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Thomas Friedman
By Thomas L. Friedman
Op-ed, reporting from Amman, Jordan
I’ve spent the last few days traveling from New Delhi to Dubai to Amman, and I have a compelling message for President Biden and the Israeli people: I see the immediate erosion of Israel’s status among friendly nations, a point of acceptance and legitimacy that has been painstakingly built over decades. And if Biden isn’t careful, America’s global standing will collapse, as will Israel’s.
I don’t think Israelis or the Biden administration fully appreciate the anger that is surging around the world, fueled through social media and television images, over the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians, especially children, with U. S. -supplied weapons. There are many day-to-day roles in unleashing this human tragedy, but Israel and the United States are now seen as the authors and main perpetrators of the events.
It’s clear that kind of anger is surging in the Arab world, but I’ve heard it over and over again in conversations in India over the past week: from friends, business leaders, a civil servant and journalists, young and old. Most tellingly, the Hindu-dominated government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the only primary force in the south that has supported Israel and has consistently accused Hamas of provoking major Israeli retaliation and the deaths of some 30,000 people. Civil.
The higher number of civilian deaths in a relatively short war would be problematic in any context. But when so many civilians are dying in a retaliatory invasion introduced by an Israeli government with no political horizon for the next day, and then, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally presents a plan for tomorrow that necessarily tells the world that Israel now intends to occupy the West Bank and Gaza indefinitely; it’s no wonder that Israel’s friends are drifting away and Biden’s team is starting to look disgruntled.
As Shekhar Gupta, veteran editor-in-chief of the Indian newspaper ThePrint, told me: “There is a great deal of love and admiration for Israel in India. But a never-ending war will test him. Beyond the initial surprise and fear, Netanyahu’s war undermines Israel’s greatest asset: the widely held confidence in the invincibility of its military, the infallibility of its intelligence, and the rectitude of its mission.
Every day there are new calls for Israel to be banned from participating in foreign academic, artistic and sporting competitions or events. Admittedly, it is largely hypocritical to censure Israel, while ignoring the excesses of Iran, Russia, Syria, and China, not to mention Hamas. But this Israeli government is doing things that make things too easy. Many of Israel’s friends are now simply praying for a ceasefire so that their citizens or constituents – especially their young people – will not ask them how they can separate themselves from such a situation. many more and more civilian casualties in Gaza.
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