Wednesday, July 1, 2015

He ain't gonna be a Rabbi now

The most important prerequisite to becoming a nominal rabbi or an ordained one, is that a Jew must be able to tell a lie so expertly that he (now also she) would convince a large number of people of a big falsehood, and make it stick for a long time. Of course, the larger the number of people who are deceived, the bigger the lie that is told, and the longer that it is made to stick, the more valuable the aspiring rabbi becomes in the eyes of the Jewish clan that records everything he or she says and does.

Writing a column in the New York Times, Thomas (Tom) L. Friedman stood for a long time as one of the frontrunners in the contest to mess-up the heads, hearts and souls of the American people by filling them with the moral syphilis that has guaranteed an American artificial “love” for Israel; a love that was proportional to the hate for the Arabs he has been able to generate over the years. But he seems to have lost his way this time, and may have damaged himself by telling a big lie that can be proven false big time.

He wrote “A Good Bad Deal?” which is the title of his latest column, published on July 1, 2015 in the New York Times. On the surface, the subject he discusses concerns the nuclear deal that's being negotiated between Iran and six other nations. In it, Friedman rehashes the talking points that have been cycled over and over again by hundreds of other writers in the print media, and by the numerous talking heads that have appeared on the audio-visual media to repeat the same things.

Because there was no opportunity for him to make a meaningful lying contribution – thus remain in the line-up of the frontrunners – Friedman created an opportunity for himself that, unfortunately for him, backfired and sank him to a level from which he will find it difficult to climb up again. He began the article with this: “Sometime after the 1973 war, I remember seeing a cartoon that showed President Anwar el-Sadat lying flat on his back in a boxing ring. The Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, wearing boxing gloves, was standing over him, with Sadat saying to Meir something like, “I want the trophy, I want the prize money, I want the belt.”

With him indicating: “I've been thinking of that cartoon as I listened to Iran's supreme leader...,” he means to say that a comparison exists between that scene and the nuclear negotiations now ongoing between Iran and the other six. But then, he goes on to say this: “it is stunning to me how well the Iranians have played a weak hand against the United States...” Does it mean that Sadat was negotiating with Meir, and does it mean that he won something from her which continues to stun Friedman 42 years later?

Most probably not. What is obvious is that Friedman wanted to make a statement – currently a recurring theme in Jewish writing – to the effect that Israel was once a strong military power despite the fact that it cannot now beat 1.6 million unarmed women, children, old men and young fighters in Gaza who have nothing to fight with but their bare hands and a few homemade firecrackers, against the billions of dollars worth of warplanes, helicopter gunships and cluster bombs that America has been pouring into Israel's arsenal free of charge year after year after year.

Well, that is a blunder but it is a small one … not big enough to deny Tom Friedman a place in the line-up of the frontrunners. The big blunder is that history has now been written about the 1973 Egyptian counter-attack. What it shows is that Moshe Dayan, then Israel's defense minister, had a nervous breakdown and was taken to hospital. He never recovered from that bout till he died not long after that.

As to Golda Meir, she reached out to the poison she had set aside to kill herself in case the Egyptians reneged on the pledge they made to the Americans that they will not cross the border to invade Israel. They had made the pledge not because they were pressured, but because they did not want to be responsible for the bloodbath that would have resulted from their destruction of the Israeli army. There are plenty of people out there who are eager to do to the Jews what the Jews have been doing to them year after year after year.

This history being out there, and neglecting to mention it in favor of discussing an important event of the time by recalling a cartoon that was drawn then, has stripped Tom Friedman of the credibility that would have maintained his rank as a potential rabbi … to be so nominated or to be ordained according to his wish.

Good luck next time, Tom. You brought it on yourself, which is what Jews always do, anyway.