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What Made David Friedman’s Confirmation So Contentious?
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of the Western
activity because he
policy world
was president of the
were convinced
American Friends of Bet
at the time that
El Yeshiva, and he has
“this will finally
questioned the wisdom
prove to the world
of the Oslo Accords.
how far Israel is
In the summer of
willing to go for
2005, I was in Israel, in
peace, even in the
the days of the unilat-
absence of a nego-
eral withdrawal from
David Friedman, President Donald Trump’s
tiating partner.”
Gaza. I watched and
newly confirmed ambassador to Israel,
Since then,
listened as the nation
during his Senate confirmation
Gaza has been
was engaged in a gut-
used as a launch-
wrenching and inter-
ing pad for thousands of Hamas rockets
nally divisive debate. I saw how Israeli
into Israel, necessitating several wars and
soldiers had been trained not to feel as
much loss of life on both the Palestinian
they forcibly removed Israeli settlers
and Israeli sides. In southern Israel, when
from their homes. One of those soldiers
an alarm siren is sounded, Israelis have
confided in me, “This is not what I
15 seconds to find shelter. By now, the
signed up for.”
rockets have a trajectory that can reach
I listened to the radio when one
anywhere in the state of Israel.
mother said, “Mr. Prime Minister, will
Israel’s morality during the two Gaza
you pack up my son’s room? I have not
been able to go into it since he was killed wars has been questioned in the court
of international public opinion, largely
in Lebanon. Will you uproot the tree in
because of Hamas’ sinister use of chil-
my yard that was planted in my son’s
dren and women as human shields,
memory?”
which inflates their civilian death count.
Jewish philanthropists funded the
In shaping America foreign policy,
greenhouses so that there would be an
most Americans would like to believe
economic infrastructure for the young,
that certain ethical qualities are in the
nascent Palestinian enterprise, and
mix, such as intellectual honesty and
many rabbis argued we should keep the
moral integrity. These qualities, whether
synagogues, to turn them into mosques,
because “after all, we all pray to the same part of an individual’s nature or those of
national policy, often necessitate some
God.”
difficult introspection.
As soon as the last vestige of a Jewish
Sometimes it even involves the pain-
presence was removed from Gaza and
ful admission that one has been wrong
the blue-and-white Israeli flag was low-
— even if one has been wrong for an
ered, the greenhouses and synagogues
extremely long time. It is human nature
were all destroyed in a frenzied atmo-
that the longer the time, the deeper the
sphere of hate-infested anarchy.
resistance to change.
Yet the government of Israel and most
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D
avid Friedman was confirmed
Thursday, March 23, by the U.S.
Senate as America’s ambassa-
dor to Israel. But that was only after a
highly contentious debate and, unfortu-
nately, only because there is a Republican
majority in the Senate.
The same was true
of Friedman’s prior
approval by the Senate
Foreign Relations
Committee. The com-
mittee’s minority
leader, Sen. Ben Cardin
(D-Md.), voted against
him, as did every single
Sarah N. Stern
Democrat on the com-
JNS.org
mittee. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.),
wrote March 6 that
Friedman “lacks the necessary tempera-
ment to serve in such a crucial position”
and that his “divisive rhetoric and dan-
gerous positions are contrary to long-
held policy and would undermine our
national security by inflaming tensions
in the region.”
In mid-February, five former U.S.
ambassadors to Israel — Thomas
Pickering, Edward Walker, James
Cunningham, William Harrop and Daniel
Kurtzer — wrote a letter to the Foreign
Relations Committee casting doubts
upon President Donald Trump’s nominee
for those exact same reasons.
What made Friedman’s nomination
so contentious? Among the reasons out-
lined by Sen. Feinstein is that he has sup-
ported recognizing Jerusalem as the cap-
ital of Israel and moving the American
embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
He has directly supported settlement
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Our foreign policy “experts” have clung
to certain misguided theories for genera-
tions now, such as “land for peace.” What
we have seen through decades of empiri-
cal and often heartbreaking experience is
that this formula simply hasn’t worked.
If the objective is “peace,” one must
honestly ask oneself if any of the politi-
cally gut-wrenching and internally divi-
sive land withdrawals from the Sinai,
Gaza, southern Lebanon and parts of
Judea and Samaria have actually brought
us any closer to that objective of peace.
Rather than challenge the premises
of this formulation, those in the State
Department’s echo chamber simply dug
their feet in further and rationalized
its failure. Each time, there is another
excuse. “Israel hasn’t given enough land”
or “Gaza was without a negotiating part-
ner.”
All of the State Department appa-
ratchiks who stubbornly clung to this
mantra were completely in favor of each
of these withdrawals. Then, when those
land withdrawals did not bring us closer
to the designated objective, the diplo-
mats came up with convenient, after-the-
fact rationalizations.
Any scientist with an ounce of intellec-
tual integrity would say we have reached
the null hypothesis, and that it is time to
re-examine the premises of the equation
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. David
Friedman, a fresh voice, is a step in the
right direction. •
Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of
the Endowment for Middle East Truth, which
describes itself as an unabashedly pro-American
and pro-Israel think tank and policy institute in
Washington, D.C.
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