Does that make any sense? Is this any way to follow up the third anniversary of October Seventh?
Temple Emanu-El, in Manhattan, has named the program: “The World According to Tom: An Evening with Thomas Friedman.” What’s so outrageous here is that we know just what the “World According to Tom” is. It’s where Jews are to be charged with contributing money to politicians in an unfair manner, and worse.
The Temple’s Streicker Cultural Center is platforming New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, the man who wrote in his December 13, 2011 column that the standing ovations Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed Congress that year were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Yet Friedman is scheduled “to discuss what the wars in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon mean for Israel’s future, its turbulent domestic politics, its changing place in the region and the world, and the Jewish future.” Isn’t this tragic? The man who publicly accused American Jews of “paying” congressmen to support Israel is going to speak at a synagogue about how troubled he is about Israel.
That “bought and paid for” slur was no one-time outburst; Friedman has repeatedly accused Jews of controlling Congress or the White House.
For example, in his November 19, 2013 column in the Times, Friedman claimed there is “a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.”
Let’s not forget his infamous New York Times column of February 5, 2004, in which Friedman declared that Israel’s prime minister has “had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office…surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates…”
Friedman added that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Jewish lobbyists, Vice President Cheney, and unnamed “political handlers” were “all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing [regarding Israel].” At the time, former New York City mayor Ed Koch said (on Bloomberg Radio) that Friedman’s statement was “an anti-Semitic slur.” I agree with the late Mayor Koch.
If a white supremacist accused Jews of bribing members of Congress, no synagogue in the world would invite him as a speaker. Yet here is New York’s oldest Reform Jewish congregation hosting a newspaper columnist who has made that exact same accusation.
Before anyone starts accusing me of trying to “censor” or “cancel” Friedman, let me be very clear: I am not saying Friedman should be banned from Temple Emanu-El or prevented from appearing at any other synagogue or Jewish institution. All I’m saying is that Emanu-El has a moral obligation to explain to its members exactly who it is that they are inviting.
The website for Friedman’s upcoming talk states, “he’s earned a reputation for seeing the forces shaping Israel, the Middle East and the world before the rest of us do.”
I, for one, find Friedman’s language about Jews controlling Congress nothing but anti-Israel bias. Not to mention the vile slurs that he included in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem. There he mocked the State of Israel as “Yad Vashem with an air force.” He claimed Israel’s leaders —both Labor and Likud— had “encouraged” what he called “the ‘Holocausting’ of the Israeli psyche.” He wrote: “Today -unfortunately- the teaching of the Holocaust is an essential element of Israeli high-school education and in the Israeli army officers’ course.” [Pages 280–282]
Think about the last sentence. Every Jew I know regards Holocaust education as vital. I’m sure the leadership of Temple Emanu-El does, too. Yet they are giving a platform to someone who mocks and derides Holocaust education.
The United States is a free country, and a synagogue can invite any speaker it chooses, even one who says Jews pay off Congress, or slanders Israel. But the synagogue’s members, and the Jewish public, have a right to know the truth about who the speaker is, and what he has said and written about Jews and Israel.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
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