Political Observer on Friedman’s 2,019 word intervention.

‘writing from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’ is attached to this ‘essay’ as the in order to of impressing the Times readership? Mr. Friedman, and his newspaper, self-present as not just the ‘last word’ on International Affaires but the sine qua non of such reportage! This rambling essay begins with these four paragraphs:

U.S. diplomacy to end the Gaza war and forge a new relationship with Saudi Arabia has been converging in recent weeks into a single giant choice for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What do you want more — Rafah or Riyadh?

Do you want to mount a full-scale invasion of Rafah to try to finish off Hamas — if that is even possible — without offering any Israeli exit strategy from Gaza or any political horizon for a two-state solution with non-Hamas-led Palestinians? If you go this route, it will only compound Israel’s global isolation and force a real breach with the Biden administration.

Or do you want normalization with Saudi Arabia, an Arab peacekeeping force for Gaza and a U.S.-led security alliance against Iran? This would come with a different price: a commitment from your government to work toward a Palestinian state with a reformed Palestinian Authority — but with the benefit of embedding Israel in the widest U.S.-Arab-Israeli defense coalition the Jewish state has ever enjoyed and the biggest bridge to the rest of the Muslim world Israel has ever been offered, while creating at least some hope that the conflict with the Palestinians will not be a “forever war.’’

This is one of the most fateful choices Israel has ever had to make. And what I find both disturbing and depressing is that there is no major Israeli leader today in the ruling coalition, the opposition or the military who is consistently helping Israelis understand that choice — a global pariah or a Middle East partner — or explaining why it should choose the second.

Its a kind of low grade political melodrama, that sends his bourgeois readership into fits of near adoration? His location, Riyadh, and his proximity to power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who appears later in the essay, lends credibility ?

The next paragraph offers a Friedmann an ‘understanding mood’:

I appreciate how traumatized Israelis are by the vicious Hamas murders, rapes and kidnappings of Oct. 7. It is not surprising to me that many people there just want revenge, and their hearts have hardened to a degree that they can’t see or care about all of the civilians, including thousands of children, who have been killed in Gaza as Israel has plowed through to try to eliminate Hamas. All of this has been further hardened by Hamas’s refusal so far to release the remaining hostages.

Followed by this paragraph steeped in admonition:

But revenge is not a strategy. It is pure insanity that Israel is now more than six months into this war and the Israeli military leadership — and virtually the entire political class — has allowed Netanyahu to continue to pursue a “total victory” there, including probably soon plunging deep into Rafah, without any exit plan or Arab partner lined up to step in once the war ends. If Israel ends up with an indefinite occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank, it would be a toxic military, economic and moral overstretch that would delight Israel’s most dangerous foe, Iran, and repel all its allies in the West and the Arab world.

The Reader searches in vain for any mention of the Zionist Genocide and Famine in Gaza! Friedman is playacting the part of the ‘Peace Maker’ , the unofficial American Ambassador, with strong ties to Biden, and perhaps acting as his proxy? Enough of the Friedman self-congratulatory chatter, the last paragraphs of Freidman’s essay:

…

The Biden team wants to complete the U.S.-Saudi part of the deal so that it can act like the opposition party that Israel does not have right now and be able to say to Netanyahu: You can be remembered as the leader who presided over Israel’s worst military catastrophe on Oct. 7 or the leader who led Israel out of Gaza and opened the road to normalization between Israel and the most important Muslim state. Your choice. And it wants to offer this choice publicly so that every Israeli can see it.

So let me end where I began: Israel’s long-term interests are in Riyadh, not Rafah. Of course, neither is a sure thing and both come with risks. And I know that it’s not so easy for Israelis to weigh them when so many global protesters these days are hammering Israel for its bad behavior in Gaza and giving Hamas a free pass. But that’s what leaders are for: to make the case that the road to Riyadh has a much bigger payoff at the end than the road to Rafah, which will be a dead end in every sense of the term.

I totally respect that Israelis are the ones who will have to live with the choice. I just want to make sure they know they have one.

Mr. Friedman is a maladroit paternalist, as the sentence I’ve placed in bold font, demonstrates!

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I’ll offer this video of Netanyahu’s latest pronouncement on American political/civic life:

Political Observer