Thomas Friedman once again has words of advice for Israel in War, Timeout, War, Time …:
The history of Israeli-Arab relations since 1948 can be summarized in one sentence: “War, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout, war, timeout. …” What differentiates Israel from the Arabs and the Palestinians is how much more productive Israel has been during its timeouts.
…it is vital that Israel use this moment of strength, this timeout, to do precisely what Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggested to the cabinet the other day — offer a “daring and assertive political initiative” to advance the peace process with the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Once again Friedman puts the onus on Israel to make peace. That’s not surprising. When it comes to Israel, Friedman is capable of only one thought. What’s troubling is how he got there.
Friedman invokes his “Hama Rules”:
Israel today is enjoying another timeout because it recently won three short wars — and then encountered one pleasant surprise. The first was a war to dismantle the corrupt Arafat regime. The second was the war started by Hezbollah in Lebanon and finished by a merciless pounding of Shiite towns and Beirut suburbs by the Israeli Air Force. The third was the war to crush the Hamas missile launchers in Gaza.
What is different about these three wars, though, is that Israel won them using what I call “Hama Rules” — which are no rules at all. “Hama Rules” are named after the Syrian town of Hama, where, in 1982, then-President Hafez el-Assad of Syria put down a Muslim fundamentalist uprising by shelling and then bulldozing their neighborhoods, killing more than 10,000 of his own people.
In Israel’s case, it found itself confronting enemies in Gaza and Lebanon armed with rockets, but nested among local civilians, and Israel chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties.
Actually, the toll in Hama was closer to 24,000, or one tenth of the city’s population.
There is a huge difference between not “being deterred” and proceeding without regard to consequences as Syria did. Friedman’s conflating the two isn’t a careless error. It is deliberate defamation. Israel, in fact, often put it soldiers at additional risk or declined to go after specific targets if the cost in civilian casualties was thought to be too high. Does that compare in any way to this summary of the atrocity in Hama?
A decade of sectarian violence culminated in the atrocity at the village of Hama in 1982. Between 10,000 and 30,000 Sunnis were murdered, their town was plowed under, and at the entrance to the city, a large statue of Hafez al-Assad was erected. The Syrian government did not try to deny or hide this slaughter. It was an iron-fisted message to the Sunni majority throughout Syria that the Alawite were in control and dissent would not be tolerated.
The condemnation Israel sustained, did not result from Israel’s “brutality,” it was the reaction of those who, like Friedman, think that Israel should not defend itself.
Friedman approvingly quotes Defense Minister Ehud Barak calling for a “… daring and assertive political initiative …” to move the peace process forward. Since 1993, Israel has engaged in at least three such initiatives.
The first was the Oslo Accords, which involved rescuing Yasser Arafat from irrelevance and transforming the unrepentant terrorist into a peacemaker. Over the next seven years Arafat used his position for creating a “suicide factory” in the areas under his control. This lasted until Operation Defensive Shield struck a blow against the terror infrastructure that Arafat permitted.
The second was Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Instead of forcing Hezbollah to abandon its attacks on Israel, as Friedman predicted, Hezbollah used its newfound freedom to build its arsenal and expand its range of targets to all of northern Israel.
Finally, in the summer of 2005 Israel “disengaged” from Gaza, completely leaving the territory. Hamas used its freedom to take over the area and build an infrastructure from which to bombard southern Israel. Noam Bedein summed it up:
“It’s very easy for the Palestinians in Gaza to gain sympathy picture-wise because of the severe devastation from Cast Lead. On the other hand, over here, you have such a huge psychological impact and trauma these rockets and constant sirens have created on the people, in addition to injuring over 1000 in the process,” Bedein said. “12,000 rockets in the past nine years and 8,000 since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005 have been fired at Israel, this has an enormous impact and what we are trying to do is express and present this psychological impact through different media outlets. We just want to be heard.”
Friedman, in his effort to cast Israel as the obstacle to peace has things exactly backwards. It’s not that the failure of Israel to make concessions hasn’t allowed the periods of calm to extend, but rather that Israel’s enemies use the periods of calm to fortify themselves against Israel. Rather than insisting that Israel’s enemies are ready to make peace if only Israel would moderate, Friedman refuses to look at their record. (… and his own record of whitewashing their lack of commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel.)
Yes Fayyad and Abbas may be relatively moderate, but do they command any real constituency? Are they even preparing their people for peace?
If Friedman’s vituperation of israel wasn’t enough he takes one last cheap shot at PM Netnayahu.
If only. … Bibi Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister now for 15 months. If he retired tomorrow, this term in office, like his first, would not merit a footnote to a footnote in Israel’s history.
When Netanyahu took over as Prime Minister in 1996, the peace process was thoroughly discredited. Netanyahu won the election, narrowly, because Arafat had proven not to be the peacemaker, Friedman and his ilk advertised. Three years later Netanyahu lost his bid for re-election, largely because he was viewed as not sufficiently committed to peace. If Friedman were honest, he’d at least credit Netanyahu for the reduced terror during his first term which had the effect of rehabilitating the peace process, even as it cost him his job.
Clearly Friedman doesn’t understand history. It’s even clearer that he hasn’t learned from it either.
Friedman, you will recall, favors China’s communist government to American democracy. He continues to advocate green technologies that do not work as advertised. So why not be wrong about the Middle East too? He’s got no credibility left to lose.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
