By Guillermo Alvarado
It is a fact that practically everyone with leftist positions in the political spectrum, or at least of the so-called progressivism, firmly condemned the genocide that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, where a large-scale humanitarian tragedy is taking place.
There are even well-defined acts, such as the recent decision of the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to cut off the purchase of Israeli weapons, which is tantamount to hitting where it really hurts the Zionist regime.
However, these days The New York Times, which no one can place at all in the categories I describe in the first paragraph, published an article by the American journalist and writer Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and, moreover, a practicing Jew.
The columnist unequivocally states that he sees an increasingly rapid erosion of Israel's position among the friendly nations of the West, I add, and he adds that if Joseph Biden is not careful, America's global position will collapse along with that of Israel.
These are not the words of an opponent of Tel Aviv or Washington, but of someone who feels part of both worlds, but is increasingly uncomfortable.
Friedman, a globalization theorist, makes it clear that neither Israel nor Biden fully appreciates the anger that is bubbling up around the world, fueled by social media and television, over the killing of thousands of Palestinians, particularly children, with U.S.-supplied weapons.
It is obvious, he says, that this anger is boiling over in the Arab world, but he also felt it very strongly on a recent trip to India.So many civilian deaths in a relatively short war would be problematic in any context. But when so many perish in a retaliatory invasion launched by an Israeli government, with no political horizon for the next day, it is only logical that his friends begin to turn away.
Without ruling out the responsibility of the Hamas organization in this drama, Friedman accused Benjamin Netanyahu of being willing to sacrifice Israel's international image to protect his personal political interests.
And along with him, he will not hesitate to drag in the United States, particularly the Biden administration, which does not understand the magnitude of what is going on.In general everything Friedman says has been said over the past few months and is being proven in practice. What is striking is that it comes from someone who is inside the system, knows its gears and perceives the risk.Every maimed or orphaned child, every parent who saw their family die, will maintain a lifelong burning pain against their tormentors.
