The Man Who Negotiated Peace In The Middle East

David Friedman was the US ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021 during the Trump administration. He played a key role in relocating the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Friedman, along with Jared Kushner, was nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in negotiating the Abraham Accords. This interview was edited for clarity.

Ari: A lot of young people right now don’t care about Israel, and if they do care, they don’t like Israel. What message would you give them to reframe the way they think about the issue?

Amb. Friedman: I think people should understand that the Jewish people, while a small percentage of the world’s population, have a 3,500-year history. For 2,000 years, we were exiled from our homeland, and in 1948, that changed.

Biblical prophecies from thousands of years ago were fulfilled when the Jewish people returned to the land of Israel. They've been living there for thousands of years, but they returned as a nation, and that means a lot. The roots of this are in a book that sells 20 million copies a year in the US — the Bible.

Now, I don’t expect everyone to accept the Bible as God's word, but they should at least recognize it as an ancient text that has produced values and stood the test of time. The Bible is at the core of the Jewish people’s presence in Israel. It’s not about colonizers taking over a land. Jews have prayed to be restored to Jerusalem as their capital for thousands of years.

Israel is also the only democracy in the Middle East, which means something. It’s a key partner for America, and I can’t go into details, but I can tell you that Americans are safer at home because of the work Israel has done in alerting the US to threats.

Israel hasn’t had a day of peace since 1948. They had peace with Jordan and Egypt, but Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and others are still in a state of war with them. 20 percent of Israel is Arab, and more than 20 percent of the students at Israel’s elite universities are Arab.

Israel is very proud of how it treats its Arab minority. It’s not a colonizing power. It would like nothing more than to have peace with all its neighbors

Israel defends itself constantly because it’s under attack. If people are willing to invest five or 10 hours to study the geopolitical, economic, and human rights issues, I think they’d understand that Israel is the solution, not the problem, in this complicated world.

Ari: I’ve been hearing from liberal Jews who are comfortable with a Kamala Harris presidency. They’re okay with how Biden has handled Israel. That’s baffling to a lot of people on the right, especially when you compare it to the work you did with Trump and the achievements you made for Israel. What would you say to Democrats who think everything will be fine under Kamala or Biden?

Amb. Friedman: Well, there are some objective facts you can’t ignore. When we left office, Iran was broke.

Now, under Biden, Iran has more than doubled its GDP. They’ve used that money to fund the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. The appeasement of Iran is at the root of why the Middle East is in flames. Without that money, Iran couldn’t afford to fund these groups.

The Biden administration also turned UNRWA back on, which we had turned off. UNRWA has been a partner of Hamas in brutalizing Israelis. Biden’s administration also tried to keep Israel out of Rafah.

If Israel hadn’t gone into Rafah, they wouldn’t have been able to rescue five hostages or uncover the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. If those tunnels had stayed open, hostages could have been moved out of Gaza, into Egypt, and out to Iran. That’s what would’ve happened if Israel hadn’t sealed the corridor.

So Biden’s administration has made massive mistakes, not just with Israel but also in places like Ukraine. When Biden said he hoped Russia wouldn’t take too much of Ukraine, it led to a war.

And recently, you’ve seen comments from people like Tim Walz and Kamala Harris about the protests on college campuses, saying that those people have good points. That only encourages horrible behavior.

Ari: It’s going to be a problem for them too, right?

Amb. Friedman: If you look at protests at places like Columbia, the demands have changed. The Palestinian cause was number four on their list in the spring, but now, number one is eradicating the “colonial American empire.”

I’ve warned people that anti-Israel movements hook people in who have a bias towards anti-semitism with pictures of suffering children, often not even from Israel but from places like Syria, and then push a broader anarchist, Marxist agenda that starts with destroying America. That’s what we’re seeing now with these different groups.

Ari: What do you think a Trump administration would do differently than Biden, especially on day one?

Amb. Friedman: On day one, we’d restore sanctions on Iran, cutting off billions of dollars to Russia and China. We’d stop funding UNRWA. We’d look our adversaries in the eye — whether it’s Iran or Hezbollah — and tell them they have a week to release the hostages or face consequences like they’ve never seen before.

It might be military, it might be economic, but the US has the power to bankrupt any country when it chooses to use that strength.

When Trump sent [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo to North Korea, he told Chairman Kim he had two hours to get three American hostages on the plane — and guess what? The hostages were on the plane.

That’s how you get hostages back: you look somebody in the eye and you say, and you make them think about the worst possible thing that could happen to them without telling them. Let them twist. Let them worry. That’s what you’ve got to do.

We spend almost a trillion dollars on defense, but we need to be willing to use that strength when necessary. That doesn’t mean starting wars, but it does mean using our power to change people’s practices.

Ari: What happens if the Biden-Harris administration keeps going and gets re-elected?

Amb. Friedman: There is no plan. Israel would have to make some very difficult choices that could result in a rift between the US and Israel.

Once the election is over and they don’t care about votes anymore, I believe Harris would tack to the left and align more with progressives and the anti-Israel segment of society.

Israel would be in a tough position, but they’ll survive. God will protect Israel, and Israel will protect itself. The issue is less about survival and more about the good we can accomplish if we’re back in office: the relationships we can build with the good guys, the pressure we can put on the bad guys—that’s the difference.

Take the gas deal with Lebanon, for example. I was negotiating a 50/50 or maybe a 60/40 deal before we left office.

Now, under Amos Hochstein and Tony Blinken, it’s 100 percent Lebanon and 0 percent Israel. That sends a signal to the rest of the world that they can push us around: Hezbollah’s looking at knowing they’re not going to be challenged. We would do things very differently.