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dor from the Times' bureau newsroom.
There are stacks and stacks of books, on
everything from the Middle East to
golf. A huge world map papers one
wall. There are push-pins in every city
that he's visited. The map is full of
holes. A Thomas Friedman New York
Times column hangs with the words
on the wall behind
"Jew Bull
him, offering him a reminder — if he
ever needed one — of who is out there.
"A lot of my more traditional Jewish
readers who are interested in the Middle
East tend to view my column as just
about Israel with the rest just filler, like
the Mobil ad. But I'm happy to report
that I have a whole body of readers who
are actually interested in Russia, China,
Brazil, the environment, global eco-
nomics, and I'm quite interested in
those issues myself"
Still, the man who wrote the award-
winning book From Beirut to Jerusalem,
which is considered by many experts as
the baseline of information on the Mid-
dle East, carries with him a question. Is
he a Jewish journalist? Or is he a jour-
nalist who happens to be Jewish?
"I really crossed that bridge a long
time ago when I went to Beirut in
1979," he said. "I've always said on that
question, 'I'm a reporter, a professional
reporter. And judge me on what I write.
I'm not bending forwards or sideways
or upside down because I'm Jewish.' If
there were some kind of weird pattern,
some kind of Jewish pattern to my
reporting, I think it'd be apparent after
20 years.
"Am I at times critical of Israel? Am I
at times critical of the Arabs? Yeah,
absolutely. The Arabs know that I'm an
equal opportunity employer, as it were,
when it comes to criticism."
Friedman did say that if there is an
advantage to being a Jew covering the
Middle East, it comes from an intuitive
feel of the emotions, passions and stakes
involved in the area. _
'After all of these years, I'm fairly
well known by the leaders in this part of
the world, and they know me as a Jew-
ish reporter with the New York Times,"
he said. "And they also know me as
someone who calls both balls and
strikes."
Hala Maksoud, president of the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, called Friedman's reporting
"balanced."
"I think he's very tedious, and it's not
balance as much as precision," she said.
"He's a very responsible person who
checks his sources and does his home-
work."
Ms. Maksoud said the fact that he is

a Jew doesn't play into her opinion in
any way.
"Beyond a certain point, a journalist
has integrity" she said. "I think he has a
great sense of humor. He's been able to
cross barriers."
How are the "balls and strikes" inter-
preted in the Jewish community? Fried-
man, his wife and two daughters are
active members of a Conservative syna-
gogue in suburban Maryland. His chil-
dren were born in Jerusalem. He is out
there for his community to touch, to
see.
"There's always a core of Jewish read-
ers who are going to begin letters to you
with, 'How can you as a Jew?' etc., etc.?
But there's also a huge body of people
who write me and say, 'Boy, I really
appreciate the way you called it.'
"There's another body of people who
say, 'I'm troubled by the way you called
it, why did you call it that way?' Then,
there's a tiny body of people who say,
want you dead.' So you know, that's
what you're going to get.
"I've been doing this for so long,
though, really since high school, that I
don't want to say I'm above it, but I'm
really in another place. My skin is so
thick on that score that there's nothing,
no question that you could ask me,
nothing you could say about me, that's
really going to bother me anymore. My
answer is, 'Read my reporting.'

Facing The Wrath Of Klein

That said, there is at least one issue over
the years that did play itself out on the
national Jewish stage. Friedman chose
not to use names even in this recent
interview. But there are those who
know Friedman who said the incident
still troubles him.
He spoke at a 1996 Anti-Defama-
tion League dinner in Los Angeles. But
at least one leader of a national Jewish
organization, the Zionist Organization
of America's Morton Klein, urged ADL
Executive Director Abraham Foxman
not to have Friedman as the keynote
speaker.
"Thomas Friedman has spent over
20 years of his life attacking all Israeli
governments," Klein told The Jewish
News recently. "He consistently places
the blame on Israel for the absence of
peace in the Middle East. If he was
speaking for Peace Now, I wouldn't have
said a word about it. But any major
Jewish organization who gives a keynote
speaker [position] to Tom Friedman
really gives a false impression that his
views are shared by American Jews. It
just enhances his stature."
Said Foxman: "This was not a happy
experience for me. But I would do it

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