If Donald Trump wanted to show he planned to obliterate Barack Obama’s approach to Israel, the president-elect might have found his man to deliver that message in David Friedman, his pick for 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 US and Israel. In a stunning decision on Saturday, Obama allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal. The move to abstain, rather than veto, defied years of US tradition of shielding Israel from such resolutions, and elicited condemnation from Israel, both parties, and especially Trump.
Presidents of both parties have long called for a two-state solution that envisions Palestinian statehood, and Netanyahu says he agrees. Friedman, who still must be confirmed by the Senate, does not.
He’s called the two-state solution a “narrative” that must end.
Under Obama, the US has worked closely with J Street, an Israel advocacy group sharply critical of Netanyahu. Friedman accuses Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism” and calls J Street “worse than kapos”, a reference to Jews who helped the Nazis imprison fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
Read the full article by Josh Lederman (AP) at The Australian.