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Thomas Friedman explains how devastating Israel’s attacks on Iran have been
By BERNIE BELLAN I’m not sure how many readers follow Thomas Friedman’s writing in the New York Times; after all, he’s been highly critical of Netanyahu for years, which probably makes him persona non grata for a lot of you.
But, on Tuesday, November 26, Friedman wrote a piece that was so particularly incisive – and came across as so laudatory of what Israel has been able to achieve in the past 13 months, that even diehard Friedman critics should be able to take some very meaningful lessons away from that column.
Toward the beginning of what he wrote, Friedman makes what, for most readers of his columns, would probably be perceived as a fairly shocking statement when he writes: “In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop.”
He goes on to describe what Israel has been able to do to Hezbollah in the past few months as so destructive of that terrorist organization’s abilities that “Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel.”
Friedman then provides some very interesting information about how effective two attacks Israel launched against Iran – one in April and then one in October, were, both in inflicting tremendous damage to Iran’s capability to defend itself against a full scale Israeli attack – should one be launched, and in undermining Iran’s confidence that it can continue to arm Hezbollah without severe repercussions.
Here is what Friedman wrote:
“There is a reason for this (Hezbollah’s agreeing to a cease fire). Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
“A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise.’ And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.’ “
Friedman’s column goes on to offer advice to President-elect Trump how to deal with other changing realities in the world, including the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development in which, Friedman points out, Israelis are playing a leading role. But one has to wonder whether anyone in Trump’s circle bothers to read anything written by Friedman. After all, he was very close to President Biden – which would certainly put him into Trump’s enemies’ camp, on top of which he writes for that most hated of all media: The New York Times.
Still, if someone who is as critical of Israel’s government as Friedman has been is capable of pointing out the vastly changed dynamic now permeating the entire Middle East as a result of the huge blows Israel has inflicted both on Iran’s number one proxy in the region – Hezbollah, and on Iran itself, once can more readily understand how Israel’s strategy of taking on different enemies all at the same time has paid off.
I, for one, will admit that I was quite surprised to read Friedman’s analysis – and it leads me to question my own thoughts as to what would happen when Israel opened up a new front in Lebanon at the same time as it was still engaged in Gaza. I had thought that it might lead to a repeat of the 2006 debacle, in which a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon led to heavy Israeli losses and what was, in effect, a victory for Hezbollah – not by being able to defeat Israel, but simply by surviving that invasion.
This time around though – and we’ll have to wait for military analysts to tell us just how effective the heavy Israeli bombardment of Lebanese areas has been in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Israel has managed to keep its own casualties relatively low by relying upon bombing of Hezbollah infrastructure. As has been the case in Gaza, however, it’s so difficult to tell what those devastating bombings have actually accomplished in specific terms beyond realizing that they have thoroughly degraded both Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capacities. It seems though that the aphorism that “the sum is greater than its parts” is particularly apt in describing what the Israel Air Force has been able to achieve.
While we have been witnessing the wholesale destruction of civilian areas – in both Gaza and Lebanon, it now seems evident that Israeli intelligence has been able to locate terrorist locations with tremendous accuracy. The fact that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been so thoroughly embedded within civilian population areas made it inevitable that, once the IAF embarked upon a relentless campaign to destroy terrorist infrastructure and locations where terrorists were embedded within the civilian population, there would be huge civilian casualties – but ultimately Israel would be able to degrade both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fighting abilities to the point where they have both been neutralized in large part.
The question, of course, is what will now happen as a result of Friedman himself describing Israel’s having forced Hezbollah and Iran to “delink” themselves from Hamas. Hamas is, in effect, nothing more than a mafia type organization, now terrorizing the Palestinian population in Gaza, with its own survival now being its purpose. The Israel Defence Forces seem content to let Hamas carry on its campaign of looting aid trucks and terrorizing the population for its own benefit.
But Hamas fighters, however many may remain, don’t have the same option as Hezbollah’s fighters – which is to retreat behind a defined line north of the Litani River in Lebanon. How many are in the tunnels? How many are embedded within the rest of the Gaza population? If the IDF has an idea what the answers to those questions are, I haven’t seen them.
So, the war in Gaza will likely carry on for some time. It appears that the bombing campaign has thoroughly reduced Hamas’s ability to carry on any effective strikes on Israeli targets, but it is not clear at what point the Israeli government might be willing to accept any sort of a ceasefire. The government’s position has been that a ceasefire can only be entered into when at least the majority of the hostages are released, but frankly, Israel is now operating from such a position of strength vis-a-vis Hamas, that the idea of accepting a ceasefire that would allow Hamas fighters to remain in place seems unconscionable to the vast majority of Israelis. It may seem perverse to think that the government has been willing to sacrifice hostages’ lives for the sake of dealing a final, crushing blow to Hamas, but that’s the sad reality.
