with CHARLIE HARPER

The war around Israel continues, with at least dozens of civilians dying every day, some of them foreign journalists and aid workers.  One of the world’s most influential opinion shapers, in a private speech and in a recent New York Times column, brings to light both the context and the peril of the current situation.

Thomas Friedman, perhaps the New York Times’ most distinguished current columnist, was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). He also won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Friedman became the Times’s foreign affairs opinion columnist in 1995. He had joined the paper in 1981, after which he served as the Beirut bureau chief in 1982, Jerusalem bureau chief in 1984, in Washington as the diplomatic correspondent in 1989 and later as the White House correspondent.

Over the weekend, Friedman discussed the continuing Israeli aggression in Gaza.  It’s safe to say that many of his views are shared by senior opinionmakers all over the Middle East, and that this current Israeli occupation and warfare in Gaza is putting at risk one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of the first Trump administration.

Friedman began by explaining why the world seems to be ganging up only on Israel now, when Hamas initiated this conflict with a deadly sneak attack last October 7.  “Because the world holds Israel to a higher standard than Hamas, and because Israel has always held itself to a higher standard,” Friedman noted.

Then the veteran columnist repeated an allegation that has been making the rounds of newsrooms and television studios for many months.  Friedman added that world condemnation is so widespread and consistent “because the world can tell the difference now between a war being waged for the survival of the Jewish state and a war being waged for the political survival of its prime minister.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long faced legal jeopardy.  Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – all of which he denies.  He has cast the trial against him as an orchestrated leftwing witch-hunt meant to topple a democratically elected right-wing leader.

In one of the cases, the PM and his wife Sara have been accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods such as cigars, jewellery and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favours.

Many including Friedman theorize that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza to extend a national crisis that in turn has compelled Israeli courts to several times postpone trials on national security grounds that could result in significant jail time for the prime minister.

Friedman also contended that the world is almost completely united in condemning Israel “because the world can no longer look the other way at the loss of Palestinian civilian life in Gaza as the inevitable byproduct of a war in which — it hoped — Israel was trying to expel Hamas from Gaza and replace it with an Arab peacekeeping force in partnership with the Palestinian Authority.

“Is it any wonder Israel is losing so many friends around the world — as well as potential regional partners like Saudi Arabia?” 

About a week before that column appeared in the Times, Friedman spoke to a private audience in New York.  He put the loss of Saudi confidence in Israel into historical context, starting with “the key event of 1979.”

His audience immediately thought of the Iranian revolution that toppled the Iranian monarchy, drove the reigning Shah of Iran into exile in Los Angeles and triggered a 444-day hostage takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran.  

That crisis in Iran not only held millions of Americans in anxious suspense for over a year.  The ultimately futile and even feckless American response under then-president Jimmy Carter made the US chief executive seem weak.  It was a major factor as his first-term presidency began to unravel and set the stage for the 1980 Republican return to the White House under former California governor Ronald Reagan.

Also in 1979, the Soviet Union launched a misguided and ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan; an American nuclear power plant suffered a scary partial meltdown on an island in the Susquehanna River just south of Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg, and Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David peace treaty which established a peace between two once bitter rivals that endures today. 

But despite all that, Friedman explained, those events in were not the most significant of 1979.  “The bigger event was the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by fundamentalist jihad militants.”

In Friedman’s mind, that one month long crisis in Islam’s holiest city led to a Saudi turn to the right that has only truly begun to moderate in the last few years.  

The crisis in Mecca ended when Saudi authorities reoccupied the Grand Mosque and immediately executed the militants.  The Saudis vowed that such a calamity would never be repeated, and the ruling family imposed strict religious-based limits on its citizens, especially women.

Much of the Middle East followed Saudi Arabia back into a much more conservative social and political environment that, in its disenfranchisement of women, empowered a younger generation of men who were in turn attracted to 9/11 terrorist Osama bin Laden, among other radicals.  After the deadly 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, Friedman believes Saudi Arabia gradually began to turn back to a more liberal political philosophy, and eventually led the relatively new Persian Gulf neighbouring states like the United Arab Emirates to embrace a pragmatism that has spawned spectacular architectural construction, world sporting events and sharp increases in tourism. 

The Abrahamic Accords were a series of agreements signed in 2020 that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Brokered by the US under Trump, these accords marked a profound shift in Middle Eastern diplomacy, moving beyond past conflicts to foster cooperation, mutual understanding, and economic opportunity among the signatory countries. 

Especially after Trump was reelected in 2024, hopes for a structure for peace in the Middle East – except Iran – seemed to be justified.  Many of the most wealthy and influential nations of the Persian Gulf region seemed committed to a lasting peace with Israel.  For experienced observers of the region, the implications were staggering.  

Then Hamas launched a deadly cross-border sneak attack on Israel, and many hopes for peace evaporated in the days, weeks and now months that followed.  Hamas, armed and politically influenced by the theocratic leaders in Iran who saw such a regional rapprochement as contrary to their anti-American and anti-Western mind set, encouraged the essentially nihilistic step of shattering the peace and the hopes of millions.

Ironically, Netanyahu’s continuing bludgeoning of Hamas and Gaza, whether it is genuinely motivated by a desire to eliminate perhaps the greatest lingering threat to regional peace or the need to distract Israeli courts from prosecuting legal charges against him, or both, continues to threaten the fragile comity between Israel and many of its Arab neighbours.  

Friedman concluded his remarks with a hopeful summary of the current situation.  “This is a moment of incredible peril, but also incredible opportunity.  I think that no one could better to enhance this opportunity that if President Trump called up Prime Minister Netanyahu and said ‘get your hostages out of Gaza, end the current war.  Open negotiations for a Palestinian state.’  

“There is an opportunity to actually lock in this inclusion network of Abrahamic Accords nations.  I believe we have the best opportunity not just for peace with the Gulf states, but also for peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, Israel and Iraq.  It will be hard, very hard.  But it would be truly heartbreaking if Israel were to miss this incredible moment of opportunity and instead get mired in this moment of peril.”

There’s another truth in all of this period of peril and opportunity.  Trump, especially since predecessor Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” is known to actively desire a Nobel for himself.  If he can persuade Netanyahu and Israel to follow Friedman’s advice and stop this war, he could strengthen his candidacy immeasurably.