an example of how the organized Jewish community has adopted a position of privilege where in they believe that their own Jewish affiliations are essentially based on the political aspirations of the Democratic Party. There has never been a president as sympathetic and helpful and concerned and supportive of the Jewish community both here and in Israel, then Donald Trump. The possibly exception to this, of course would be Harry Truman, who lent his support and squelched his antisemitic anti-Jewish elite state department when he lent his support to the establishment of a state of Israel. Thomas Freedman is mostly left-wing claptrap crying about Donald Trump, and this is just another vehicle with which to do it. The writer of this article truly is likely also a victim of TDS except a lower grade as he repeats the lies of Charlottesville as if it was the truth And proffers the statements of JD Vance with regard to the AFD party in Germany.
The apologies of the Germans, for the atrocities of the Nazis have long been hypocritical and insincere. It has resulted in a sort of perverted acceptance of the Muslims into Europe as a way atoning for participation in the murder of 6 million Jews. All one needs to do is go to Germany and look at the various memorials and museums with regard to Jews to see that this is true. It is another example of what Dana Horn titled her book regarding the fact that people love dead Jews, and are completely indifferent and hostile to live ones.
This article is a slam on the organized Jewish community and Thomas Freedman, but it can’t help itself in asserting that Donald Trump is a closet antisemite who is using the plight of the Jews in America and Israel for his own benefit or as some sort of political benefit to himself. The organized Jewish community, it’s nothing more than the Jewish auxiliary of the Democratic Party. They are blinded by their own privilege to sit at what they consider the grown-ups table with the non Jews. And to try to get money from our bloated federal bureaucracy, which is now in the process of cutting them off as well as other entities which should not be receiving federal money. These agencies don’t even refer to themselves with words that reveal their Jewishness. They use letters in the hope that non- Jews miss the Jewish part. As for example ADL (The Anti-Defamation league which was established to combat antisemitism and has long left that task in the dust in order to oppose Donald Trump.). Then there is an organization called:. HIAS (Hebrew immigrants aid society.). It’s a major goal in life is aiding Muslim immigrants to the United States and when they’re not doing that are supporting illegal aliens, wherever they can and using laundered federal money to do it.
And don’t get me started on the JUF which thought that an appropriate response to blatant antisemitism by the mayor of Chicago and physical attacks on Jews, could be handled by harshly worded letters to the editor and back door, sycophantic meetings with the Mayor’s office.
The organized Jewish community care nothing for Jews or their Jewish college students and others who are under attack by the Jew haters of the Ivy League who loved the Jews as long as they were fawning Democrat victims and hate them now because they have fallen in love with new victims: Gaza, foremost, illegal aliens, and keffiyah wearing thugs who want to murder Jews.
The hope of the organized Jewish community and people like Thomas Friedman is that when the antisemites do start murdering Jews, they will spare them because they were the good Jews, the Democrat, Jews, the Jews, who wore symbols of Judaism and committed blood libels against their own people. I hate to break it to you, Tom and all your other privileged Jewish idiots. Should that time ever come the antisemites will not know the difference between you and me. They didn’t last time and that’s how we lost 6 million Jews many of them as secular as you. And many of them participants in their own organized Jewish community who collaborated with Nazis in order to save themselves. How’d that work out?
So the writer of this post slanders Donald Trump because in his heart, he is also afflicted with TDS. But Donald Trump, the grandfather of three orthodox Jewish grandchildren, who, along with his father supported Jewish institutions all over New York City, and the state of New York, is a genuine supporter, an ally of the Jewish people who is using his political capital and the power of the federal government to defend them. The least you can do is stop with the Charlottesville nonsense, which you should know by now is nonsense and say thank you.
Thomas Freedman is a hopeless sycophant to leftism. In writing this article you are correct about him, but you should re-examine your underlying lack of understanding about the efforts of the Trump administration directed by the President, in their unabashed support of the Jewish people.
It was my impression that the anti Trump TDS parts were the longer quotes from Friedman himself, not the author's opinions. Am I wrong?
