Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel sparks debate
N E W YO R K — I f P r e s i - dent- elect Donald Trump wanted to show he planned to obliterate President Barack Obama’s approach to Israel, he might have found his man to deliver that message in David Friedman, his pick for U.S. ambassador.
The bankruptcy lawyer and son of an Orthodox rabbi is everything Obama is not: a fervent supporter of Israeli settlements, opponent of Palestinian statehood and unrelenting defender of Israel’s government. So far to the right is Friedman that many Israel supporters worry he could push Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be more extreme, scuttling prospects for peace with Palestinians in the process.
The heated debate over Friedman’s selection is playing out just as fresh tensions erupt between the U.S. and Israel.
In a stunning decision Friday, the Obama administration moved to allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal. The move to abstain, rather than veto, defified years of U.S. tradition of shielding Israel from such resolutions, and elicited condemnation from Israel, lawmakers of both parties, and especially Trump.
“Things will be difffffffffffferent after Jan. 20th,” when he’s sworn in, Trump vowed on Twitter.
Presidents of both parties have long called for a twostate solution that envisions eventual Palestinian statehood, and Netanyahu says he agrees. Friedman, who still must be confifirmed by the Senate, does not. He’s called the t wo-state solution a mere narrative” that must end.
Under Obama, the U.S. has worked closely with J Street, an Israel advocacy group sharply critical of Netanyahu. Friedman accuses Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism” and c alls J St reet “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jews who helped the Nazis imprison fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
Fo r d e c a d e s , t h e U. S . has opposed Israeli settlement- building in lands it seized in the 1967 Mideast war. Friedman runs a nonprofifit that raises millions of dollars for Beit El, a settlement of religious nationalists near Ramallah. Beit El runs a right-wing news outlet and a yeshiva whose dean has provocatively urged Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to uproot settlers from their homes.
So it’s unsurprising that Friedman’s nomination has already sharpened a growing balkanization of American Jews, between those who want the U.S. to push Israel toward peace and those who believe Obama’s approach abandoned America’s closest Mideast ally.
Educated at Columbia University and NYU School of Law, Friedman developed a reputation as an aggressive, high-stakes bankruptcy attorney, representing Trump when his Atlantic City casinos went through bankruptcy.
In the courtroom, he’s known as a formidable opponent.