Nine paragraphs snipped on all the ways in which the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman has been lying since 2002 on the subject of Israel.
The reality is that though Israel has suffered some modest public relations damage—more from China- and Russia-backed social media smear campaigns than from Friedman's fantasizing—the country is not a pariah state. The capital markets and high-tech firms understand this, if Friedman does not. In December 2025, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced: "Israel is home to some of the world's most brilliant technologists and has become NVIDIA's second home." Apple just bought an Israeli AI startup, Q.ai, reportedly for nearly $2 billion. An Israeli drone startup is going public at a $1.5 billion valuation. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, "Our stock market is at an all time high. The shekel versus the dollar is almost at a 30 year high." (The Iranian rial, meanwhile...)Netanyahu just returned from his seventh in-person meeting with President Trump, more than Trump has had with any other foreign leader. The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to visit Israel from February 25 to 26. The president of the Serb Republic visited Jerusalem on January 28. The prime minister of Albania visited January 26. The president-elect of Honduras visited on January 18. The German interior minister visited January 11 and signed a cybersecurity pact with Israel. Israel welcomed 1.3 million foreign tourists in 2025, even though its skies were closed during much of the 12-day war with Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
in June.
On what evidence does Friedman rest his dire warnings? He writes, "A poll by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by YouGov in November, found that 51 percent of Republican voters under age 45 said they preferred to support a candidate in the 2028 presidential primary who favored reducing taxpayer-funded weapon transfers to Israel. Only 27 percent favored a candidate who would increase or maintain weapon supplies." This is a crummy poll, because it asked only about Israel, not about Ukraine or Taiwan, and thus doesn't indicate anything about Israel in particular. In fact, when Americans oppose arms for Ukraine, the Friedman types blame the Americans for being isolationist rather than blaming Ukraine or its leaders. It's an anti-Israel double standard.
The other thing Friedman keeps carefully concealed from his readers—as hidden a secret as Olmert's criminal record—is that the "Middle East Understanding Policy Project" is part of the noxious anti-Israel philanthropic-industrial complex. It's an affiliate of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which has gotten half a million dollars from George Soros
...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true. Maybe both....
's Open Society Foundations and $405,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, on whose board sits J Street president (and organizational Soros fund recipient) Jeremy Ben-Ami. The Institute for Middle East Understanding's most recent tax filing lists as the group's $138,140 a year "communications director" Diana Buttu, a Harvard division of continuing education faculty member and former PLO legal adviser who recently was scheduled to appear with a Hamas
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...official at an event sponsored by Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
's Al Jazeera.
At this point the Friedman columns are a contrary indicator—each time the Times publishes one, another foreign leader or CEO visits Israel to invest or make a deal, and the Israeli stock market and the shekel soar more. It's enough to make one conclude that the product the Times readers are purchasing with the apartheid-pariah-state narrative isn't a reliable prediction of the future or an accurate picture of the current reality. It's something else—a psychological outlet, validation for their own Bibi Derangement Syndrome ("BDS") or more deeply rooted hatred of Israel or its people (of the sort that shows up in the Times reader comments on Friedman's column, many of which observe that Netanyahu and his government were elected by Israeli voters). Demonizing Israel and its people requires neither originality nor accuracy. It's a function that can be performed even by a fool.
Related:
Thomas Friedman 10/04/2024 Lebanon: Nasrallah agreed to a ceasefire just before Israel killed him
Thomas Friedman 07/25/2024 Israel may face a dilemma: to be destroyed or win at a terrible cost
Thomas Friedman 04/29/2024 Rafah and Riyadh: Defeating Hamas is essential for normalization - analysis
Thomas Friedman 10/04/2024 Lebanon: Nasrallah agreed to a ceasefire just before Israel killed him
Thomas Friedman 07/25/2024 Israel may face a dilemma: to be destroyed or win at a terrible cost
Thomas Friedman 04/29/2024 Rafah and Riyadh: Defeating Hamas is essential for normalization - analysis