New York Times columnist Tom Friedman blasts Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, West Bank Settlements and Donald Trump in a column Dec. 29 that has won wide pickup.

Thomas FriedmanFriedman

“Bibi Makes Trump His Chump” is the headline on the column that says the Israeli settlements in the West Bank make the “two-state solution impossible.”

“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” writes Friedman, “and right now Obama and Kerry rightly believe that Israel is driving drunk toward annexing the West Bank and becoming either a bi-national Arab-Jewish state or some Middle Eastern version of 1960s South Africa, which Israel has to systematically deprive large elements of it population of democratic rights to preserve the state’s Jewish character.”

Trump will “wake up and discover he was manipulated into become the co-father, with Netanhayu, of an Israel that is either no longer Jewish or no longer democratic,” says the column.

Another statement is that “Trump has no idea how much he is being manipulated into helping Iran and ISIS.”

The West Bank settlements put Israel “in permanent conflict with Palestinians and the Muslim world,” says Friedman.

He has been an NYT columnist since 1981.