Thomas Friedman published one of his boilerplate op-eds in the NY Times yesterday about Israel, you know, the ones that these days an AI can generate just as well (try it, it works). But there was one killer sentence in his article, entitled, “What in the World is Happening in Israel?” that stood apart from the rest.
During his visit to Israel, Friedman met with Hebron’s international spokesman Yishai Fleisher who tried to open up Friedman’s eyes to the actual reality that is Israel during their tour of Hebron.
“…I was shown around Hebron by the spokesman for the Jewish community there, Yishai Fleisher, a couple days after the incident. He expressed his relief that hard-line Jews, like Ben-Gvir, were coming back to power, replacing what he deemed as weak ones. Or, as he put it to me: “The Israel we knew is back — that is, the badass Jewish state that protects the Jewish ethnic minority in this region has returned.”
Even as Friedman plays false prophet of doom about the future and future instability of the State of Israel, blaming the Right, the religious, the Ultra-this, the Ultra-that, it appears that at least Friedman’s primary takeaway from the Hebron tour is that a strong, self-confident Israel is back and the two-state solution is dead, and that scares him.
And now all the readers of the NY Times know it too.