Still, who would have thought that Israel would be able to wage successful wars on so many fronts? As Thomas Friedman has noted, Israel has upended the situation in the Middle East, albeit at a very heavy price. And even though I’ve been questioning from the outset the Israeli government’s strategy of seeking total victory over Hamas, given how thoroughly Israel has been able to undermine Hezbollah’s and Iran’s positions, perhaps I was wrong to question Netanyahu’s goal of thoroughly crushing Hamas. Credit has to be given though to the IDF and how much they learned from previous wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Amidst all this though, one has to feel great sympathy for the people of Gaza. They are being held to ransom by a gang of thugs and there does not appear to be any way out for them. For their sake, let’s hope that Israel can “finish the job” quickly, although how that can be done remains difficult to know. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who is always so thoughtful and insightful, can shed some answers to that question as well.
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Somerville councilors to discuss Israel divestment proposal
(JTA) — SOMERVILLE, Mass. — The issue of divestment from Israel returns to the Somerville City Council in Massachusetts on Tuesday night as lawmakers plan to discuss how to implement a nonbinding ballot question on the matter that passed last year.
The divestment push has divided the city of more than 84,000 residents, which has a long-standing Jewish population. It is located between Cambridge, home to Harvard University, and Medford, a city with which it shares the Tufts University campus.
After Question 3 passed with 55.7% of the residents’ vote in November 2025, the City Council that same month passed a resolution committing to work toward an ordinance within a year to enact the ballot’s goals.
The measure to that effect, introduced in June, would bar the city from investing in or procuring labor, services or goods from companies that support entities identified by the ordinance as violating international law, including Israel.
Unlike the divestment proposal awaiting a November ballot vote in Providence or the binding human rights divestment ordinance passed by Medford’s city council in 2025, the Somerville ordinance specifically mentions Israel and Palestine.
In response to the push for a binding ordinance, 74 registered voters in Somerville submitted a petition for a hearing, which was held in September, before final action is taken, citing concerns about its impact on the city. The issue has now moved to the city’s Legislative Matters Committee, which is meeting Tuesday night.
Among the groups opposing divestment is Shalom Somerville, which submitted the September petition stating that “the sense of belonging and safety experienced by Jewish, Israeli and other residents of diverse backgrounds” is at risk as a result of the ordinance.
Sam Gechter, co-founder and president of Shalom Somerville, said that the ordinance singles out Jews who support Israel, which makes it antisemitic. Deputy City Solicitor David Shapiro also advised in November 2024 that such an ordinance would be “likely invalid,” according to a letter from the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
“I think it’s incredibly irresponsible,” Gechter said, suggesting that the ordinance would slow down governmental action. “But the biggest thing for me is that it makes Jews feel unwelcome in Somerville.”
A local organization, Somerville for Palestine (S4P), has been a driving force behind both the ballot question and the ordinance, which the group developed in collaboration with sponsoring city councilors Ben Ewen-Campen, Ben Wheeler, Wilfred N. Mbah and Jon Link. “It’s what people voted for,” said Mo Katz-Christy, a member of S4P’s leadership and Jewish Caucus. “We want to follow the will of the people.”
The ADL issued a statement condemning the ordinance in June. It also joined the Brandeis Center in issuing a letter calling the proposal an unconstitutional intrusion into foreign affairs.
Other Jewish organizations disagree. Jewish Voice for Peace Boston has worked closely with S4P to back the measures. “I don’t think that those objections have validity,” said Eli Gerzon, a longtime member of JVP. “As a Jewish organization, we are especially concerned that ‘never again’ really means what it says: never again, that we never let a Holocaust, a genocide happen.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Somerville councilors to discuss Israel divestment proposal appeared first on The Forward.
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A major Jewish museum hopes to join the Smithsonian – at a difficult moment for the storied institution
(JTA) — Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History is moving closer to becoming part of the Smithsonian Institution at a moment of significant upheaval for the storied museum network.
A new congressional commission will study whether to make the museum part of the Smithsonian. Its members were sworn in Tuesday, when they also held their first meeting.
In an exclusive interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the commission’s new chair Philip Darivoff, a former longtime chair of the Weitzman, and vice chair Dara Horn, a New York Times bestselling author, said that the Weitzman joining the Smithsonian would send a powerful message that Jews are a crucial component of the history of the country.
“It’s a different statement that our country makes when it says that the study of Jewish American history and culture is important to this nation,” Darivoff said. Both he and Horn also hope that a boost in the Weitzman’s profile could combat what they called an “epidemic of ignorance” among Americans when it comes to knowledge of Jewish history and culture.
“This really would be an elevation of the Jewish community,” Horn, author of “People Love Dead Jews” and “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” told JTA. “The place that Jews show up in a school curriculum is typically more about the Holocaust” — an area that the author has written critically about in the past as too limiting a view of Jewish life.
Horn believes in the Weitzman project, she said, because she hopes to emphasize the ways that Jews have contributed to American founding ideals such as religious pluralism.
