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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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Jewishness found me on my European vacation
To visit Europe is to look at many old, stone churches. My recent trip was no exception, but a few things set our tour of Geneva’s Cathédrale Saint-Pierre apart.
The most obvious difference between it and your typical Notre Dames and basilicas is aesthetic: Saint-Pierre is a Protestant church at the hub of John Calvin’s ministry in the Old Town. There’s no crucifix or stations of the cross and the stained glass eschews biblical scenes, a rebuke of Catholic extravagance. An exception is a small adjoining chapel.
Our Swiss guide gave us the name of this alcove, the burial place of Cardinal Jean de Brogny: Chapelle des Maccabées.
I assumed she was giving some French term for “tomb” that shared a root with “macabre.” I was wrong. The chapel, whose gorgeous, 15th-century stained glass depicts the Evangelists, the Last Supper and Jesus seeming to teach what may be the first-ever CCD class, is one of the few Christian structures to boast an explicitly Jewish name. (The Book of Maccabees, replete with martyrs, is part of the Catholic canon, not the Protestant.)
As for that ghoulish word “macabre,” linguists believe it to be a cognate with the name of the Hasmonean rebels, perhaps a reference to many of their grisly fates.
I should say now that when I am on vacation I don’t seek out Jewish landmarks. A lot of times there isn’t much to see: a street sign clinging to the name of a ghettoized population long-since liquidated, an old cathedral built on top of an even-older synagogue, a museum in a basement in Barcelona.
When I arrived in Paris before setting sail on a Rhone river cruise, my
fiancée, her family and I paid a visit to the Shoah Museum there. English-speaking Chabadniks tried to get me to wrap tefillin while I waited in line at L’as Du Fallafel, the kosher-certified institution in the Marais. Nearby we found a Hellenic-themed juice bar — Temple du Jus — which boasts an ancient sandstone wall with inscriptions in Greek and Hebrew (next to a chintzy, fake Ionic column).
France boasts the largest population of Jews in Europe, mostly now from North Africa. There are synagogues in Avignon and Lyon, but on this trip, the less obvious markers were the ones that kept asserting themselves. There was the Rue Léon-Blum in Arles, named for the three-time prime minister of France. Geneva has Rue Albert-Cohen, for the Corfu-born Swiss novelist.
Montreux in Switzerland has a resplendent statue of the resort town’s longtime resident Freddie Mercury, arguably the world’s most-famous Zoroastrian. But when we visited, the construction workers building the Christmas village behind the Queen frontman were listening to Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” (If you stop inside the shopping mall right near it, you’ll find Cohen’s name on the tiles, marking his 1976 performance at Montreux’s Jazz Festival.)
Our hotel breakfast had a version of chocolate babka, part of their “luxury collection,” with a posted explanation of the “sweet braided bread which originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine.”
Our second evening in Geneva we went to a chalet-themed fondue restaurant called Edelweiss. There, a Swiss accordion player sang the establishment’s eponymous, invented folk song of Austria penned by a duo of Jewish Americans in English for The Sound of Music.
In the city hosting the UN’s base in Europe, and before that the League of Nations, such an international display was maybe unsurprising, but what struck me more is that it felt so natural.
For years now, watchdog groups have been fearing for the future of European Jewry amid increasing attacks and widespread pro-Palestinian protests. This assessment, rooted in valid concern, at times marches in lockstep with a far-right hostile to immigrants from the Muslim world. That alarm comes at times from the very same parties, and in the case of the National Assembly’s Marine Le Pen, the same family, that once leveled their xenophobia at Jews.
What I saw on my petit tour was a kind of cultural victory that will be harder to shake, even as French and British Jews continue to make aliyah in record numbers. It would perhaps shock those who lived through World War II that so much of the so-called national character, to which new arrivals are being labelled a threat, is now so casually Jewish. Emphasis on the “ish.”
For the most part, this Jewishness blends with the dominant culture, forming the soundtrack to builders putting up their Christmas market, giving the name to a Catholic tomb attached to a Protestant landmark or sitting on the buffet table a few stations away from cured ham. It is at times imported, at times native, like Serge Gainsbourg, or naturalized like Albert Cohen.
It’s not going anywhere, and if you’re paying even the slightest attention, it’s hard to miss.
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Christianity won in the midterm elections — but not Christian nationalism
The midterms saw the election of many new Jewish congressional representatives — Brad Lander in New York, Daniel Biss in Illinois, Scott Wiener in California, Zach Dembo in Kentucky. But another group was surprisingly well-represented in the Democratic wins: Christian pastors.
For decades, Christian clergy have usually been associated with the Republican party, thanks to evangelical groups like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. They have rallied Evangelical support for politicians around culture war issues like opposing abortion rights and gay marriage, and white Evangelicals have been one of the defining voting blocs for Republicans ever since.
In 2024, fundamentalist evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and they have been influential members of his cabinet and advisory team. Paula White-Cain, a charismatic Christian, is Trump’s personal faith adviser. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a member of an ultra-conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches founded and led by Doug Wilson, a pastor who has said women should not have the right to vote and that slavery was good; Hegseth has instituted prayer services at the Pentagon, something once considered a violation of the separation of church and state, and he and his preferred preachers often promote Christian nationalism in the services.
