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Views on Choice for Israel Envoy: From ‘True Partner’ to ‘Totally Unqualified’ Pick for Ambassador to Israel Has Close Ties to Trump
(about 9 hours later)
The hard-right views of David M. Friedman have drawn polarized responses in the aftermath of his selection by President-elect Donald J. Trump as the next United States ambassador to Israel. JERUSALEM — He is president of the American fund-raising arm for a yeshiva in a settlement deep in the West Bank headed by a militant rabbi who has called for Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlers.
Mr. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has represented Mr. Trump in matters involving Atlantic City casinos, has no diplomatic experience. He has long espoused hard-right, pro-Israel views that are often at odds with decades of United States policy toward the region. He writes a column for a right-wing Israeli news site in which he has accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism,” dismissed the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, likened a liberal American-Jewish group to “kapos” who cooperated with the Nazis, and said American Jewish leaders “failed” Israel on the Iran nuclear deal.
He doubts the need for a two-state solution; endorses continued settlements in Palestinian territory and even the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank; has accused the Obama administration of anti-Semitism; and once likened left-leaning Jewish critics to Nazi collaborators. He also supports United Hatzalah, an Israeli emergency medical services group that prides itself on integrating Arab and Druze volunteers; helped build a $42 million village for disabled children — Bedouin and Jewish — in the Negev Desert; and is known as an affable host of large holiday meals at the penthouse apartment he owns in a well-heeled Jerusalem neighborhood.
In a column, he called supporters of J Street — a liberal American Jewish organization that supports a negotiated two-state solution — “far worse than kapos — Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps.” Now, David M. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island, is Donald J. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, despite his lack of diplomatic experience and frequent statements that flout decades of bipartisan American policy.
He wrote: “The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas — it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.” “Bankruptcy law and involvement with settlements are not normally seen as an appropriate qualifications for the job,” one of its former occupants, Martin S. Indyk, said on Friday. “But then these are not normal times.”
J Street announced its firm opposition on Friday morning to Mr. Friedman. Mr. Friedman, 58, has done legal work for Mr. Trump since at least 2001, when he handled negotiations with bondholders on Mr. Trump’s struggling casinos in Atlantic City. Mr. Friedman represented Mr. Trump’s personal interests in the bankruptcies of the casinos in 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Mr. Friedman, the organization noted on Twitter, had “called Obama an anti-Semite”; “backs unlimited settlement expansion”; and “says liberal Zionists ‘worse than kapos.’” Benjamin Silverstein, the organization’s digital director, vowed to work to block Mr. Friedman’s appointment, which requires confirmation by the Senate. Their relationship was cemented in 2005, friends said, when Mr. Trump traveled three hours in a snowstorm to pay a condolence call on Mr. Friedman after the death of his father, a prominent Long Island rabbi.
The left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in an editorial, called Mr. Friedman “an extreme right-winger,” adding, “He makes Benjamin Netanyahu seem like a left-wing defeatist.” “He was very taken by Trump spending almost all day just to pay the shiva,” said Yossi Kahana, one of the two friends who described the visit, using the Hebrew term for the week of mourning. “Barely any people came, and here is Trump, coming and sitting with him and talking about things that are important to both of them, their values, their fathers and their legacies.”
Mr. Friedman, in a statement on Thursday, said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.” Mr. Friedman did not respond to an interview request made to his office.
For decades, the United States Embassy in Israel has been in Tel Aviv. That is largely because the American position has been that the status of Jerusalem must be determined as part of a broader peace deal, and that having an embassy there could seem like taking sides in the fraught argument over who has the right to control the ancient city. Mr. Trump has promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem, but so did several of his predecessors. A person close to the Trump transition who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the ambassadorship had been negotiated directly between the two men over many months. Mr. Friedman, who donated a total of $50,000 to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in 2016, according to federal election records, had been openly saying even before the election that the job — one of the most sensitive and high profile in the diplomatic corps — would be his, according to friends.
A senior Palestinian cleric, Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, warned against Mr. Friedman’s support for moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem. Israel’s conservative settlement supporters and their American backers rejoiced at the selection, while believers in a Palestinian state and the American-brokered peace process were perplexed and close to despair. Mr. Friedman is a staunch opponent of basic tenets of Washington’s longstanding approach to much of the ambassadorial portfolio.
“If this happens,” Sheikh Sabri, a former mufti of Jerusalem, said during a Friday sermon at Al Aqsa Mosque in the city, “the U.S. is declaring a new war on the Palestinians and all Muslim Arabs.” He refers to the West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, something hard to imagine his predecessors doing publicly. Upon being nominated Thursday night, he said he looked forward to working “from the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem,” rather than Tel Aviv, where the American Embassy has been for decades, under the State Department’s insistence that the holy city’s status be determined as part of a broader deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely of Israel called the appointment “very welcome news for Israel,” adding, “His positions reflect the desire to strengthen the standing of Israel’s capital Jerusalem at this time and to underscore that the settlements have never been the true problem in the area.” The State Department has not allowed its ambassadors to set foot in West Bank settlements. Tax forms list Mr. Friedman as president of the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, which has raised about $2 million a year in recent years. He is also described as president of Bet El Institutions, which supports, among other things, the news site for which Mr. Friedman wrote columns, IsraelNationalNews.com, known as Arutz 7.
Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, congratulated Mr. Friedman. Yossi Dagan, the head of a regional council of settlers in the West Bank, called Mr. Friedman “a friend and a true partner of Israel and the settlements.” Beit El, as the settlement is more usually spelled, was founded in 1977 and is now home to about 7,000 religious residents. It was a hotbed of controversy in 2012 when the Israeli authorities followed a court order to evacuate 30 families from five buildings built illegally on private Palestinian land.
