Thomas Friedman sure knows how to flip reality on its head. In his New York Times op-ed column today, Friedman hops on the bandwagon (FAIR blog, 6/10/10) of bashing Turkey for “joining the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran resistance front against Israel.”
Friedman accuses Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan of no longer promoting democracy and instead being more focused on “praising Hamas instead of the more responsible Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is actually building the foundations of a Palestinian state.” Friedman says of Erdogan:
I’d love to see him be the most popular leader on the Arab street, but not by being more radical than the Arab radicals and by catering to Hamas, but by being more of a democracy advocate than the undemocratic Arab leaders and mediating in a balanced way between all Palestinians and Israel. That is not where Erdogan is at, though, and it’s troubling.
Siding with the Palestinian Authority against Hamas would be a peculiar way of advocating for democracy in the Middle East, though. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas categorically defeated Fatah in what former President Jimmy Carter called “free and fair” elections (CNN, 5/17/09). The U.S., EU and Israel rejected those results (New York Times, 6/8/06), and after Fatah’s U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Hamas in Gaza failed (Vanity Fair, 4/08), an “emergency government” composed of members of Fatah was installed (New York Times, 6/18/07). This “emergency government,” still in place to this day in the West Bank, was not democratically elected and consolidated its power illegally (Electronic Intifada, 6/18/07).
In Friedman’s alternate universe, the Turkish prime minister is not advocating for democracy because…he supports the democratically elected government in Palestine that Israel has been trying to overthrow by way of “economic warfare” (FAIR Blog, 6/14/10) instead of the unelected government approved by the United States.
I wonder if TF is aware of the fact that before 1948 we didn’t have any enemies in the middle east? Now why was that and what the hell happened? Maybe he could write a column and explain that to me.
The media has really done a poor job all in all of covering the fact that the taxpayer-funded Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) in DC yesterday (June 17) gave the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, its top “Public Service” award. Indeed, the WWC handed the award to Davutoglu in Turkey at a fundraising dinner for the WWC.
The WWC is knee-deep in dirty corporate money and politics, and the award looks to many Americans – regardless of what one may believe about Israeli policy – as inappropriate and even embarrassing at this time of considerable tension between the US and Turkey.
Background/investigative piece on this issue from back in May:
http://www.countercurrents.org/boyajian060510.htm
Pres. Wilson’s descendant is against the award:
http://keghart.com/DWBush_Pawn
Cong. Gary Ackerman, the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee on Middle East affair, recently wrote a critical letter to former Cong. Lee Hamilton, director of the Wilson Center, asking that it not award Davutoglu. Hillary Clinton sits on the WWC board of trustees, which approved of the WWC to the Davutoglu. Congress may be investigating the Wilson Center.
As far as Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan supposedly being some sort of friend of Palestinians, please read this blockbuster (“Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Deserves Medal as Fake Friend of Palestinians”):
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19630
@Boots (and I suspect your comment was more sarcasm than curiosity, and you already know this),
but in one word, “petroleum”.
Or I suppose you could be referring to the creation of the state of Israel. My bad.
However, oil was already creating a lot of friction between Islam and Christianity. Johan Goulong has even suggested that this religious disrespect and ignorance by Western culture and Zionist biblical readings may actually point to a larger Arab-Muslim conspiracy taking place on September 11, 2001 than what is the currently accepted narrative, that originally took us into Afghanistan.
But Kane is right about Friedman. He is a loony-toon.
No one that appears on the mainstream have an opposing view to Israel. Nothing is ever heard about Israel on network TV except on the internet. How shameful!
TF works for israel. His job, like of others of his ilk is to misinform and threaten the american people into supporting israel no matter what…especially if it against america’s interests.
did the mustache of mediocrity forget that hamas won an election that the united states supported?
When Friedman says “I’d love to see him (Erdogan) be the most popular leader on the Arab street..” he Does understand that Erdogan is Turkish? Oh, of course he does! ^..^
I still maintain that a really good point being overlooked is Jean-Paul Gagnon’s argument that Israel would be better off economically, peacefully, diplomatically, and ethically if it helped Gaza gain independence in a two-state solution sharing Jerusalem. There’s too much bad blood between them now for a one state solution to work and its pretty much the hardliner minorities on both sides that want that through war. Let’s try and spread this message. Will anyone do the economics of this? Would Israel really save money if they help the Palestinians build their state and let them have their own political (peaceful) journey?
WWW-Bush Bush Bush-WWIII-WAR of COMMUNICATION and ECONOMY
When masses of people are propelled to the streets to demand regime change that means a change to democracy. It is extreamly worring that the USA mass media does not present this in its simple beauty and with pressing urgency. There has been a gradual falling away of free press in the USA for many decades (free press maybe increased after WWII, maybe peaked in the 70s). Since the U.S. has contrived itself as at War with Terror (in 2003, with the implication of global permantence) the western media has become an entrenched and dangerous properganda authority. I fear media listeners percieve the U.S. as the best model of democracy but in fact it is an imperial military regime and the people’s economic mess.
Whenever an uprising or upset happens on the planet the main media has it’s USA audience convinced that the government has a right and duty to attend to it. It promotes the specific purpose of “installing” the gifts of law and order to the rabel by appointing puppet regimes so as to become protected in the great fold of USA “freedom” and “democracy”. It’s religious in it’s theatre.
Meanwhile this is what’s installed: secret dirty weapons contracts with the U. S., regional subversion of other nation’s media and forign policy, and Globalization, ie. the unsustainable U.S. consumer culture with oppressive labor conditions.
Now, mass media bias can hardly be called media spine, it is hard core longterm propaganda. It has been rising slowly in reaction to the fall of Nixon but most recently nailed and embedded in September 2001. No wonder Henry Kissenger is popping up all the time with some sort of credibility when in fact he is a war criminal.
I believe their is a global war now, it is WWW (or WWIII). It is not a convential war on the ground. It is a tyranical economic and communications war. It has to do with the battle for media truth and mass education. FAIR is on the front line and should be supported. Why pay taxes when you can pay FAIR, Democracy Now!, and so many others?
The lie of democracy that the USA projects on its people and the world is not the objective of liberty the USA foreparents fought for.
The Egyptian youth have seen through the internal propoganda of the Murbarak regime (so parented by the US and Globalized forces). The Egyptians now need an alternative government. They will get something. But without a huge campaign by the likes of FAIR, to leap-frog the true mess of the US model it is a strech to think that Egyptians will be delivered anything close to democracy.
Tahrir Square is the model. It would be encouraging for the world if every US city square was filled with peaceful people of persistence expecting the simple beauty of representation in government.