David Melech Friedman (born August 8, 1958) served as the United States ambassador to Israel under President Trump from May 15, 2017, until January 20, 2021, having previously been a bankruptcy attorney with the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. It was in that capacity that he met and represented Donald Trump, then chairman and president of the Trump Organization. In December 2016, President-elect Trump’s transition team announced that Friedman was Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel. After being confirmed by the Senate, he was officially sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on March 29 of that year, and he presented his credentials to the president of Israel on May 15.
As ambassador, David Friedman helped negotiate the Abraham Accords, which brought about the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as well as with Bahrain. For that work, he was nominated along with Jared Kushner for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
After his term of ambassadorship was completed, Mr. Friedman launched the Friedman Center for Peace through Strength, which seeks to continue the inroads made by the Abraham Accords. In 2022, Friedman released the memoir Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East. In it, he describes his journey to becoming ambassador, and how the Abraham Accords came about. I interviewed Mr. Friedman after the release of that book.
Although David Friedman has consistently been an avid supporter of President Trump, when Trump hosted Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, Mr. Friedman tweeted: “Even a social visit from an anti-Semite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.” Nonetheless, on June 13, 2023, David Friedman endorsed Donald Trump for president ahead of the 2024 election.
I spoke to David Friedman this past Thursday about the Biden administration’s troubling relationship with Israel.
When we last spoke, the Biden administration seemed to be following the policies that you had helped put into place in the Middle East, but things seem to have changed since then.
There have been some unfortunate changes, and we can talk about them.
What do you consider to be the most disturbing?
I think the most disturbing one is the refusal of the US government to respect the results of Israel’s elections. I know that there have been six months of real civil unrest in Israel, and that’s okay. Israel has its internal issues, but Israel doesn’t involve itself in America’s internal issues, of which there are many, and America should extend the same courtesy. For example, the refusal of President Biden to invite Netanyahu to the White House is not just a discourtesy, it’s a signal not just to Israel but also to Israel’s enemies that the United States doesn’t really support the Israeli government. Whatever one thinks of Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir—and I understand they’re controversial, and I would agree that both of them have said things that I’m sure they wish they could take back, but that’s probably true of most politicians—they were duly elected to their positions, and I think it’s inappropriate for America to pick and choose which Israeli officials or ministers they should meet with.
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