Thomas Friedman’s Hezbollah Breakfast? (VIDEO)
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Thomas Friedman enjoys breakfast with Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam.
The main dining room of New York’s Loews Regency hotel located on the corner of 61st Street and Park Avenue is well know as the favorite breakfast venue of the rich and influential.
Last Friday, an Algemeiner reader captured this photo and video of beleaguered New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman with Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations Nawaf Salam breakfasting at the hot spot.
Salam, who has held his position since 2007 is well know for his key role in forwarding the Unilateral Deceleration of Palestinian Arab Statehood at the United Nations, a move that was vigorously opposed by the United States.
Anne Bayefsky, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and editor of Eye on the UN, commented on Salam’s position as a representative of the Hezbollah dominated Lebanese government, saying, “He is essentially Hezbollah’s representative in the United Nations.” The group, listed as a terror organization by the United States, has dominated Lebanese politics since 2009.
Our eyewitness tells us that their body language seemed friendly and jovial.
The meeting came just three days following the publication of Friedman’s now infamous December 13th column where he wrote, “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Friedman subsequently expressed regret over the statement in an interview with the Jewish Week saying, “In retrospect I probably should have used a more precise term like ‘engineered’ by the Israel lobby — a term that does not suggest grand conspiracy theories that I don’t subscribe to.” “It would have helped people focus on my argument, which I stand by 100 percent,” he concluded.
An Israeli government insider who did not wish to be named told the Algemeiner that there is suspicion among some in the government that the recent heightened pitch of Friedman’s attacks on the Jewish state in his columns are the product of undue Arab influence.
2:59 am
this is a low article designed to be sensationalist
5:23 pm
a real yiddishe antisemite
11:43 am
I am paraphrasing what Friedman wrote in “From Beirut to Jerusalem” during the 1st Lebanon war – any journalist that was not influenced by the PLO and Syrians was either naive or crazy.
He was undoubtedly talking about himself as well, since he was a journalist there at the time.
The Arab influence seems to have ocntinued albeit taking different forms.
11:25 am
This is the new low of this news organization. Very very sad.
2:58 am
agree
11:16 am
Friedman does not get it.Israel is the jewish nation.We jews are a people.Without Israel the middle east would be a nest for those desiring world domination.How quickly we forget the UN gave Israel the land which encompasses Jordan and the British named Palestine.
3:55 pm
I must disagree 100%. G-d Almighty gave all Jews the land of Israel over 3,000 years ago. Read the first Rashi for the only answer to todays challenge.
12:24 pm
>must disagree 100%. G-d Almighty gave all Jews the land of Israel over 3,000 years ago.
Really? Yet the Romans and a few other Empires took it away from them. Why didn’t your god do something about it then?
Are you sure it’s “almighty”?
4:38 pm
Actually, the UN did NOT give us Israel as we declared our independence in 1948. The UN thus did not create the legal status of Israel.
The legal foundation for the Jewish people having sovereignty over the land we call Israel came about in 1920 at the San Remo Conference in Italy, where the powers that had the disposition to do so, legally granted that land to the Jewish people for eternity. This and this alone, is the true basis for our legal claims.
10:33 am
And the people that were already living there? What say did they have?
And let’s say that the Palestinians had their own “San Remo Conference in Italy” and decided that Israel was theirs you of course would just move on out?
You can dress it up in whatever legal version of “Following Orders” you like but in the end a large group of people were displaced and ghettoized because they said the wrong prayers / have the wrong DNA.
I know, I know, the Nazis did it to the Jews so that means the Jews get to do it to other people.
3:59 am
False. Americans who are friends of Israel spend their own time and money to make sure Israel can defend itself against those who’d sworn to destroy it.
6:53 am
Wrong, the answer was true:
Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the House Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee that “American assistance to Israel serves vital U.S. national security interests and advances critical U.S. foriegn policy goals.”
He requested that Israel receive $2.775 billion in military aid in fiscal year 2010, as called for in the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel that allocates $30 billion in aid for the Jewish state over 10 years.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/03/27/1004048/aipac-head-testifies-on-israel-aid
Friedman is obviously an big fat anti-Semite for pointing that out.
2:54 am
everybody is talking and talking about how the jews and israel are presumably buying and paying people to make them look good – i mean seriously, if that was true, they should ask for their money back, coz it’s not working!
besides, when was the last time the media spoke about how the arabs are influencing and paying big money to get their story told all over the world and make them look like innocent victims? exactly, there was no such time, because nobody talks about that! and this little article and video show you how it’s done – in nice restaurants, over meals paid from the money donated by international organizations, which should actually get to the poor people of the Arab world, not in the pockets of their leaders!
4:04 pm
Israel, as a nation spends a great to deal of money to secure even more money from the US.
Is that true or false?
4:34 pm
False. AIPAC and others are funded by Americans and not the Israeli government.
Thomas Friedman is a purchased property of the anti-Israel lobby.
6:31 pm
While there is certainly a fanatical Zionist streak in the Jewish community that lobbies cash from the US to keep their angry god’s promise, the Israeli government gets BILLIONS and they make no effort to ensure the flow continues or gushes more?
I would find that surprising.
4:41 pm
Yes, it’s beginning to look like Friedman is bought and paid for.
The money Israel gets from the US is largely, and by law, spent in the US with American companies.
And that amount pales in comparison to what Arab countries currently get.
10:42 am
>The money Israel gets from the US is largely, and by law, spent in the US with American companies.
Sure, do you think that has anything to do with how much power the lobbying groups have? It’s an interesting feedback loop isn’t it?
What American companies? Arms and other security assets providers no doubt. How do you think they’d react to peace in the Middle East? I bet they wouldn’t be too keen on it.
>And that amount pales in comparison to what Arab countries currently get.
Really? The Americans are giving BILLIONS to oil rich Saudi Arabia? Syria? How much are they getting? Can you please back that up with some links because I just don’t think “pales” is the right word.
5:28 pm
Salvage:
Why do you omit the fact that the Saudis – let alone other Arab nations and anti Israel left wing ( and extreme right wing) organizations – annually spend tens of millions of dollars on college campuses ( forget about their high powered lobbying organizations in Washington) alone to influence American public opinion? HUH?
10:36 am
Wow! Ya got me!
Oh, no, wait, this was about Friedman not college campuses.
Tell me, when was the last time the anti-Israeli Apartheid leadership got a standing ovation from a pack of American leaders?
And how many billions of dollars of aid do they get from the American taxpayer again?
See how different things are different?
Oh and of course all those college organizations are naturally anti-Semitic and they’re not opposed to Israel because they’re violating human rights laws but because they hate Jews.
Even the Jewish ones.
There is no other possible explanation.