Tag: Israel

By Nathan Guttman / Forward
December 16, 2016

“Everything an ambassador says and does has an impact on policy. The president hasn’t been sworn in yet, the Secretary of State hasn’t spoken about this, and he’s already talking about the policy he is going to change. This is unheard of.”
—Daniel Kurtzer, Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel

President-Elect Donald Trump’s decision to appoint David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel is brewing into a Jewish battle royale for supporters and detractors of the two-state solution.

For the Jewish left, Friedman appointment has quickly emerged as a banner for rallying troops already concerned with the impact the Trump presidency will have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the right, Trump’s choice of a pro-settlement bankruptcy lawyer as chief envoy to Israel is seen as ushering in a new era of settlement expansion and changing the fundamentals of American policy toward the conflict. Continue reading “Jewish Storm Builds Over Friedman’s Appointment as Ambassador”

Following the appointment of a settlement-loving envoy, the pretense is over: the United States will no longer be able to claim that it is an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By Gideon Levy / Haaretz
December 18, 2016

This means the United States will no longer be able to claim that it is an honest broker. It never was one, but now the mask is off. In those terms, Friedman’s appointment is right and good. The Palestinians, Europeans and the rest of the world should know: America is for the occupation. No more pretense.

President-elect Donald Trump has decided to appoint an anti-Israeli and racist lawyer as ambassador to Israel. That is, of course, his prerogative. With David Friedman’s appointment last Thursday, the United States has finally come out of the closet. From now on, it officially supports the establishment of an Israeli apartheid state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Friedman is not the first Jewish ambassador to Israel — a matter that has always sparked questions of dual loyalty — but he is the first declared friend of the settlements in this position. His predecessor, Dan Shapiro, was also a friend of the settlements, like all the ambassadors before him — representatives of governments that could have stopped the settlement project but did not raise a finger to do so, and even financed it.

But now we have an ambassador who has also contributed to the dispossession from his own pocket. Continue reading “The U.S. Is Finally Out of the Closet”

If the settlers had a state of their own in the West Bank, he might be suitable to serve as ambassador there.

By Haaretz Editorial Board
December 18, 2016

If the settlers had a state of their own in the West Bank, he might be suitable to serve as ambassador there, and maybe not even that, because his basic identification must be with overall American interests. He must also understand the security and diplomatic interests of Israel in general, not just the settler tail that wags the dog.

Donald Trump’s transition team announced Thursday that the president-elect intends to appoint his close associate David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a lawyer specializing in bankruptcy cases, was one of Trump’s key campaign advisers.

More than anything, Friedman is an extreme right-winger and an avid supporter of the settlements and annexation to Israel of West Bank territories. He called members of the moderate organization J Street, whose positions many Israelis support, “worse than kapos [privileged prisoners in Nazi concentration camps],” an expression that could incite violence against them. His worldview is simplistic and befits a propagandist and a preacher, not a diplomat. Continue reading “Trump’s Envoy Should Be Persona Non Grata”

By Isabel Kershner and Sheryl Gay Stolberg / The New York Times
December 16, 2016

“He has made clear that he will appeal to a small minority of Israeli — and American — extremists, ignoring the majority of Israelis who continue to seek peace. Friedman’s appointment as ambassador runs directly contrary to Mr. Trump’s professed desire to make the ‘ultimate deal’ between Israelis and Palestinians.”

He is president of the American fund-raising arm for a yeshiva in a settlement deep in the West Bank headed by a militant rabbi who has called for Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlers.

He writes a column for a right-wing Israeli news site in which he has accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism,” dismissed the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, likened a liberal American-Jewish group to “kapos” who cooperated with the Nazis, and said American Jewish leaders “failed” Israel on the Iran nuclear deal.

Now, David M. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island, is Donald J. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, despite his lack of diplomatic experience and frequent statements that flout decades of bipartisan American policy. Continue reading “Friedman Is Hostile to Two-State Solution”