Once more the editors declare that “The United States and its Quartet partners… should put a map and a deal on the table, with a timeline for concluding negotiations… The core element: a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders [sic] with mutually agreed land swaps…”
Predictably, there is again no acknowledgment in the editorial of the obstacles to peace presented by Palestinian leaders’ refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy within any borders and their incessant incitement to the state’s destruction. Of course, there’s once more no reference to Palestinian promotion of the extermination of Jews.
For Thomas Friedman, the Times perennial op-ed “expert” on Middle East affairs, Palestinian incitement, including the incitement to genocide, is likewise a non-issue. The major issue is, and has always been, the settlements. More recently, as in a June 18, 2011, op-ed, Friedman has embraced the mantra of a return to the 1967 “borders” (as he characterizes the cease-fire lines in the op-ed) with “mutually agreed border adjustments.” In the piece, entitled “What to Do With Lemons,” Friedman proposes a new UN resolution which, in some respects copying the 1947 General Assembly Resolution 181 that called for partition of Mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, would repeat this formula but specify, in Friedman’s words, “the dividing line should be based on the 1967 borders…” Friedman insists such a new General Assembly resolution would satisfy the basic desires of both sides. As is typical for Friedman, the Palestinians have no desire to destroy Israel and annihilate its inhabitants as well as other Jews. That part of reality would sour the lemonade he brilliantly fantasizes – has for decades brilliantly fantasized – creating out of Middle East lemons.
Nicholas Kristof is the Times op-ed writer who likewise opines extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, invariably to bash Israel. In fact, there is virtually no form of anti-Israel disinformation – whether concerning supposed Israeli withholding of electricity or water from Palestinians, or stealing Palestinian land, or destroying Palestinian homes – that Kristof has not parroted.




















