Neither a career diplomat, nor a beltway insider, nor an important donor, David Friedman was chosen to be ambassador to Israel after having been Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Friedman played a key role in moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and then in brokering the Abraham Accords. Reviewing Friedman’s memoir of his four-year diplomatic career, Seth Mandel writes:
Though Friedman’s knowledge of the region and its history matches or exceeds that of his predecessors, he was dismissed as “unqualified” because he did not go through the requisite brain-deadening reeducation by international-relations professors, whose Arabist affectations were frozen in amber sometime in the 1950s. Nor did Friedman spend his professional years in Foggy Bottom, absorbing groupthink and developing the approved posture of aggressive ignorance. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish attorney from Long Island, . . . was not looking to ingratiate himself with what Harry Truman called “the striped-pants boys.” Past ambassadors saw him as a threat and came out against Friedman’s nomination. Democratic senators and congressmen disgraced themselves by questioning Friedman’s loyalty. And then Friedman did the very thing that his critics were terrified he might do: he succeeded.
Even when Friedman would convince the president to take a specific course of action, other advisers would try to tap on the brakes. A key goal of Friedman’s was to fulfill U.S. law and move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s actual capital, Jerusalem. There was plenty of internal resistance to this move, despite it being a common promise for presidential candidates to make. The only argument against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital was a manufactured fear of Palestinian violence. . . .
Democratic members of Congress and their stenographers in the press warned of an explosion of violence if the president followed through. But follow through he did, and the threats of violence proved empty. American policy on Jerusalem had been hostage to phantoms.
Read more at Washington Examiner
More about: Abraham Accords, Donald Trump, Jerusalem, State Department, US-Israel relations