Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Day Thomas L. Friedman Got Stoned in Jersualem

Via the Investigative Project, veteran Israeli journalist and former New York Times correspondent Michael Widlanski tells an interesting tale about the NYT's self-styled sage/foremost Israel-basher:
He recounts a 1988 incident in which Friedman's car was stoned by Palestinians as he drove through Jerusalem. 
"If I had a gun, I would have blasted the faces of all those sons of bitches," Friedman reportedly yelled after returning to the Times' office. Yoram Ettinger, then head of Israel's Government Press Office, told Friedman that the experience should make him more sympathetic to Israeli security concerns.

"Friedman was right to be upset. He was hypocritical not to report it then and is hypocritical to treat Arab rocks as a natural part of 'bargaining,' where Arab attacks in 1967 are repaid by the Arabs getting all the land back they used to attack Israel," Widlanski writes... 
Friedman? A hypocrite? Perish the thought.  Let's just say that, like many at the NYT (and in the grand tradition of Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter Walter Duranty), he's rather selective about what he chooses to--and chooses not to--report.

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