By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania –Credit David M. Friedman, our man in Israel, for his powerful bid to erode America’s support for Israel.
In so doing, he can be counted upon to become Rashida Tlaib’s and Ilhan Omar’s new best friend.
Oh, did someone say he is in fact continuing his ongoing efforts to bolster Israel? He has a funny way of doing it.
Invoking God as Israel’s ally is the swiftest way to alienate Americans and anyone else who would either back Israel or at least attempt to be fair in evaluating the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
That is what Friedman, Donald J. Trump’s choice as our ambassador to Israel, did. Anyone who takes Friedman seriously could determine that all staunch supporters of Israel are bonkers.
As reported by The New York Times, Friedman proclaimed on Tuesday: “Israel has one secret weapon that not too many countries have. Israel is on the side of God, and we don’t underestimate that.”
I am certainly a strong supporter of Israel, and I have criticized elements of the Netanyahu administration’s policies. I can list many arguments for backing Israel’s existence and most of its positions in its ongoing dispute with the Palestinians. Bringing God into it is not one of them.
For that matter, the Palestinians repeatedly invoke religion to back up their side. That alone precludes me from taking them seriously.
“As the ambassador of the far-right Orthodox Jewish community in the United States, Friedman’s comment makes sense,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, according to the Times. “As the supposed ambassador of the United States government and all its people, it is an extremely inappropriate comment.”
Israel’s best hope for good will from others depends on its own good will. So long as Israel and its supporters back their positions with rational arguments can Israel expect a fair hearing in the American and even international court of public opinion.
Conservative Christians and some Jews have often claimed that God reserved Israel for the Jews, which is nonetheless a minority. This is different. Friedman is our ambassador to Israel, who represents America. If he wants to uphold and expand Israel’s support among Americans, he will only use rational arguments no matter what he personally believes.
Many Americans are already dismissive of anything said by President Trump or members of his administration because of Trump’s thousands of lies. Friedman’s dependence on religion makes it worse for Israel.
Obviously, Friedman is playing to Trump’s base, a large segment of which backs Israel on the basis of biblical teachings. An Orthodox Jew who has long been a major donor to Israeli settlements on the West Bank, he made this and other comments during a gathering Tuesday hosted by an American evangelical group in Jerusalem to observe the anniversary of our embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Friedman’s speech plays right into the hands of advocates for the Palestinians like Tlaib and Omar, the two Muslim members of the U.S. House of Representatives who regularly bash Israel.
Palestinian officials Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat, who share long records for disingenuous statements about Israel, seized on Friedman’s words, according to the Times. “I can’t believe this extreme fundamentalist ideologue is an ambassador,” said Ashrawi, who is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee. “The last time we had people thinking that way in Palestine was in the Middle Ages, and look at what happened.”
Erekat, the P.L.O.’s chief negotiator, added, “What ambassador Friedman is telling Palestinians, Christians and Muslims…(was) that God is against them.”
There are people still thinking this way, many for whom Ashwari and Erekat claim to speak. That would include Rashida Tlaib, who in the past week conjured up a story that the Palestinians protected Holocaust survivors and paid for it by losing their homes amid the establishment of the state of Israel.
I thought it important to remind readers of Tlaib’s latest ramblings, in case Friedman’s claim of religious justification caused any of you to forget.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
According to this author: (1) Friedman’s
invoking of G-d as Israel’s ally “disserved” the U.S. and Israel, and (2) invoking G-d is the “swiftest way to alienate” Israel’s supporters.
If that’s the case, then Israel must be renamed immediately before Israel’s supporters figure out that the translation of “Israel” is “to struggle with G-d”.
This entire editorial is both an affront to logic and decency. It should never have been published.
From Dave Klepper
I am an Orthodox Jew AND a tolerant person. To a Christian Evangelist who expresses his love for me by trying to convince me that Yeshu is my Messiah, I do not attempt to refute him but simply say: “You pray for the Messiah’s coming, and so do I. Let us work together to help the Eternal repair the world, and when the Messiah comes, the Messiah will settle the argument between us.” I have many secular friends. They are Secular and Tolerant. They rightly interpret Friedman’s “God” as morality, justice, civilization. Justice and morality? Main-stream Zionism always envisioned sharing the Holy Land with Arabs. But the terrorist leaders of the Arabs of the Holy Land educate their people that Jews have no rightful connection with the land, a teaching, a lie, repeated now by anti-Semitic Democratic Party Representatives in the Halls of Congress. Civilization? Israel exports technology to extract water from thin air, drastically reduce food spoilage, a cure for AIDS, the Computer USB technology, and on and on. The so-called Palestinians have been exporting hate and terror. And Christian communities in the Near East by being decimated because teaching Arabs to hate Jews inevitably results in hatred of Christians and all other minorities.
So Ambassador Friedman is entirely correct in saying that “God is on the side of Israel.”
Most Americans are Christians. Most go to church on Sundays. Most believe in an Eternal Creator. You obviously do not. I don’t have a problem with that as long as you are a decent person. Most Americans believe Israel has the right to exist within secure boarders, so Friedman does represent most Americans And part being decent being tolerant. So, I ask you show tolerance to Ambassador Friedman.
More, your equating Orthodox Judaism with the “Islam” of “Palestinian” leaders, terrorists, and anti-Zionists in general is itself an anti-Semitic viewpoint, like comparing Orthodox Judaism with Naziism. Because this “Islam” is truly Naziism with an Islamic face, a rot within Islam that the 1926-British-appointed Jerusalem Mufti Haaj Al Husseini spread throughout the Islamic world….
I am an evangelist on behalf of belief in the Eternal…Thanks for reading this letter and any response you wish to make.
David Lloyd (en Yaacov Yehuda) Klepper, student of Yeshivat Beit Orot, Jerusalem, USA Army Veteran, co-author of Worship Space Acoustics, J. Ross, Publishers, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2010