Friedman: News drumsticks for your Thanksgiving feast

Thanksgiving is a time for dinner-table conversation. If you’re short of news drumsticks to chew on, here are a few you may have missed.

For starters, it’s true the world would be safer if we got a deal that curbs Iran’s nuclear program. But if the Iranians and their Arab neighbors don’t protect and preserve their environments, Mother Nature is going to finish them all off long before they get to each other. Read Chandran Nair’s essay in The International New York Times on Nov. 10 from Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city: “The major artery that ran through the city was the Zayanderud River, a thoroughfare that nourished some of the earliest civilizations in recorded history and sustained the people of Isfahan down through modern times. But for two years the river has been bone dry. It’s not that its banks have receded; they simply aren’t there anymore. In their place is a desertified riverbed. … Wells have dried up and ecosystems have been destroyed.”

The crisis was produced by a prolonged on-again, off-again drought, dating to 1999, and populist, undisciplined water subsidies by the ayatollahs, trying to win support from industry, farmers and the poor. The doubling of Iran’s population in the last 40 years compounded the problem. But Iran’s rulers are afraid to cut back now for fear of triggering populist anger. Iran will soon need a lot of nuclear power - to desalinate water.

Speaking of population, it was a hot topic at the World Parks Congress in Sydney last week - the U.N.’s startling new population data. According to a Sept. 18 article in Science magazine, “Analysis of these data reveals that, contrary to previous literature, the world population is unlikely to stop growing this century. There is an 80 percent probability that world population, now 7.2 billion people, will increase to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion in 2100. … Much of the increase is expected to happen in Africa, in part due to higher fertility rates and a recent slowdown in the pace of fertility decline.”

We just added a couple billion more people to the planet this century! If the ecosystems and forests that provide us with clean water and clean air are stressed with 7.2 billion people here, what happens at 12.3 billion? Pass me some wine with that drumstick.

You may have missed this one, too: The Times of Israel reported on Oct. 24 that Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, decried “what he sees as an epidemic of anti-Arab racism,” telling a group of Israeli academics, “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease.”

Actually, Rivlin’s speaking out is a sign of health. So was an essay by Shabtai Shavit, the former chief of the Mossad, in the newspaper Haaretz on Monday, saying: “I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project. I am concerned about the critical mass of the threats against us on the one hand, and the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other. … I am concerned that for the first time, I am seeing haughtiness and arrogance, together with more than a bit of the messianic thinking that rushes to turn the conflict into a holy war. … This right wing, in its blindness and stupidity, is pushing the nation of Israel into the dishonorable position of ‘the nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations’ (Numbers 23:9).” Shavit said Israel should launch a peace effort, based on the Arab peace initiative, which calls for full peace for full withdrawal.

The same day, Ori Nir, who covered the Palestinians for Haaretz, wrote his own brutally honest essay, which said: “The Palestinians don’t have a national figure with Rivlin’s integrity. I wish they did, because their society, too, is very sick, indeed, and could use Rivlinesque self-criticism.”

One only needs to read the praise that Hamas, the Jordanian Parliament and Arab commentators heaped on the two Palestinians who murdered four Jews at prayer in a West Jerusalem synagogue to know just how sick their society is, and one only needs to study the continuing flow of young Muslim men to the Islamic State, or listen to the hate-mongering of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who declared Israel guilty of “barbarism that surpasses Hitler” – to know this whole region needs a shrink.

Nir put it well: “Without leaders who inspire hope for a future of peace, young Israelis and Palestinians have lost the ability to dream, to envision a different reality. … I know that even if the occupation ended tomorrow, healing will take many years. But healing will only be possible once the two societies separate, so they can mind their own illnesses. We must let the healing begin.”

Finally, Ferguson, Missouri, reminds us of our own wounds of mistrust we need to heal. The controversial verdict was announced the same day President Barack Obama awarded this year’s Presidential Medals of Freedom, which also reminded us that we’ve been a work in progress in repairing our racial divide. Among those honored were the three civil rights workers killed in the Freedom Summer of 1964. Another was Charlie Sifford, a black golfer who helped desegregate the PGA Tour and pave the way for Tiger Woods. And another was Stevie Wonder, who, as Obama put it, “channeled his inner visions into messages of hope and healing.”

That should be plenty to talk about.

Thomas Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times.