Thomas L. Friedman, And the Facts in the Middle East He Is Determined To Ignore

 

By Steven Halpern

Thomas L. Friedman has been reporting on stories from the Middle East for many decades. In his latest two-page column in the New York Times, he reported on some facts of this region, but he chose to ignore other facts that are essential in beginning to understand the politics of the region. This is the typical method of the New York Times.

The title of Friedman’s column is Saudi Arabia and Israel Are Reinventing Themselves. When we look at the facts that Friedman presents, it becomes clear that while there have been some changes, the power brokers in Saudi Arabia and Israel continue to be stuck in the same quagmire they’ve been in for many decades. We can start with Israel.

Israel

Friedman reported on the opinion of an observer to a so-called democracy demonstration in Israel. The argument is that Israeli politics have been drifting to the right ever since the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. This has meant increased funding for the ultra-Orthodox Israelis, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The ultra-Orthodox schools do not teach English, science, or math. 

The increased funding for settlers of the West Bank makes the idea of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict impossible. The Israeli government will do everything in its power to prevent the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank to be ruled by a Palestinian government.

Friedman’s on-the-ground reporting consisted of a walk along the beachfront in Tel Aviv. There he saw two young Israeli women with surfboards. He also saw two other women who appeared to be Israeli Arab Muslims wearing black headscarves along with tennis shoes under their long black dresses. What is Friedman’s conclusion from this observation?

“This country—this whole region—will thrive only if these four women can share the same beachfront promenade with dignity, in a society and culture that values live and let live.” So, what is the problem with this statement?

Before 1948, Palestine was, for the most part, a place where there was a live and let live attitude between Jews and Palestinians. The main problem was British colonialism and the drive to expel Palestinians from their homeland. At that time, the vast majority of the country was Palestinian. Then in 1948 Israeli terrorists organized to expel Palestinians to create the state of Israel. Palestinians refer to their 1948 expulsion as the nakba or catastrophe. 

So, since 1948, the Israeli government did not have a live and let live attitude. The United States government has been supporting the institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians to the tune of billions of dollars every year.

In order to begin to have a live and let live attitude, the Israeli government would need to give all Palestinians the same rights Palestinian citizens of the United States have. This would include the right to own homes, have a job, and to and to travel throughout all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Literally every penny of money used to support the Israeli military is used to prevent that from happening. Thomas Friedman lives in denial of these facts.

Saudi Arabia

Then there is the reality of Saudi Arabia where there have been some significant reforms in their educational system was well as in the treatment of women. Friedman argues that the Saudi educational system has “been scrubbed to eliminate materials that promote intolerance of other faiths or subservience for women.” Friedman continues that the government has been doubling down on teacher training with the aim of “instilling technological proficiency, alongside critical thinking, problem solving and analytical capabilities.”

Today Saudi women have the right to drive cars. In fact, Aseel al Hamad was the first woman to drive a Formula 1 car in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also has a premier soccer league in its second season. We need to see these advances in the context of advances for women all over the world.

Then Friedman throws a wrench into this argument with the following quotation. “For all the radical social, religious and economic reforms here, this is still an absolute monarchy, where you can get arrested and imprisoned just for tweeting mild criticism of Mohammed bin Salman (the effective ruler) or his government.” So, today the citizens of Saudi Arabia can think critically, but they can be sent to prison for voicing their criticism. Like the nation of Israel, the U.S. government has given the Saudi royal family massive economic and military aid. 

Palestine and Mexico

The idea of the Israeli government having a live and let live attitude towards Palestinians also has a persistent problem called the wall. Israel has used enormous resources to build and maintain a wall to separate Israel from the West Bank. So, why is this happening and why is there another wall between the United States and Mexico.

First, we need to understand that in the past Palestinians had the right to travel throughout Israel. In the past, the United States government encouraged immigration and capitalists became dependent on Mexicans to pick the fruits and vegetables we eat every day. 

However, up until the 1970s the United States economy was relatively strong and growing. Then, the government found out that it needed to pay for the war against Vietnam. There was also competition from Germany and Japan. So, capitalists and the government responded with austerity, outsourcing, and automation.  While the stock market skyrocketed, wages stagnated and about 70% of the workforce of the world lives on ten dollars per day or less.

Part of the drive towards austerity was about making immigrants as well as Palestinians the scapegoats for these conditions. Workers began to understand that the millions of eliminated jobs were replaced with jobs with lower wages and fewer benefits. So, governments allocated astronomical amounts of money to build walls on the U.S. southern border, as well as a wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

Friedman would like to imagine that the working class doesn’t exist

Literally every commodity that has ever been produced was produced by workers. Yet capitalists gouge out profits from all these commodities without providing any useful goods or services. They merely move money from one place to another.

Workers generally live with a seething anger. We understand that the only reason we are hired to do a job is so capitalists can profit from our labor in one way or another. Workers understand the profound problems with this system. However, as long as workers can maintain a standard of living, they will tolerate many injustices. 

This problem was stated in the Declaration of Independence. Paraphrasing that document, we see that people will tolerate many injustices, but when there is a long train of abuses that results in despotism the people not only have a “right but a duty” to throw off that power and establish new guards for their security. 

There is a serious problem with capitalism. Marx and Engels identified this in their Communist Manifesto as the “problem of overproduction.” For the first time in history overabundance is the cause of crisis.

So, capitalism needs to continually grow. The only way it can grow is by cutting labor costs and driving down the standard of living. However, there are limits to this and the economy broke through those limits in the depression of the 1930s.

So, when capitalism goes into depression workers begin to see that the traditional politics are totally ineffective. This is when strikes, rebellions, and revolutions erupt. 

Thomas Friedman doesn’t like to think about this. His salary comes from the advertising purchased in the New York Times. Those advertisers do not control the editorial slant of the NY Times. To the contrary, advertising reflects the capitalist need to continually grow the economy. The NY Times merely goes along with the international capitalist drive to maximize profits and their editorial slant reflects that underlying drive.

The entire capitalist system relies on oil for all profits. Much of the oil in the world comes from the Middle East. This explains why the government and the capitalists in this country have invested so heavily in that region. Sooner or later working people are going to see the dead end of capitalism and begin to organize for a world where human needs are the priority over profits. With that kind of a system Palestinians and Jews will begin to live together with freedom, democracy, and dignity.