Thomas Friedman Endorses Terrorism

By Toufic El Rassi
January 14, 2009

Thomas Friedman, influential American writer and commentator, op-ed contributor to The New York Times, and author of best sellers like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World is Flat, considered to be an expert on the Middle East, openly endorses the use of terrorism in today's New York Times. Friedman is a strong supporter of Israel so it is no surprise that his opinion on the war on Gaza would reflect this but today's article is just so over the top that I think it needs to be addressed.

First I think most would agree (regardless of political persuasion) that there is a rough definition of terrorism: using violence against noncombatants (namely, women and children) to achieve a political goal constitutes terrorism. I realize not everyone would agree with that definition but I would venture to guess that most reasonable people (again, right or left leaning) would tend to favor it as a relatively objective definition.

So Friedman essentially admits that Israel was (and is) engaged in terrorism when he writes that Israel's goals in the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon were "to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. " And this infliction of "substantial property damage and collateral casualties" was done to reach a political goal; the only way to achieve a "long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future."

Friedman goes on to say that this is potentially the same policy being pursued by Israel in Gaza today. Indeed Israeli Major-General Gadi Eisenkot has clearly stated with regard to the Gaza campaign: "we will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases," and went on to say, "this isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized." I suppose it is somewhat superfluous to point out that targeting entire villages constitutes a war crime.

Here is the essential hypocrisy of people like Thomas Friedman and others like him - that it is justified even "logical" for Israel to kill civilians in order to achieve a political goal but it is "terrorism" if Bin Laden or any other sub national group does it. Imagine if a supporter of Bin Laden wrote an op-ed in the New York Times justifying the 9/11 attacks saying:

The goal of the 9/11 attacks were "to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on [the United States] at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical " and the only way to create a "long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the [political leaders] — to restrain [the United States] in the future."

The question must be asked and answered honestly: why is there no widespread outrage when the American media justifies the killing of innocent Palestinians and other Arabs? This is a simple question - in any other context, with regards to any other ethnic or religious group, Friedman would be (rightly) accused of aiding and justifying war crimes. But there is no outrage, there will be no retractions or apologies, instead ordinary Americans will read Friedman's article and find another justification for Palestinian women and children to be blown up by U.S. made weaponry. And we will never get an honest answer to the question: Why is it OK to kill Arab civilians?

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14friedman.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html