But in the 2026 midterms, the pastors and seminarians who won their races were overwhelmingly Democrats. And they were not Evangelical — they were mainline Protestants.
This includes James Talarico, a seminarian currently enrolled in the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, who defeated Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat; Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist minister who became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932; and Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, who won her House race in Iowa.
The shift in American Christianity that these wins represent, of mainline Protestantism over fundamentalist evangelicalism, may sound esoteric — both groups are, technically, Protestant, after all. And it can get confusing; Garriott’s mainline Protestant denomination is called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
But the difference between the two Christian movements is essential to understanding the appetite for, and power of, Christian nationalism in the U.S., and represents Americans’ changing relationship to Jews and Israel.
What is mainline Protestantism?
The term mainline — or, sometimes, oldline — Protestant emerged in the early 20th century, during a debate between an emergent fundamentalist church movement and more modernist denominations. It referred to a historical group of churches that were influential in earlier American history, known as the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism.
But more colloquially, the term refers to a broader set of churches that share a theologically liberal style of scriptural interpretation, a focus on ecumenism — or acceptance and understanding among different Christian movements — and, usually, a progressive-leaning politics focused on social justice.
While mainline Protestants do not vote as a liberal bloc, the theology is less focused on culture war issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights; instead, they center the Social Gospel — a form of theology oriented toward loving thy neighbor and serving the poor. Most mainline churches allow women to be pastors and are accepting of LGBTQ+ members.
For much of American history, these churches were also the mainstream of American Christianity; they were the churches associated with WASPs and with wealthy, influential families like the Rockefellers. In 1970, mainline denominations accounted for 30% of Americans.
But in the 1970s, with the rise of major political evangelical organizations and leaders like Jerry Falwell, the balance of power shifted, and conservative, fundamentalist churches began to gain power. By 2024, only 14% of Americans identified as mainline Protestants according to the Pew Research Center; 23% identified as evangelical.
But judging by the midterms, mainline Protestant progressivism might be making a comeback.
Mainline Protestantism squares off against MAGA fundamentalism
The battle between fundamentalism and progressive mainline churches was not an undercurrent in many midterm campaigns; religion was an overt theme of attacks from the right on the Democrat pastors, and Republicans repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Democrat’s Christianity.
In the race for Iowa’s second congressional district, Republican candidate Joe Mitchell jeered at the Christianity of the mainline Protestant ministers running for a variety of seats, including his opponent, Presbyterian minister Lindsay James, who ran as a Democrat.
“I call them PINOs,” Mitchell said at a conference; the term, he explained, means “pastors in name only.”
Republicans ripped Garriott, also a pastor, as “the wicked witch of Woke” and denounced her preaching as “fake.” Zachary Nunn, who lost to Garriott, took a similar tone in lambasting his opponent.
“I don’t need a lecture from someone who pretends to preach from the pulpit,” the Republican said in May during a Des Moines campaign rally with Republican Vice President JD Vance.
Talarico — who is not ordained but is a current seminary student, and who centered Christianity in his campaign — was meanwhile castigated by evangelical Republicans for statements they called un-Christian, such as saying God is “nonbinary.”
His rival, Paxton, castigated his theology, saying Talarico’s beliefs are “literally the opposite of Christianity,” while Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, said he has “never seen anyone commit so much blasphemy against the word of God and the Bible” and that the now-senator-elect was “going to Hell.”
At a service in a CREC church — Hegseth’s ultra-conservative denomination — a night was devoted to preachers inveighing against Hamilton’s Christian bonafides. Pastors called on the Democratic candidate in Kansas, a preacher at a large United Methodist congregation, to “repent” for his teachings, including that non-Christians aren’t going to hell. Vance accused him of wearing Christianity as “a skin suit.”
The Democratic pastors’ voting records, such as James’ support for gender-affirming care for minors or Talarico’s support for abortion access, were also framed as damning evidence of fake Christianity by Republican evangelicals.
Meanwhile, the ordained Christian Democratic candidates were open about their hope to reclaim Christianity from Republicans. Talarico made similar accusations to his critics, saying that “Christians in the halls of power are blatantly violating the teachings of Christianity on a daily basis and hurting our neighbors in the process.”
Garriott even stated that the representation of Christianity in Republican politics upset her so much that it motivated her to run for office to offer a different Christianity. “Faith has something to say to politics. And what we are seeing labeled as the faith perspective is not faithful to me,” she said in an interview with Religion News Service earlier in her campaign.
A Christian repudiation of Christian nationalism
Numerous members of Trump’s administration are outspoken Christian nationalists. Hegseth has a Crusades tattoo, and his preacher, Doug Wilson of the CREC, opposes the right of non-Christian Americans to hold office. Numerous architects of Project 2025, which advocated for a government imbued with “biblical principles” are members of the administration. JD Vance has stated that “Christianity is America’s creed.”
