To paraphrase an old joke, there are some 12 million Jews worldwide, and 12 million and one Jewish spokespersons.
But a controversy over just who can — and cannot — speak erupted over the past week.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was a scheduled keynoter at a Los Angeles Anti-Defamation League dinner. That could hardly be considered a controversial choice: Friedman speaks quite often, including recently at a San Francisco dinner for American Associates of Ben-Gurion University.
But Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of American, urged the ADL to drop Friedman, with the ZOA terming the Timesman a “hostile critic of Israel.”
Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, rejected the idea and blasted Klein.
Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, David Bar-Illan, declared that Friedman was an anti-Zionist unworthy of an American Jewish organization’s forum.
(In his last job as editor of the Jerusalem Post, Bar-Illan had penned a column on anti-Israel bias in media coverage, often naming Friedman.)
Anyone familiar with Friedman’s journalism knows the absurdity of such reactions. Friedman — the first Jew who covered Israel for the Times, won two Pulitzer Prizes for superb, balanced Mideast coverage.
Why is Friedman an Israel-basher?
Is it his membership while a Brandeis University student in a Jewish peace group? His coverage of both sides in the Israeli-Arab conflict?
Perhaps it’s Friedman’s recent columns harshly critical of Netanyahu, whom the ZOA’s Klein supports and who is Bar-Illan’s boss.
Even if Friedman were as critical of Israel as, say, Noam Chomsky, why should he be blacklisted? And just who would draft that list?
No one has elected the ZOA, or the Israeli government’s spokesman, for the job. No one should.
Hopefully, the Jewish people are secure enough to recognize their many voices, and censure no one — even if they, God forbid, criticize Israel.