West of Eden: Friedman has a hangover

Peace, from Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government, Siena, 1337.

Mr. Pierce and Driftglass invite us to contemplate a bizarre paragraph from Friedman's piece yesterday:

O.K., so we learn to live with Iran on the edge of a bomb, but shouldn’t we at least bomb the Islamic State to smithereens and help destroy this head-chopping menace? Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS? Or let me ask that differently: Why are we, for the third time since 9/11, fighting a war on behalf of Iran?

Pierce, with his clinical interest in amnesia, is mainly interested in reminding us that the other times we were fighting a war on behalf of Iran had to do with Friedman asking someone or other he didn't like to Suck On This.

I had to read this several dozen times before I understood that the middle question wasn't a typo, because I was getting it as "are we sure we're doing the right thing arming ISIS?" and I was positive we were supposed to be not doing that, or at least trying pretty hard not to, but it's now pretty clear that he meant the Friedman-pitch contrarian question, "are we totally sure we're doing the right thing not arming ISIS?" and he doesn't mean it to be taken seriously or anything. He means in this crazy old world it just keeps getting harder to arm or not arm anybody or bomb them to smithereens or anything without giving a boost to somebody you don't like. Ha ha ha.

Netanyahu is now saying he continues to support Palestinian statehood but reality is unfortunately against it:

“I haven’t changed my policy,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an interview with MSNBC, his first since his resounding victory on Tuesday, which handed him a fourth term. “What has changed is the reality.”

“I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change,” he said. “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. To make it achievable, then you have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.”

He wants it, just like you and me, but alas, it's not there. It's become imaginary, while nobody was looking.

I'd like to remind everybody what he actually said on Monday, which may be a bit more subtle than you remember, but not exactly ambiguous:

Netanyahu said that if his rivals were elected security would be compromised and they would give up total Israeli control over Jerusalem. "We will continue to build to fortify Jerusalem so its division will not be possible and it will remain united forever," he said on a tour of Har Homa, a settlement neighbourhood of annexed east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu, who is seeking a third consecutive term, vowed he would never allow the Palestinians to establish a capital in the city's eastern sector and pledged to build "thousands" of settler homes....

But Netanyahu's most strident statement came when he was asked by the rightwing NRG website if it was true that there would be no Palestinian state established if he was reelected.

"Indeed," said Netanyahu

None of these words were in Jodi Rudoren's Times story about the same moment, though she did describe him as

declaring definitively that if he was returned to office he would never establish a Palestinian state.

But it's clear that he did exactly that, and that's what conforms with his actions throughout his terms in office: he never has given an inch on Jerusalem, and he's never refrained from building a West Bank settlement, just as he told the folks in Har Homa on Monday. What he's saying now isn't walking it back, either; it's just shifting the blame back where his American friends feel comfortable with it, on the negotiations being unreal and the interlocutors uncommitted (he doesn't have to be committed to peace himself, I notice, that's their problem).

And the White House isn't buying it:

Earlier Thursday, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said that regardless of the prime minister’s clarifications, his pre-election statements demonstrated that he was “no longer committed to a two-state solution,” which “means that the United States is in a position to re-evaluate our thinking.”

That's exactly right. In the United Nations Security Council, where the US constantly blocks any move to ask any concession from Israel, even when the move is in line with express US policy (like our official position since 1978 that the West Bank settlements are illegal), we do it on the grounds that the UN must not interfere with the delicate Israel-Palestinian negotiations, but if the prime minister of Israel says there is no possibility of "real" negotiations, then there's no point in the US continuing to vote that way.

We're certainly not going to stop shipping their $3 billion a year or their direct feeds of NSA information, unfortunately, and I'm afraid we won't come to recognizing a declared Palestinian state, which would be best of all in my view (but maybe some Europeans will start doing that), but things are going to change.

That's what Friedman thinks: he's veritably pissed off with Netanyahu for unclothing himself in public this way and forcing us all to recognize that he's opposed to peace. It's spoiling everything! It's going to lead to the deal with Iran! He's so upset he's written an unseasonable Thursday column spilling over from Wednesday's:

And the leader in the world who is most happy that Netanyahu ran on — and won on — a one-state solution is the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Oh, my goodness. They must have been doing high-fives and “Allahu akbars” all night in the ruling circles of Tehran when they saw how low Bibi sank to win. What better way to isolate Israel globally and deflect attention from Iran’s behavior?

Actually some members of Iran's ruling circles are probably extremely annoyed, because it's President Rouhani's faction, which supports the nuclear negotiation with the US, that will benefit, not the old hardliners who prefer to be martyrs to sanctions and a state of perpetual hostility so that the Revolution can stay pure and free of the pollution of Pepsi-Cola and Taylor Swift.

But let that pass. What Friedman can't understand is that making peace in this crazy old world is just as crazy as making war, bound to offend and frighten some of your friends. Sorry, Tom! Suck on that for a minute, why don't you?