New York Times columnist and three-time Pulitzer Prize Winner Thomas Friedman once characterized his high school years as “one big celebration of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War.” In his latest piece for the New York Times, the prize-winning writer foresees a similar celebration when Britain, Europe, and the United States completely rule Ukraine.
Interestingly, Friedman spent his high school summers at Kibbutz HaHotrim, in Israel. This Kibbutz, was established in 1953 on the site of the depopulated Palestinian village of al-Tira. Some scholars claim this area near Haifa was the original location of Ancient Tyre, which was once the main city of the infamous Sea Peoples. Some claim these warlike seafarers were the last of the Minoans. Others link them to the Phoenicians. The reason I mention this is, I think it’s very important for us all to begin looking at the origins of our bias, hatred, and misunderstanding. Friedman, like everyone else on this planet, has an agenda based on a rationale. Israel now owns al-Tira, but wars and blood have spilled over this soil since the King of Tyre helped build Solomon’s temple.
The area is now a seaside paradise respite for well-to-do Israelis. I’ve no space for a history lesson, but this Palestinian village was the first populated by Jewish emigrants in from Czechoslovakia and Germany in 1949. The Palestinian and Christian residents fled to Jordan. It’s interesting to look back at what influences people, especially those who influence others. And Friedman’s foundations are built on the framework of the Zionist Utopia. Turn the page to his brilliant ideas for mediating the crisis in Ukraine, and it’s easy to visualize a de-Russified Ukraine.
Friedman’s latest Russophobic fantasy equates the Russian operation to de-nazify Ukraine as a cosmic disaster. The Pulitzer winner visited Kyiv recently and commented on Zelensky’s neat display of destroyed Russian equipment in the piazza of Saint Michael’s Golden Monastery.
“I eventually realized that it reminded me of a meteor, like a meteor that came from outer space and landed on this country.”
As an award-winning journalist, Friedman could not resist worsening a bad situation by mischaracterizing the whole mess. The NYTs writer paints Zelensky and his Gestapo as more heroic and Homeric than the death spiral they’ve created for their country. Meanwhile, the Russians, especially Vladimir Putin, have been dehumanized again. They are hot rocks from outer space. His solution to the Armageddon from the East is like something from a bad movie. The Friedman solution for a world-smashing asteroid does not star Bruce Willis.
He tells his audience that the West needs to engineer a way for Ukraine to become a NATO and a European Union member. He also proclaims that the European Union is “one of the miracles in global history.” As I said, the world of influencers is powered by rational and flawed idealism. Friedman also says, “NATO expansion was never the issue,” for the Russians. The expansion and empowerment of Nazis and fascist zealots, the building of Europe’s largest army, the biolabs, and the fake Minsk agreements designed to stall the Russians – none of that is what mattered to Putin and his countrymen! What did matter?
This NYT’s super sleuth has deduced that the Russians launched a demilitarization operation to stop Ukraine from becoming “an example of a successful Slavic economy.” Read the transcript of his talk here if you do not believe it. His “Bringing Ukraine Into NATO and the E.U. Is the Key to Peace” is the same insanity that caused every major and minor war humans ever saw. This world domination by any means necessary narrative has killed hundreds of millions, made nations into refugees, and imprisoned the Palestinian people in an open-air shooting gallery.
Friedman emphasizes that the world is not buying Russian cars and watches. He fails, however, to mention the economic miracle Vladimir Putin created when the banksters who love Pulitzer writers were trying to carve up Russia. Friedman cannot mention Putin’s “Third Way,” or the Vladivostok to Lisbon protocol that scared Wall Street and the London banksters to death. Free trade, free visas, and a multipolar world cutting loose from the chains of the American hegemony – you cannot get a prize for writing about that. You can get jail, like Julian Assange.
People like Tom Friedman are tools. Since his first Pulitzer for covering the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He won subsequent prizes for covering the Intifada and a third for his “clarity” on global terror in 2002. This was one of the setup propaganda pieces for the invasion of Iraq in 200, in my opinion. The Progressive takes issue with him in this 2014 piece, “Thomas Friedman’s Iraq Amnesia.” Some may recall that Friedman suggested that the world had to “steamroll” Saddam Hussein. And now he suggests steamrolling Russia, the most powerful armed nuclear force the world has ever known.
Who knows how, or why, highly educated men lose their minds? Does one of the world’s most recognized journalists envision a Kibbutz HaHotrim somewhere in Crimea? Or maybe, with the help of the Swiss or Timex, Russian watches may soon be all the rage in London and New York! Will Ladas made by Peugeot or VW soon plow the chic boulevards of Tel Aviv? Maybe. That is, if NATO and the EU can convince Vladimir Putin of their good intentions. What if America and her allies contributed to modernizing Russia’s autoworks in the same way, Germany’s former Nazi industries were resurrected? If the hegemony returns to its steamrolling strategy, I hope this island of Crete is out of the atomic fallout air stream.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.