Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel has all sides on edge

If President-elect Donald Trump wanted to show he planned to obliterate President Barack Obama’s approach to Israel, he may have found his man to deliver that message in David Friedman, his pick for US ambassador, reports the Associated Press. 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 even 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, punctuated last Friday by the Obama administration’s stunning move to allow a UN Security Council resolution to pass 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 angry condemnation from Israel, lawmakers of both parties, and especially Trump. “Things will be different after Jan. 20th,” when he’s sworn in, Trump vowed on Twitter. Friedman, certainly, is different. So it’s unsurprising that Friedman’s nomination has already sharpened the borders of a growing balkanization of American Jews, between those who want the US to push Israel toward peace and those who believe Obama’s approach abandoned America’s closest Mideast ally. It’s a debate playing out even at Temple Hillel, near the Long Island-Queens border, where Friedman’s father was rabbi for almost half a century. In announcing his pick, Trump pointed out that Friedman’s bar mitzvah 45 years ago was at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where Friedman now owns a home. Though his father was an Orthodox rabbi, the synagogue belongs to the more moderate Conservative denomination, making the Friedmans more observant than many of the congregants.