False premises

It's an irony of my life that while I wanted as much or more than anything to belong to some kind of larger institution that shared my values, I have instead become more of an intellectual lone wolf every decade. So it is what while I have for the last 12 years subscribed to the same newspapers that I did through the 1970s, I continually find myself taking issue both with their opinion pages and their reporting. Two noteworthy examples of this popped up during the last week.Last Tuesday, in the New York Times, the venerable Thomas Friedman told Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the victorious Democratic candidate for Senator in Michigan, how he should change his position on Israel and Palestine so as to win the election in the fall. Astonishingly enough, he recommended that the candidate adopt Friedman's own position in favor of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and endorsing "the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state." Criticizing Hamas, Friedman blames them for wrecking the…