Donald
Trump's Israel Ambassador is Hardline Pro-settler Lawyer
David Friedman opposes two-state solution, backs
undivided Jerusalem as capital
By Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem and Julian Borger in
Washington
December 16, 2016
"Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Guardian"
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Donald Trump
has named as his ambassador to Israel a pro-settler
lawyer who has described some US Jews as worse than
concentration camp prisoner-guards.
David Friedman,
a bankruptcy lawyer who represented the president-elect
over his failing hotels in Atlantic City, served
Trump’s advisory team on the Middle East. He has set out
a number of hardline positions on Israeli-Palestinian
relations, including fervent opposition to the two-state
solution and strong support for an undivided Jerusalem
as Israel’s capital.
He has called
President Barack Obama an antisemite and suggested
that US Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank are worse than kapos, Nazi-era
prisoners who served as concentration camp guards.
Liberal Jewish
groups in the US denounced the appointment as “reckless”
and described Friedman – a man with no experience of
foreign service – as the “least experienced pick” ever
for a US ambassador to
Israel.
Yossi Dagan, a
prominent Israeli settler leader and friend of Friedman,
welcomed the news, describing him as “a true friend
and partner of the state of Israel and the settlements”.
Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization
of America, said Friedman had “the potential to be the
greatest US ambassador to Israel ever”.
An indication
of how Friedman views Israel came in
a 16-point action plan he issued with another Trump
adviser in November. It included “ensur[ing] that Israel
receives maximum military, strategic and tactical
cooperation from the United States” and a declaration of
war on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
movement and pro-Palestinian campus activism.
Friedman, 57,
has worked with Trump for more than 15 years and advised
the president-elect on the Middle East during his
election campaign. He represented Trump after the
umbrella company for his three Atlantic City casinos,
Trump Entertainment Resorts, went into bankruptcy in
2009.
He said he was
looking forward to taking up his post in “the US embassy
in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem”, indicating
Trump’s determination to overturn years of US policy and
move the embassy from Tel Aviv. The change would be a
potentially explosive gesture in the Middle East, as the
status of Jerusalem is one of the issues in the
long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Also
controversial is Friedman’s presidency of the American
Friends of Bet El Institutions, an organisation that
supports a large illegal West Bank settlement just
outside Ramallah.
His links with
Bet El, along with recent revelations that the family
charity of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, gave money
to one of the West Bank’s most hard-line ideological
settlements, suggests the settler movement will have an
unprecedented number of advocates in the heart of
Washington.
Announcing the
appointment in a statement, Trump said: “[Friedman] has
been a long-time friend and trusted adviser to me. His
strong relationships in Israel will form the foundation
of his diplomatic mission and be a tremendous asset to
our country as we strengthen the ties with our allies
and strive for peace in the Middle East.”
The
announcement appears to have caught Israeli analysts by
surprise. The Haaretz columnist Chemi Shalev said
Friedman made Israel’s rightwing prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, “seem like a leftwing defeatist”.
“From where
Friedman stands,” he said, “most Israelis, never mind
most American Jews, are more or less traitors.”
Friedman
disagrees with the general international consensus that
the settlements are illegal and he opposes a ban on
settlement construction on the West Bank and in East
Jerusalem.
He wrote in the
Jerusalem Post during the US election campaign that
Israel would feel “no pressure” under a
Trump administration. “America and Israel will enjoy
unprecedented military and strategic cooperation, and
there will be no daylight between the two countries,” he
said.
In a column for
the Israel National News website, he compared the
liberal Jewish US lobby group J Street to concentration
camp prisoner-guards and described its supporters as
“smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from
the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard
to imagine anyone worse”.
He went further
at the Saban forum earlier this month, saying J Street’s
supporters were “not Jewish, and they’re not
pro-Israel”.
The J Street
president, Jeremy Ben Ami, said in a statement on
Thursday: “J Street is vehemently opposed to the
nomination of David Friedman. This nomination is
reckless, putting America’s reputation in the region and
credibility around the world at risk.”
The National
Jewish Democratic Council tweeted: “Trump must stand for
a strong US-Israel relationship and take it seriously.
[There] hasn’t ever been a less experienced pick for US
ambassador to Israel.”
Lara Friedman,
of Americans for Peace Now, tweeted: “I don’t know about
the Palestinians, but I know Jews who truly care about
Israel’s security, democracy & place in the world are
outraged.”
Like Trump,
Friedman is an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and has
portrayed the Russian president as fighting Islamic
State in Syria despite little of the Russian war effort
being focused on Isis.
“Vladimir Putin
gets it,” Friedman wrote in November last year. “He may
be a ‘thug,’ as he was recently described by Senator
[Marco] Rubio, but he knows how to identify a national
objective, execute a military plan, and ultimately
prevail.”
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