He just spoon feeding his loyal readers, himself included, with what they want and need to hear. That has been my perception of Jews like him since October 8. It's not a ruling class necessarily - it's a class of people whose entire world view is curated, carefully by the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, etc. That is what they have in common. I am not personally acquainted with many Jews in the ruling class (as described here). The Jews and other liberals I know that are blind to the dissonance between their stated ideals and the actions and people they defend in the name of those ideals have been blinded successfully by these entities (and overtaking them in number, will be those who are now children being indoctrinated in our schools to hate America, Israel, and Jews (literally)). They know they can't afford to think differently about the antisemites and remain in the worlds they inhabit. Some do see, can see the hypocrisy, have seen it and left those worlds, even before Oct 8 - as one of those, it's been an odyssey of loneliness but I've found much better things, much better people (including writers) to admire.
Oh yes, that completely benign organization, the PA, who never had a pay for slay program, who doesn't print all text books for Palestinian children in both the WB and Gaza. Whose president never wrote an anti-Semitic, anti- Zionist, "social science" doctorate in the Soviet Union -- on the connection bw Zionists and Nazis. Yes, the PA is perfectly wonderful.
Sounds like Thom didn't get Palestinan memo from Oct 7th.
The Liberal New York Jewish Community prefers
Entebbe Zionism That is an Israel they can support.
The Jews of Manhattan can’t stomach a full blown war against an enemy whose sole objective is the massacre of Jews and the destruction of Israel; in practice not theoretically. They have taken the sick Hamas propaganda hook. line and sinker.
Here is the brilliant military advice offered by Thomas Friedman in his oh so clever NYT column of October 16, 2023.
“If Israel were to announce today that it has decided for now to forgo an invasion of Gaza and will look for more surgical means to eliminate or capture Hamas’s leadership while trying to engineer a trade for the more than 150 Israeli and other hostages whom Hamas is holding, it would not only avoid further traumatizing its own society, as well as Palestinian civilians in Gaza; it would also give Israel and its allies time to think through how to build — with Palestinians — a legitimate alternative to Hamas.”
Since then the IDF. Mossad and Shin Bet under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu,
the all time worst leader of Israel according to Thomas Friedman has crushed Iran, Hezbollah. Hamas and the Houthis.
That’s not nothing!
Mene mene tekel uparshin. Am I dreaming or are you describing a court Jew from Hapsburg Spain? Friedman like Blinky, Mayorkis or Biten’s AG Meritless Garland all JINO’s. This shit makes me crazy.
The last two Oscars ceremonies were another example of privileged Jews forsaking their brothers and sisters in order to ingratiate themselves with an antisemitic elite.
It was disgusting to hear some of them voicing anti-Israel opinions in their speeches while refusing to show any solidarity with the hostages or condemnation of Hamas.
Friedman belongs in that category.
Friedman has been writing this garbage since the early 1980s when he was stationed in Israel as a NYT correspondent . He is an apologist for anti Semitism of ala Schumer and a self hating Jew of the Bernie Sanders variety
Most are/were jews by name only
Really excellent piece. It’s one of the most distressing and frustrating phenomena of the past year and a half: all of these highly-placed Jews in government, academia, the media, etc. going absolutely limp the moment they’re most needed. We’ve all been watching in horror wondering “why aren’t they DOING something??”
And worst among them is Jonathan Greenblatt, who flew the ADL into the side of a mountain. All the celebrity-studded gala fundraisers, the lunches with (actual) big shots, the lockstep allegiance to the woke DNC, and what did it get him, for all his servility and sycophancy? Total abandonment.
Add Chuck Schumer to this list, for advising Columbia University on how to evade the House investigation into campus antisemitism
https://freebeacon.com/campus/best-strategy-is-to-keep-heads-down-schumer-advised-columbias-leaders-to-ignore-anti-semitism-backlash-saying-their-problems-are-really-only-among-republicans/
OMG. And to think I had cast votes for Schumer? OMG!
I watched in horror from Oct 2000 and wondered "Why aren't they doing something?"
Then I realized that they were a variety of antisemite themselves, suddenly it makes sense.
