Thomas Friedmanâ

The ugly truth: Israel is so Middle East now

I can never forget that one sentence from Thomas Friedman’s legendary book on the Middle East, “From Beirut to Jerusalem.” It was something like this: “Jews would like to wake up in Israel but would like to live next to Switzerland and Belgium.” After 20 years of Likud governments and small immigrant parties holding politics hostage, unfortunately Israel is now no different from any s