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February 11, 2004
OU
Denounces Friedman Op-Ed in New York Times
The Union of
Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the nation’s largest
Orthodox Jewish Synagogue organization, strongly criticized Thomas
Friedman’s op-ed in the New York Times (February 5th, 2004) “A
Rude Awakening.” Professor Richard B. Stone, Chairman of the OU’s
Institute for Public Affairs said:
“We deplore Thomas Friedman’s specious accusations blaming the
Israeli government and supporters of Israel for the current
impasse in the peace process. Does Thomas Friedman really believe
that ‘the failure to forge, empower and legitimize a modern center
… Palestine’ is attributable to the actions or inactions of the
‘Bush team’ and Sharon? As much as all of us wish it were
otherwise, is it not far more likely that the inability of a
Palestinian ‘moderate center’ to seize the role of Peace Partner
is about Palestinians and not about Bush, Clinton, Sharon,
Netanyahu, Barak, Peres, or Rabin?”
“But never mind that,” continued Professor Stone. “Friedman is
entitled to express views that miss the point. What really upsets
us is the statement that PM Sharon has ‘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 Sharon dictates, and by political handlers
telling the president not to put any pressure on Israel in an
election year-all conspiring to make sure the President does
nothing.’”
“A low point in the proud history of America-Israel relations
occurred when the President’s father (the first President Bush)
lamented his ‘lonely’ position in a sea of pro-Israel Jewish
lobbyists. Friedman places the current President in an even more
powerless position. Now the Jewish lobbyists have been joined by
Christian lobbyists, in an alliance with Vice President Cheney and
Bush’s political handlers, and Friedman calls the whole thing a
‘conspiracy.’”
“Where does one start? President Bush has insisted from the
beginning, as he explained in the famous speech of June 24, 2002,
that step one is a cessation of Palestinian terrorist violence.
Everything he has done, or not done, since then, in or out of an
election year, has been true to that very sound premise. The
notion that Sharon controls Cheney is beyond preposterous. And the
notion that a Sharon-dominated Cheney is conspiring with Jewish
and Christian lobbyists and election year political handlers to
coerce the President to continue the position he has correctly
taken all along is to put a preposterous idea in the form of an
accusation with sinister overtones.”
“Finally, why did Friedman not mention that the President’s
attitude and behavior toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
centered on cessation of Palestinian violence as the first step,
is also supported in the Congress and by the American people?
Would that, to Friedman’s frustration, turn his ‘conspiracy’ into
a ‘consensus’?”
“We share Friedman’s concern that there may be a future Islamic
Republic of Palestine but that is not because of President Bush’s
policies. Rather it is because of the predictable failure of the
Palestinian Authority to live up to its commitments to stop the
campaign of terror, which has only yielded disastrous results not
only for Israel, but also for the Palestinians themselves.”
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