Thomas Friedman’s Misguided Equivalence Between ICE and Hamas Obscures Israel’s Occupation

By: Said Arikat

Thomas Friedman’s recent column, “Minneapolis and Gaza Now Share the Same Violent Language,” attempts to draw a moral and operational equivalence between American domestic policing under ICE and the violence witnessed in Gaza. On the surface, his argument might seem provocative: masks, gunfire, chaos, and political opportunism. Yet a closer reading reveals a familiar pattern in Friedman’s work—a selective framing that downplays Israel’s systematic occupation while subtly conflating Palestinian resistance with lawlessness. In attempting to critique U.S. domestic enforcement, Friedman inadvertently reinforces the very narratives that normalize Israel’s decades-long military domination.

Friedman’s comparison rests heavily on optics. He notes that ICE officers, like Hamas fighters, wear masks, suggesting a hidden intent or fear of accountability. He argues that photographs of the two could be indistinguishable. This observation, however, collapses a vast power asymmetry into a superficial visual parallel. ICE officers operate as agents of a state with judicial oversight, paid salaries, and a political mandate; Hamas fighters operate as militants resisting an occupying power with a centuries-long history of displacement and disenfranchisement. By suggesting that a visual resemblance implies equivalence in behavior or culpability, Friedman sidesteps the structural realities of occupation. The Israeli military, whose conduct he treats as exceptional yet morally constrained, routinely engages in actions—airstrikes, targeted assassinations, checkpoints, collective punishment—that far exceed ICE’s domestic reach and consequences.

Friedman’s critique of ICE is in part valid. The videos he cites—of Renee Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti being shot or endangered—demonstrate the hazards of aggressive enforcement and militarized policing. Yet he frames these incidents as part of a moral symmetry with Gaza’s suffering, implying that American citizens are subject to the same patterns of state violence as Palestinians under occupation. This is misleading. In Gaza, Israel’s occupation is constant, pervasive, and designed to control not just movement but resources, governance, and survival. Palestinians live under checkpoints, airstrikes, siege, and a military judiciary that functions outside ordinary civilian law. The trauma and structural violence are not momentary episodes of overreach but a sustained system of control—one that Friedman, despite his extensive Middle East reporting, rarely confronts directly in his work.

Friedman also frames Netanyahu’s electoral calculations as morally equivalent to Trump’s ambitions in Minneapolis, suggesting that both leaders exploit violence for political gain. While it is certainly true that political expediency shapes decision-making everywhere, his framing minimizes the fact that Israel’s policies are embedded in occupation. Netanyahu’s calculations are not about mere electoral optics—they are about maintaining an internationally contested military occupation, displacing populations, and enforcing a systemic hierarchy of citizenship. To equate this with domestic U.S. politics, where ICE actions occur within the framework of a legal system with avenues for accountability, is to obscure the magnitude of Israeli state violence.

Equally troubling is Friedman’s treatment of Palestinian casualties. He expresses sympathy for the journalists killed in Gaza but presents their deaths primarily as collateral damage in a narrative about Israel’s “fire, ready, aim” culture. He fails to interrogate the legal and moral frameworks that govern an occupying army’s responsibilities under international law. By highlighting these deaths as errors or lapses rather than as the predictable outcome of an ongoing siege and occupation, Friedman perpetuates the normalization of Israeli military impunity. The pattern is consistent with his longstanding stance: unwavering support for Israel, coupled with a selective acknowledgment of harm when it cannot be ignored.

Ironically, Friedman’s column indirectly supports the very analogy he seems hesitant to make: ICE officers do, in fact, emulate Israeli occupation practices. Militarized raids, coordinated assaults on civilian areas, targeting of individuals based on perceived threat, and a culture of anonymity—all mirror techniques used by the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank. Yet Friedman quickly draws back from this implication, reframing it as a superficial resemblance rather than a critique of systemic influence. His reluctance to fully confront this reality reflects a broader reluctance in his work to challenge Israel’s strategic and moral policies, even when parallels are unmistakable.

Friedman’s column further underplays the human agency and resistance of Palestinians. Hamas is presented largely as an obstacle to peace or a political nuisance, rather than as a movement emerging under conditions of occupation, siege, and systemic disenfranchisement. By emphasizing the group’s electoral or military calculations, Friedman ignores the context that produces these choices. He paints Palestinian actions as morally flawed, while glossing over Israel’s structural role in creating and sustaining the conditions for conflict. In doing so, he mirrors a common journalistic bias: attributing violence primarily to the oppressed while treating the oppressor’s decisions as strategic necessity or electoral politics.

Finally, Friedman’s repeated invocation of electoral politics—Trump, Netanyahu, Hamas—is reductive. It suggests a symmetry of choice that obscures power disparities. Palestinian leadership does not wield a state apparatus comparable to Israel’s. ICE officers, despite abuses, operate under a domestic legal framework with comparatively limited lethality. By failing to account for these differences, Friedman’s moral equivalence risks flattening the lived realities of those under occupation, presenting them as morally ambiguous actors rather than victims of a structured system of oppression.

In sum, Thomas Friedman’s attempt to link Minneapolis policing with violence in Gaza is a superficial, misleading equivalence that obscures the reality of Israeli occupation. His visual analogies and focus on individual incidents distract from systemic power imbalances, leaving readers with an impression of symmetry that does not exist. If anything, Friedman inadvertently confirms that American enforcement agencies have imported occupation-style practices, yet he cannot—or will not—fully acknowledge the ethical and political implications. The column thus reflects a long-standing pattern: a reluctance to critically confront Israel’s military actions and occupation, even while drawing attention to abuses elsewhere. ICE may mirror some tactics of the Israeli military, but the moral and structural context is crucial—and Friedman’s framing obscures it entirely.