Tom Friedman’s Latest Stratagem Is Having US Taxpayers Subsidize Syria’s Assad

Ira Stoll

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Photo: Charles Haynes via Wikimedia Commons.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman floats an unconventional idea in his latest article: having the US pay the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to kick Iran out of Syria.

Here’s how Friedman frames it: “I have an idea: One way to defuse the tension between the US and Israel would be for Biden to attempt a radical new diplomatic initiative — a leveraged buyout of the Iranian presence in Syria.”

The Times columnist writes that “Biden and the gulf Arab states could go to the Russians and Assad with this offer: Kick out the Iranian forces from Syria and we will triple whatever financial aid Iran was giving Syria, and we’ll tacitly agree that Assad (though a war criminal) can stay in power for the near term.”

Friedman acknowledges that the idea would be “cynical,” but contends, “Israel’s military would back this deal, because breaking the Syrian land bridge that Iran uses to keep Hezbollah supplied with rockets would be a game-changer.”

Friedman’s column doesn’t give a dollar amount, but a May 2021 report from the Atlantic Council said, “Experts place the Islamic Republic’s annual support for Assad’s war at $15 billion per year.” Triple that would be $45 billion a year, or more than 11 times annual US aid to Israel. That would indeed be a “game changer,” though perhaps not exactly in the way Friedman means it.

Just how bad an idea is it to drop $45 billion a year on Bashar Assad’s Syria? Let us count the ways.

First, Syria has a history of breaking its promises. The US government says the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons such as sarin and chlorine 50 times since Damascus joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013. There’s no reason to believe Syria would keep any promises it makes to kick Iran out.

Second, it contradicts the stated Biden policy of emphasizing human rights. As Elliott Abrams recently wrote in a different context, “Recall what Secretary of State Blinken said when he announced this year’s State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: ‘President Biden has committed to putting human rights back at the center of American foreign policy, and that’s a commitment that I and the entire Department of State take very seriously.  We will bring to bear all the tools of our diplomacy to defend human rights and hold accountable perpetrators of abuse.’”

Syria is a major human rights abuser. According to the State Department:

Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings by the regime; forced disappearances by the regime; torture, including torture involving sexual violence; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care; prolonged arbitrary detention; political prisoners and detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious abuses in internal conflict, including aerial and ground attacks impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure including schools, markets, and hospitals; serious restrictions on free expression, including restrictions on the press and access to the internet, censorship, and site blocking; substantial suppression of the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; undue restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections, including severe restrictions on political participation; high-level and widespread corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for violence against women; coerced abortion; unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers by the regime and other armed actors; trafficking in persons; violence and severe discrimination targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons; existence and use of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults; and severe restrictions on workers’ rights.

American policy should punish or change this sort of behavior, not reward it.

Third, it’s legally difficult. Syria is designated under American law as a state sponsor of terrorism. Section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended forbids the US government from providing foreign aid “to any country if the Secretary of State determines that the government of that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” There’s a provision for the president to waive that restriction if “national security interests” justify it, but it’s not at all clear that in this case such a waiver would be legally justified.

Fourth, tripling Iranian aid to Syria might create a bidding war. What’s to stop China from coming along and offering Syria four times what Iran was paying to achieve whatever its local goals are? It just sets up an auction.

Fifth, Syria would get rewarded yet another time for fulfilling obligations it or its proxies are already bound to under various previous agreements, such as the Taif Accords and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559.

Sixth, the key issue is less the Iranian forces in Syria than in Lebanon. They can be resupplied by other, non-Syrian means, or manufacture their own missiles. The recent Gaza example shows that an Iranian-backed terrorist force can rain rockets down on Israel without a land bridge. Remember, Gaza is “blockaded.” If not even Israel and Egypt can prevent Gaza terrorists from building missiles and rockets, why would Friedman expect that Syria can or would prevent terrorists in neighboring Lebanon from building rockets?

Seventh, the Friedman-Bribe-Syria plan extends the logic of rewarding terrorist bad behavior from the Iran nuclear deal to Syria, again in exchange for minimal promises. Would Syria make peace with Israel? Cede its claim to the Golan Heights or to Shebaa Farms? Become a democracy? Cease harboring terrorists not only from Hezbollah but also from other terrorist groups such as the PKK, Al Qaeda, and ISIS? Stop using chemical weapons on its own population? Release US hostages such as Austin Tice? Or does Assad claim the $45 billion a year cash bonanza up front merely by promising to cut off Iranian land bridge, and does the US only then begin negotiating on the “longer, stronger” front, on the model of the Iran nuclear deal, where the US front-loads all its concessions in exchange for imaginary future progress?

Eighth, Friedman’s unsubstantiated claim that “Israel’s military would back this deal” is an odd one. Israel’s military is under civilian democratic control. This is a foreign policy question. What matters is not whether Israel’s military would back the deal but whether the Israeli public would. Nowhere in the new Israeli coalition agreement is it written that the parties are going to support $45 billion in financial aid to the Assad regime.