“I’m really interested in the connections between the Jewish story and a lot of our foundational ideas in this country,” she said. Jewish ideas such as the Exodus from Egypt in the Passover story “were inspiring to Americans,” she added.
The wheels for the Weitzman joining the Smithsonian began turning in 2024, when Congress passed legislation in 2024, then signed by President Biden, to establish the commission. The group spent the next two years putting the commission together, and has two years from its first meeting to research and publish a report on the feasibility of such a move — though Darivoff said he hopes to finish the work well before the deadline.
Adding a new member to the Smithsonian has been known to take years, if not decades. The two most recent additions, the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum, were both long in the works.
Founded in 1976, the Weitzman is already an existing, fully functioning institution — and also already a Smithsonian affiliate, meaning it can share resources with other museums in the system. Unlike a museum being built from scratch, the Weitzman already has a building and collection, which proponents hope could speed the process.”
Dan Tadmor, the Weitzman’s CEO, told JTA that joining the Smithsonian would improve their educational mission.
“We have a national footprint for our educational programming, but of course we’d like to widen it,” he said. “Who would say no to a curriculum that’s been developed by a Smithsonian museum?”
The Weitzman’s bid for increased prominence within the Smithsonian comes as the Trump administration has sought to exert greater control over the latter — home to such storied institutions as the National Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Zoo.
This summer the White House issued a report alleging “radical ideology” in the museums’ content, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently announced plans for signs accusing Smithsonian leaders of ideological bias. Observers say such signs are indicative of larger administration priorities opposing the teaching of historical subjects such as slavery. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III is stepping down at the end of the year.
A representative from the Smithsonian declined to comment to JTA on the Weitzman’s bid, or on its current political conditions.
The commission’s chair and vice chair of the new Weitzman said that the current political upheaval shouldn’t affect their work. The Smithsonian, Horn said, “has lasted through many political winds.”
“I think we see this as a long-term project that’s about the place of Jewish Americans in this country’s history,” Darivoff said. “The Smithsonian is a really important institution for this country, and it is the great museum complex of our nation. God willing, it will be flourishing for centuries to come. It’d be an honor to be included in the Smithsonian.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A major Jewish museum hopes to join the Smithsonian – at a difficult moment for the storied institution appeared first on The Forward.
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Two deaths in Manchester synagogue attack last year will be probed through public inquiry, Britain says
(JTA) — The deaths of two Jewish men in an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year will be examined through a public inquiry, the British home secretary announced on Monday, a necessary step to include sensitive information in the investigation.
Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed during the attack on Yom Kippur on Oct. 2, 2025, when Jihad Al-Shamie rammed a car into a group of worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester and stabbed two people. Cravitz died from stab wounds and another man, Andrew Franks, was seriously injured but survived. Daulby was shot by police while blocking the synagogue doors to stop Al-Shamie from entering. Two other people were seriously injured.
Al-Shamie, a Syrian-born British citizen, said he was acting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, before police shot him dead.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the public inquiry in a statement about national security at the House of Commons, saying that “what happened that day must be fully understood.”
“This will ensure that all evidence can be heard, including any sensitive national security material that could not otherwise be fully heard in the coroner’s court,” said Mahmood.
Judge Alexia Durran, the chief coroner of England and Wales, was overseeing inquests into the deaths of Cravitz and Daulby. Durran last month recommended that Mahmood convert the inquests into a public inquiry, following statements from Home Office lawyers that some information from MI5 would be withheld from open court due to national security concerns. A full investigation that involves hearing sensitive material in private requires a public inquiry.
Earlier this year, Greater Manchester Police’s chief constable Stephen Watson said he was “deeply sorry” for a “missed opportunity” to uncover the plot against the Heaton Park synagogue. Watson made the apology after prosecutors revealed that Al-Shamie had two prior arrests for allegedly breaching a non-molestation order and alleged rape, and his mobile devices were not examined until after the synagogue attack.
Mahmood listed “a series of attacks on our Jewish community” in the year since the synagogue attack, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in the London neighborhood of Golders Green, a spate of arson attacks and a “foiled but potentially lethal plot” against Jews in Manchester on the eve of Yom Kippur last month. In the last case, two Iranian men have been charged with terrorism offenses.
“Faced with the threat posed to our Jewish community, we have increased funding to the police by an additional £250 million to boost police presence in key Jewish areas and to tackle antisemitism on our streets,” said Mahmood.
She added, “I know we cannot simply build higher walls around our Jewish community and expect them to live in fear. So we must root out the evil of antisemitism wherever it lurks in society, and this government is committed to that effort.”
Mahmood’s announcement comes days after the Home Office released data showing that hate crimes against Jewish people in England and Wales rose 10% in the year ending in March.
Mahmood said the United Kingdom was aware that “the Iranian state is targeting our Jewish community,” adding that the threat posed to Jews demonstrated “how the lines are increasingly blurring between extremism and state threats.”
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