3. Israel maintains the current situation, but instead of falling into an apartheid nightmare, it offers individual Palestinian communities to become independent from the PLO autonomy. Israel can encourage these communities to form their own alliance, with mutual loyalty to Israel. Israeli law is imposed in Jewish communities and in Arab communities that request it. Watch how in under ten years the only Palestinian statehood aspirations are in the Muqata in Ramallah and nowhere else.
But, finally, the most irritating, and condescending note in Tom Friedman’s column is this one:
“…being the ‘nation state of the Jewish people’ means that the values of Israel cannot be sharply divergent from the values of the Jewish diaspora (the vast majority of American Jews vote liberal) or from the values of America — Israel’s only true ally.”
Seriously? That’s what it means? Israel has an obligation to carry out the aspirations of the Liberal Jews in America who have no problem boycotting it, demonstrating against it on campuses, collaborating with its worst enemies—take your pick—and also the aspirations of America at large?
What exactly are those aspirations? An assimilation rate of 80 percent for the Jews? A decline of Jewish culture to the point where the only vitality there comes from whorish comediennes making lascivious suggestions to elderly politicians? An organizational fundraising industry alien to most of its presumed constituency? Who the heck wants to go near these values, other than Tom Friedman?
And as to America’s values – I’m stunned he can commit this idea to paper with a straight face—I’m sure he had to crack a smile, in fact. A country too big for its own good, unable to cater to the needs of most of its poor and unemployed, paralyzed by a corrupt political system, with 50,000 annual murders, endless wars that gain nothing, 85 tycoons who earn as much as half the rest of the planet – where’s your sense of shame, Tom Friedman?
As to the threat of the BDS, which is real, I’ll remind you that the 57 states comprising the Arab world have been boycotting Israel since 1948. And the United States government’s response used to be to discourage, via stern legislation, compliance with this unjust and hypocritical boycott.
As your allies, we expect that Secretary of State Kerry continue to discourage these boycotts, emphasize that they are evil and that the United States will fight in the courts any company that collaborates with the BDS. Do that, and we’ll stay friends.