How to be an envoy in Israel

Re “Trump’s envoy of discord in Israel,” July 9

Although I disagree with President Trump on almost everything else he does, I believe he’s got it right on diplomacy with Israel, thanks to Ambassador David Friedman.

This article parrots the Palestinian propaganda that Israel is expected to give up more of its sovereignty and land to appease the Palestinians’ demands.

There’s no mention of Hamas, and how it turned the peace gesture of Israel’s gift of a thriving Gaza Strip into a militant ghetto from which unprovoked war against Israel is waged. There’s no mention of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, a thinly veiled plan for a one-state solution that would destroy the country. There’s no mention of the rejections of peace by Palestinian leaders.

But most glaring of all is that there is no mention of the hatred of America and its best ally, Israel, by Palestinian leaders. It is this that justifies Friedman’s reality-check diplomacy. Alan Segal San Diego

Friedman should be recalled as ambassador for involving the United States in Israel’s ongoing theft of the Palestinian village of Silwan and other parts of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Friedman’s antics are many. One example was his participation in the ceremony acknowledging the archaeological dig under Silwan and his actual swinging of a sledgehammer to open a tunnel.

Such actions make the U.S. complicit in Israel’s attempt to push out the legal Palestinian residents, and they make it ever harder to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. That should not be the goal of the U.S. ambassador. Jeff Warner Los Angeles