For religious minorities in the U.S., however, the mainstreaming of open Christian nationalism has been worrying; the Christianity pushed by these Christian nationalist figures has roots in antisemitism and Islamophobia, and imposing a version of religion that does not allow for diverse beliefs feels dangerous.
For many of these conservative Christians, supporting Christian nationalism is synonymous with being a devout Christian; they equate biblical values with morality, and advocating for a moral country is simple obedience to their beliefs. Not all Christians believe this is part of their religion, however; the mainline Protestants who just swept the midterms preach a Christianity that is overtly opposed to Christian nationalism.
Garriott has preached about the topic directly, saying that “evangelicalism, from a Christian nationalist perspective, is trying to make the nation, the government, and everyone the same.” She argued that her faith requires a diverse republic founded on ecumenism.
Talarico has similarly argued directly against Christian nationalism: “I believe the separation of church and state is sacred. I think a nation with one supreme religion is not just un-American, I also think it’s un-Christian, given how Jesus taught about religious supremacy,” he told Ezra Klein of The New York Times. “I have a special moral responsibility to combat Christian nationalism wherever I see it.”
This repudiation of Christian nationalism from within the majority religion of the U.S. is an essential defense for the minority religions of the U.S. And it comes from the ecumenism at the heart of mainline Protestantism. Though ecumenism historically focused on Christian unity, and acceptance of other denominations of Christianity, the theological bent toward nonjudgment — instead of conservative evangelicalism’s fire and brimstone — opens doors toward interfaith dialogue. Mainline Protestants are capable of antisemitism, of course, but the less literal theological interpretation that defines the movement helps keep minds open.
There is one detail of mainline Protestantism that may concern some Jews, however. Evangelicals have long been a source of stalwart support for Israel, thanks to the conservative movement’s eschatology, which focuses on the End Times when, it teaches, Jews must all return to the Holy Land in order for Jesus to return. In the past several decades, evangelicals who subscribe to this apocalyptic theology, including the current ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, Christians United for Israel founder John Hagee and Texas senator Ted Cruz, have referenced their Christianity as grounds for supporting Israel unconditionally.
Mainline Protestantism has its roots in churches founded before this form of dispensationalism was popularized, and they are therefore less attached — at least theologically — to the state of Israel. And though most of the Democratic ministers are moderate on Israel, that’s far from the hawkish pro-Israel template for religious politicians that has previously been defined by evangelicals.
Still, in 2024, Americans voted for an evangelical, conservative, Christian nationalist government. That made for a government full of people defending their right to say that Jews killed Jesus, to post the Ten Commandments in schools, to make Christian prayer a part of military service. And in the midterms, the vision of Christianity the Republican party promoted couldn’t even accept other Christians, much less minority religions.
But that’s not what Christianity has to be. In 2026, Americans voted for a different Christianity: one that is tolerant of other religions, values and viewpoints. That can only be good for the Jews.
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Video: The queen of Yiddish cabaret
אַן אינטערוויו מיט דער אָנגעזעענער ייִדישער זינגערין, אַקטריסע און שרײַבערין עלענאָר ריסאַ איז לעצטנס אַרויפֿגעשטעלט געוואָרן אויף יוטוב.
אינעם שמועס געפֿירט פֿון אלי בענעדיקט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע, דערציילט ריסאַ וועגן אירע ערשטע טריט אויף דער בינע, די מענטשן און פֿאָרשטעלונגען וואָס האָבן אויסגעבויט איר קינסטלערישן וועג, אירע אויפֿטריטן איבער דער וועלט, און דעם אופֿן ווי זי בויט אַ מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַם און קלײַבט אויס לידער. זי רעדט אויך וועגן איר בליק אויף דער צוקונפֿט פֿון ייִדיש־טעאַטער.
ריסאַ איז אַ געבוירענע ייִדיש־רעדערין פֿון פּויליש־ייִדיש, קאָן דער ווידעאָ אויך דינען ווי אַ גוטער לערן־מיטל פֿאַר ייִדיש־סטודענטן וואָס ווילן הערן אַ נאַטירלעכן ייִדיש.
עלענאָר ריסאַ איז אַן אַמעריקאַנער אַקטריסע, רעזשיסאָרין, דראַמאַטורגין און זינגערין, און ייִדיש איז איר מאַמע־לשון. זי איז אויפֿגעוואַקסן אין ברוקלין, די טאָכטער פֿון צוויי לעבן־געבליבענע פֿון פּוילן. אין משך פֿון לאַנגע יאָרן האָט זי געשפּילט, רעזשיסירט און געשאַפֿן סײַ אין ענגלישן, סײַ אין ייִדישן טעאַטער, און איז געווען די קינסטלערישע מיטדירעקטאָרין פֿון דער פֿאָלקסבינע.
זי האָט אויך געשריבן, רעזשיסירט און איבערגעזעצט אַ ריי פּיעסעס און מוזיקאַלישע פּראָגראַמען. אין די לעצטע יאָרן פֿירט זי דעם פּאָדקאַסט “Those Who Were There” בײַם פֿאָרטונאָף־אַרכיוו אין יעיל־אוניווערסיטעט און אַרויסגעגעבן אַ בוך זכרונות, The Letters Project.
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