Finally, short of unleashing his full chemical weapons arsenal in a way that would make the “only children” of Gaza look like small potatoes in terms of collateral damage, it’s not even clear that Assad has the capacity to kick the Iranian forces out of Syria. Maybe with $45 billion of US taxpayer dollars he would. More likely, though, he’d use the ammunition and weapons purchased with those funds not on fighting or deterring Iran but rather on attacking Israel or his own internal political rivals. For the US and Israel, the Friedman-Bribe-Syria plan would be a bad risk.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

WJRO condemns Polish parliament for draft bill on Holocaust restitution

JERUSALEM POST STAFF

The bill passed the Sejm on Thursday with 309 in favor and 120 abstained and must go to the Polish Senate for private approval.

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The site of the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz is pictured during the ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp and International Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, January 27, 2020. / (photo credit: REUTERS/NORA SAVOSNICK)

The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WRJO) condemned the Polish Parliament for passing a draft bill introducing a statute of limitations on claims for the restitution of property.

This draft bill would severely limit any ability by Polish Jewish Holocaust victims to recover their stolen property. Poland is the only country in the European Union that has not legislated on property restitution, despite repeated calls to do so from the US.

The WJRO is calling for a withdrawal of the proposed bill that would make it nearly impossible to challenge decisions issued by the Communist authorities to expropriate Holocaust era private property, Jewish and non-Jewish owners alike.

“We urgently call upon Prime Minister Morawiecki and the Polish Government to address the issue of private property restitution in a just and timely manner,” said the Chair of Operations for the WJRO Gideon Taylor. “Both Jewish and non-Jewish claimants have waited decades for a measure of justice resulting from the confiscation or nationalization of their property during the Holocaust or by the Communist government.”

“The current proposal, if adopted, would further harm Polish Holocaust survivors who have already suffered so much,” Taylor added. “New, insurmountable legal conditions should not be imposed in 2021 that would make it impossible to recover property or receive just compensation.”

Additionally, the WJRO issued a letter to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who pledged that his country would not pay restitution to Holocaust survivors for German crimes committed against them on its territory during World War II.

“I can only say that as long as I am the prime minister, Poland will surely not pay for the German crimes. Not a zloty [PL currency], not a euro, not a dollar,” Morawiecki said on Friday.

The advancement of the bill heightened tensions with Israel on the issue, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warning that ties between the two strong allies could be harmed.

“No law will change history,” Lapid said. “The Polish law is immoral and will severely harm relations between the countries. Israel will stand as a bastion protecting the memory of the Holocaust and the dignity of Holocaust survivors and their property.”

“Poland, on whose ground millions of Jews were murdered, knows the right thing to do,” the foreign minister added.

The United States also spoke out against the bill.

“The decision of Poland’s s parliament yesterday was a step in the wrong direction. We urge Poland not to move this legislation forward,” the US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a tweet on Friday.
Poland-Israel ties have been strained since 2018, after Poland passed a law penalizing those arguing that Poland or the Polish people were in any way responsible for the Holocaust.

Poland was home to one of the world’s biggest Jewish communities until it was almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis during World War II. Jewish former property owners and their descendants have been campaigning for compensation since the fall of communism in 1989.

In 2015, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that there must be a deadline set, after which faulty administrative decisions on returning confiscated property can no longer be challenged. In March, a parliamentary committee proposed a bill to implement that ruling, with deadlines ranging from 10-30 years. Critics say that would put a time limit on requests for restitution.

The draft bill passed the Sejm on Thursday with 309 in favor and 120 abstained and must go to the Polish Senate for private approval.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said on Friday morning in a tweet that Lapid’s statement is “marked by bad will, and above all, a deep ignorance of the facts. The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Jablonski’s tweet.

“Poles, like Jews, were victims of terrible German crimes,” Jablonski tweeted. “The act passed in the Sejm [lower house of parliament] protects the victims of these crimes and their heirs against fraud and abuse. It is the implementation of the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal of 2015. As a result of wild re-privatization… many people were deprived of their possessions.”

Blocking the law would be an injustice in which Israel should not be a part, Jablonski added.

Lapid said that preserving the memory of the Holocaust and taking care of survivors, which includes property restitution, is an important part of Israel’s identity and the Foreign Ministry’s actions.

“This is a moral and historic responsibility that we proudly carry,” he stated.

Lapid added that he expects countries to act to return Jewish property that was confiscated during the Holocaust.

“The Polish law, which effectively prevents restitution of Jewish property or compensation in exchange for it, is a terrible injustice and shamefully harms the rights of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, which came from Jewish communities that lived in Poland for hundreds of years,” he stated.

Zachary Keyser, Lahav Harkov and Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.