Since 10:7 Greenblatt has walked away from rendering the ADL as woke as possible
A little late for that, I think. When you spend 10 years shitting on this country people tend to remember that. And returning to reason and principle now looks awfully opportunistic.
I never liked Friedman from the title of his book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree.'
The title implicitly supports the anti-Israel Palestinian Arab's posturing as the sole Indigenous group and at the same time frames Israel as some kind of frivolous and extraneous American branch plant, and he achieved all that in just the title.
Speak for yourself Friedman. I love Israel for the Jewish history, Hebrew language, the pioneers who drained the malaria swamps and built the roads, the communities who held on by their fingernails for centuries. I could go on.
And most of the secular Jews, professionals mossad and IDF who have worked to make Israel the greatest country on earth! Am Israel chai! 💙🤍💙🤍🇮🇱
I dont think Trump was defending antisemitism in the “fine people” comments. He specifically condemned radicalism in the same paragraph
Thank you. He wasn’t. He was talking about the statue controversy. He said clearly neo-Nazis should be utterly condemned. If you can find it, go watch the whole video of what he said.
I decided that all these people were useless at least 20 years ago. During the Bush 43 years, I went to luncheon of Jewish leaders where the speaker was from AIPAC. She babbled on about their relationships with Congress critters, all of whom were Democrats. I asked why she did not include Republicans, who after all were the majority in Congress at the time. As a 3rd generation Jewish Republican, it seemed to me that you would want to cultivate all sides but all I got in response was blather. I realized then that they were only comfortable in a one-way conversation with their own side. The whole lot of them don't get my donations and frankly can go pound sand.
Disappointing that was AIPAC. But I may be naive/ignorant.
You are. They are just as much a tool of the Dems as ADL has become.
Oh, interesting that you'd think so - it doesn't really ring true to what I've seen. For one thing I do believe AIPAC has been very effective in gaining political support for Israel, more than other similar entities (not sure how to describe them). And they have not pushed for the types of things ADL (or Dems of course) do - neither their newsletters nor action items. AIPAC has never seemed to be apologists for woke ideology or "progressive" (regressiveness) or anti-semites as ADL and Dems have seemed to, to me. It was frustrating to hear Jews attack AIPAC especially at a time when others were demonizing it as a way to demonize Israel and its supporters. Of all our enemies why pick on AIPAC? Anyway, thank you for your perspective - I'll keep it in mind.
Decadent and depraved are the very words I use to describe Palestinians and their western supporters. Friedman deserves everything you say about him. But there are many Jews who think he is a lovely person. Go figure.
Sycophants admire people who appear to have achieved worldly success. Marrying into the Buxbaum family qualifies Friedman as above reproach.
He’s a pathetic , self loathing apologist. Factor in Peter Beinart, Seymour Hersh, Jen Rubin, David Corn, Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, Naomi Klein…
Hannah Arendt famously and controversially said in "Eichmann in Jerusalem":
"Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had been really unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and half and six million people."
Watching the liberal Jewish leadership these days makes it hard to argue with the truth of her statement.
I can’t really like this statement because it is so pathetically true.
Eh… I think Arendt’s views on Israel were such that she would be pretty well aligned with, say, Friedman. Obviously she wasn’t an anti-Zionist, but she was quite critical of the most extreme Zionists and even more moderate Zionists, particularly with respect to (what she saw as) their disregard for Palestinians.
Off topic. The point was that during the times of danger too many Jewish leaders did not align with their people.
I believe she also considered Israelis to be 'lower class' people. Total snob.
Nevertheless, what she said on that topic is absolutely true.
One of the beauties of today's world lies in the fat that Friedman and his ilk are losing audience rapidly to the point where they will not be relevant. While it is not happening at the pace I would like, it is happening. With you and other sources (writers and actual videos not shown on TV), the truth is coming out. The fact that Trump won the popular vote despite legacy media being 100% negative proves this. This piece is instructive and I will share with my Jewish friends who still cannot see the light.
Friedman as a college student was part of a short lived organization called Breitbart that had fantasies of a two state solution and in his writings has always despised anything traditionally Jewish or an Israel willing to do what is necessary to protect itself .
Woops - Breira not Breitbart!