I watched the recent discussion between Thomas Friedman and Peter Beinart with great interest. Friedman, a New York Times columnist and arguably the journalist who has most shaped the US debate over Israel-Palestine in recent decades, was invited onto Beinart’s podcast to talk about Zionism, the two-state solution and Israel’s latest far-right government.
Friedman spoke at length about the evolution of his thinking about Israel-Palestine and Zionism over the course of his life, and whether he thinks the two-state paradigm still makes sense, subjects which he has addressed in his many books on the Middle East and were not of much interest to me on this occasion. I was more interested to hear if he had anything more to say about his recent columns in the New York Times which highlighted powerfully a growing wedge between American Jews and Israel.
Thomas Friedman shows that liberal Jews have no reason left to defend Israel