With Congress back in session, Jewish organizations on the left and the right are gearing up to mobilize support or opposition in the Senate to David Friedman, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee as ambassador to Israel.
With a Republican majority in the upper chamber, it is likely that Friedman, Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and personal friend, will receive the 51 votes to confirm him.
Still, Jewish groups are issuing press releases, launching petitions and contacting senators to go on the record about their positions.
Friedman, 57, differs significantly from past U.S. ambassadors to Israel in that he has no diplomatic experience and does not support the longstanding U.S. position of the two-state solution as the best way to resolve Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.
Friedman, of New York, also has ties to Israel’s settlement movement. A Hebrew speaker, he was a commentator for Arutz Sheva, a media network affiliated with the movement. He was president of American Friends of Beit El Institutions, which supports the Beit El settlement near Ramallah. Friedman has said Israeli settlements in the West Bank are legal, another departure from traditional U.S. foreign policy.
Liberal groups gear up to fight
While Friedman is likely to be confirmed, left-wing pro-Israel groups such as J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu and the New Israel Fund are banding together to try to defeat the nomination by sending out a petition to their members, urging them to contact their senators with their concerns about Friedman.
The joint petition has been on the website of several liberal Jewish organizations for a couple weeks, including Washington-based Americans for Peace Now. Ori Nir, a spokesman for APN, said this is the first time the organization has petitioned against the nomination of a U.S. ambassador to Israel.
“Unlike other ambassadors and many other people who have run for office, he has a very long paper trail, and that paper trail has a very long trail of things he’s written for Arutz Sheva,” he said.
APN cannot lobby due to its nonpolitical status as a 501c3, but Nir thinks this is a fight worth fighting since it involves the American Jewish community as a whole.
“One of our main roles in this is to contact players in the Jewish community and try to put pressure on them to join our efforts,” he said. “We think it’s really important that the Jewish communitiy joins in this and takes sides.”
Daniel Sokatch, who heads the New Israel Fund which advocates for civil rights in Israel, said his organization has never petitioned against an Israeli ambassador nominee before. But Friedman holds views directly in opposition to the organization’s values of tolerance and mutual respect.
“Here’s a person with no diplomatic experience, who’s been put in a position to be the ambassador to one of our most important allies and who holds extreme views,” he said. “It’s like throwing a lighted match into a tinder box.”
Sokatch said his group’s opposition to Friedman is a warning that it will continue to be vocal after Trump’s inauguration.
“Regardless of the outcome in the Senate we think it’s very important to say that we don’t roll over every time the incoming administration does something bad for Israel’s neighbors and itself,” he said.
Far right offers support
One of Friedman’s biggest backers in the Jewish community is Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, which, like Friedman, is aligned with Israel’s settlement movement. Klein wrote in a statement that “no previous ambassador appreciates the political, historic, legal, and religious rights of the Jews to Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem like David. Yet he respects and understands the beliefs and hopes and dreams of the political left in Israel and America.”
In an interview, Klein said he has known Friedman for six months and the two have spoken “dozens of times.” He thinks Friedman is “very smart” and has a “thorough understanding of the war against Israel’s existence.”
Klein said he has called a number of senators in the last week, both Democrats and Republicans, urging them to confirm Friedman.
The National Council of Young Israel sent a statement to its members urging them contact their senators and representatives in support of Friedman’s nomination.
“Although only the Senate is constitutionally tasked with confirming ambassadorial nominees, we seek bi-partisan statements of support from elected leaders of both the House and the Senate,” it said.
Many are undecided for now
Sokatch said has had conversations with center-right Jews who are opposed to Friedman’s nomination, but will not say so publicly out of fear they will be lumped in with the rest of Friedman’s opponents.
AIPAC, a bipartisan pro-Israel organization that is hawkish but supports the two-state solution, did not take a position on Friedman.
Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, told Politico after Trump’s announcement that he understood the rationale behind the nomination.
“For those in the Jewish community who voted for Donald Trump — and largely did so because they wanted a change of direction, not to mention tone, in the U.S. – Israel relationship from the contentious one of the Obama years — Mr. Trump’s nomination of David Friedman is a step precisely toward that change of direction,” he said.
Diament would not comment further and for now is not taking a position on Friedman.
For there to be a chance of defeating Friedman’s nomination, all Democratic senators would need to vote against him. The Senate’s new minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), has not taken a position on Friedman. Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin’s office released a statement last week expressing cautious optimism over Friedman, but not taking a position.
“America’s ambassador to Israel is a critical lynchpin in the enduring U.S.-Israeli relationship,” according to the statement.
“Senator Cardin looks forward to meeting Mr. Friedman to learn more about his views on the full range of issues central to our bilateral relationship, in advance of his confirmation hearing.”
Those who love Israel are ecstatic over the nomination. Those who hate Israel but pretend the contrary are in anguish. C’est la vie.
I find it ironic that J Street and similar groups can back the inept efforts of Kerry and Obama, yet condemn an untested Friedman. I did not vote for Trump, yet I lament the efforts of Obama, Kerry, and our State Department to time and again, throw Israel under the bus.
Unlike many crony appointments, Friedman really has been to Israel, and realizes the reality on the ground. There is no functioning PA government, except to line the pockets of its senior office holders with the millions in charitable contributions meant for its citizens. The PA and Hamas promote terrorism, not country building.
Liberal Jews in the US, of course, conveniently forget that the Palestinians were given a country by the UN in 1947-48. The Arabs unsuccessfully went to war, and lost, and have for nearly 70 years wallowed in self-pity. Israel built a thriving, vibrant democracy and provided for its citizens. Land for peace is a false syllogism that has never worked. It can’t when the Arabs press for the destruction of Israel and the Jews.
Friedman despises “J Street”, as he should. Had their Chamberlain type philosophy prevailed, Israel and the Jews would not exist. Appeasement does not work with the Arabs. The negotiations never quite get done. They always want something more.
Move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Negotiate from strength. In this way maybe the US could contribute. 68 years of give, give, give have not worked. Maybe negotiating from strength may do the trick. Mazel Tov to Friedman!
Dan Schere has a pretty skewed (or uninformed) view of the Jewish world if he thinks Young Israel and Hadassa are part of the “Far Right.” Or is it just that anyone to his right is automatically defined as extremist?
Arthur is referring to the section of the story “Far right offers support.” Hadassah is not mentioned in that section.
–David Holzel, managing editor