In the United States, the Republican Jewish Coalition said it hoped Mr. Friedman would “repair relations with our greatest ally in the Middle East that have eroded over the last eight years,” while former Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Mr. Friedman would help “build a much closer and stronger” relationship between the United States and Israel. According to an investigation by The Seventh Eye, an Israeli magazine, the contested neighborhood was built by a company linked to the one registered in the Marshall Islands that controls Arutz 7.
For the Palestinian leadership, the choice of someone with views at odds with the broad American approach to Israel over decades poses a grave challenge. The office of President Mahmoud Abbas has not yet commented on the appointment. Baruch Gordon, the director of development for Bet El Institutions, told Arutz 7 on Friday that it was “proud to be closely associated with Mr. Friedman,” calling him “a pioneer philanthropist and builder of Jewish institutions and housing projects in Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the ‘West Bank’) and throughout the country.”
Other observers, including a number of prominent American Jews, expressed dismay at the choice. Mr. Friedman, whose middle name is Melech — Hebrew for king — grew up in North Woodmere, N.Y., one of four children of Rabbi Morris S. Friedman, who held the pulpit at Temple Hillel there for 46 years. In October 1984, President Ronald Reagan visited the synagogue and went to the Friedman family home for lunch, perhaps an early political influence on the ambassador-desginate.
Martin S. Indyk, executive vice president of the Brookings Institution and a former ambassador to Israel, said that Mr. Friedman would be “a great ambassador for the deep settler state,” referring to right-wing Israelis who want to expand their presence in the Palestinian territories. “But David Friedman needs to be U.S. envoy to all Israelis,” Mr. Indyk wrote on Twitter. “Is he up for that?” He graduated from New York University School of Law in 1981, and has worked since 1994 at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman L.L.P., where he is a partner.
Daniel C. Kurtzer, a retired career diplomat and Princeton professor who was ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, under President George W. Bush, said in an interview that the appointment alarmed him. The firm represented Mr. Trump in his unsuccessful libel lawsuit against a former New York Times reporter, Timothy L. O’Brien, and its founding partner, Marc E. Kasowitz, twice this year threatened to sue The Times in relation to articles it was preparing regarding Mr. Trump’s treatment of women and income tax returns.
“Mr. Friedman’s published articles and public statements will create significant damage for American interests and for the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace,” Mr. Kurtzer said. “He has made clear that he will appeal to a small minority of Israeli — and American — extremists, ignoring the majority of Israelis who continue to seek peace. Friedman’s appointment as ambassador runs directly contrary to Mr. Trump’s professed desire to make the ‘ultimate deal’ between Israelis and Palestinians.” Mr. Friedman’s connections to Israel date back to his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall. Friends describe him as a strong Zionist who spends many Jewish holidays and most of his summers in his Jerusalem apartment. He and his wife are renowned for gathering people for dinners in their sukkah, a hut observant Jews build on their balconies during a fall harvest festival.
Peter Beinart, an author and journalist who has written extensively about Israel, called Mr. Friedman “totally unqualified,” likening his selection to that of Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has been tapped by Mr. Trump to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “His whole life, he’s been focused and extremely thoughtful about Israel and about the political situation there,” said Philip Rosen, whose friendship with Mr. Friedman began in law school.
Anon Geva, the founder of an Israeli winery in which Mr. Friedman’s son’s company invested, said Mr. Freidman had invited everyone connected with the winery — about 30 people — for dinner one year in the sukkah. Mr. Geva recalled Mr. Friedman saying that he decided to buy a home in Jerusalem on the day in 2002 that a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at Café Moment, a popular bar in the city, killing 11 Israelis.
Mr. Kahana, who directs a task force on disabilities for the Jewish National Fund, said Mr. Friedman and some friends raised and donated several hundred thousand dollars to help build Aleh Negev, the village for disabled people, a joint project of the fund and the Israeli government.
“He visited, and I must say, he was very concerned that this village is not only for Jewish kids, that it is also for Bedouin kids,” Mr. Kahana said. He called Mr. Friedman “very generous, very caring for needy people and especially people with disabilities.”
Mr. Rosen, who was co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 and Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 bid, said Mr. Friedman had developed a strong rapport with Mr. Trump that would allow him to be effective as his envoy. “They’ve worked together closely for a very long time, and he knows what Donald is thinking, and what Donald wants to accomplish,” Mr. Rosen said.
Many of Mr. Friedman’s views are far to the right of the stated positions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has endorsed the principle of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Mr. Netanyahu did not respond to Mr. Friedman’s selection, nor did Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
But the deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, who hails from the right flank of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, rushed to praise it, saying, “His positions reflect the desire to strengthen the standing of Israel’s capital Jerusalem at this time and to underscore that the settlements have never been the true problem in the area.”
A senior Palestinian cleric, Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, said during Friday Prayers that if Mr. Friedman managed to move the embassy to Jerusalem, “the U.S. is declaring a new war on the Palestinians and all Muslim Arabs.”
Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told reporters in the West Bank on Friday that Mr. Trump’s appointments were “his business,” but that it was “not up to Trump or anybody else” to take steps like moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served President George W. Bush as ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005, was alarmed by the appointment.
“He has made clear that he will appeal to a small minority of Israeli — and American — extremists, ignoring the majority of Israelis who continue to seek peace,” Mr. Kurtzer, now a professor at Princeton, said in an interview. “Friedman’s appointment as ambassador runs directly contrary to Mr. Trump’s professed desire to make the ‘ultimate deal’ between Israelis and Palestinians.”