An Evening with Ambassador David M. Friedman

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[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, An Evening with Ambassador David M. Friedman, December 4, 2023, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and David M. Friedman appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] It's great to be here with Ambassador David Friedman. David and I have known each other for a long time. We were at Columbia together. I'm not going to spend too much time introducing him because actually we're going to begin by talking about his book, Sledgehammer. And in the book, he talks a little bit about his history. So I'm going to let him do some of the introduction himself.

But I will say that, during his time as US ambassador to Israel, Ambassador Friedman had a number of incredible accomplishments, including moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and being one of those who was involved in the Abraham Accords. And some of what we'd like to talk to him about tonight, of course, involves that time.

When we first planned this program, it was actually before October 7. And certainly things in Israel and the world have changed a lot since then. And I'm hoping that David and I get a chance to talk about that a little later. But I just wanted to start, David, by saying that you had an incredible career, but in some ways surprising because you went from being an attorney to being the US Ambassador to Israel. So can you tell us a little bit about your career and how this came about?

[David M. Friedman] Well, Alan, it's great to be with you again. We go back a long time to those days when Columbia University was a sane and pleasant place to go to school. God willing, it'll return to that at some point, although it's hard to see what's happening to it right now.

Look, in those days, if you remember back when we were in college together, the A students went to medical school, and the B students went to law school, and the C students would become investment bankers and make all the money, and then the D students usually went into politics. That was usually the way the waterfall worked. So I was a B student, and so I went to law school. And I went to law school without giving it much thought. I was 19 years old when I finished college, so I certainly needed to stay in school. And I went to law school, and I enjoyed it. And then I went and practiced law for 35 years.

People ask me all the time, people come to me and say, we love this field of diplomacy, of statecraft, of working on these big, big issues, these thorny issues that we all care so much about. And they ask me for advice, how do you do that? And I tell them, you have to be extremely, extremely lucky. And even more so, if it's, the way I look at my life as it the turns it took beginning in 2016, you really need a lot of help from God, because the path that I took was extraordinarily improbable.

The idea that a client of mine would run for president with no prior political experience, that he would win, that he would select me, with no diplomatic experience, to be the Ambassador to Israel, that I would be confirmed by the United States Senate, and then that I would be able to go off to Israel with his support and do all these things. I mean, these are all outside of the normal course of events, as we tend to think of them. So I tell everyone, I can't give you advice on how to become a diplomat, let alone an ambassador, because some of it, so much of it was really incredibly fortuitous and, as I think about it, had so much help from God.

So, again, as I've alluded to, I mean, I had lots of clients when I was a lawyer. One of them was named Donald Trump. I had an unusually successful run with him, won a number of cases that I didn't think were particularly winnable. And again, I don't attribute that to the fact that I was a particularly good lawyer. I just think it, again, a lot of mazel.

We always had a good relationship. Again, everyone knows him. As you can imagine, you win for him, you develop a relationship that's a whole lot better than if you lose. I mean, that's kind of obvious to anybody who knows him, and everybody, at this point, knows him.

So we had this great relationship, and it developed into a friendship, and it developed into him being the president and me being the ambassador. And then we went off to do, thank God, all these incredible things. So that's it. I mean, it's not translatable or portable to any other person, I'm sorry to say. But it was, it's a highly unique experience, I think.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So what was it like being his attorney?

[David M. Friedman] You know what, he's very much the way he appears. He's very much larger than life, big, strong personality, very, thinks big, acts big, takes big risks. I mean, in those days, we were working on things like multibillion dollar casinos in Atlantic City or very large buildings that I was helping him out with. I think that he was one of the early, it's funny. We think now, the word "brand" right now is so overused. Everybody needs a brand, from businesses to schools to individuals. Everybody is trying to work on their brand.

He was, I think, the original kind of individual brand. I mean, there had been brands for 100 years before that. But he was the first person who would take his name, stick it on a building. And in those days, he could demonstrate that a building with his name on it was worth more than a building without his name on it. He tried to create this brand of outsized luxury and kind of, what's the right word, conspicuous consumption that a lot of people wanted to be part of. And he was very successful at that. I mean, his branding of himself was a real skill.

So he was a very good businessman. He did very well. As I said, we had some, he was not my largest client at all, by not by a long shot. But we had five or six interactions, I would say, in the 10 or 12 years prior to his being elected president. And they all worked out really well. So I think that's how the relationship flourished.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So before we talk about what you did as ambassador, David, what was it like being the US ambassador to Israel, just from a personal level and an operational level?

[David M. Friedman] Look, I mean, it's an incredible dream come true to represent the United States of America as the president's representative in Israel, I mean, to basically, and look, in the case, there have been lots of, I was the 20th US Ambassador to Israel. Most of them, I would say, and I'm not looking to be critical. Most of them were not steeped in Israel. Until recently, most of them were not Jewish. The more recent ones who were Jewish, I think, to a large extent, wanted to prove that their Judaism was not a significant influence in how they did their job.

But the basic notion of being an ambassador before I got there was that you sort of wait to be instructed from headquarters, which is either the Secretary of State or the Department of Near Eastern Affairs or the president, as the case may be. You wait for instructions, then you act out on instructions. Well, my relationship with President Trump was different. I mean, we knew each other. He had a lot of confidence in me. Obviously, he's got lots and lots of other things that are taking up his time. And so to a large extent, put me in charge not just of executing policy, but actually of making policy.

And so for me to have this opportunity, as someone who cared deeply for the state of Israel, I remember when I was nine years old, I came down the stairs out of my bedroom and saw my parents crying because Rabbi Shlomo Goren had just blown the chauffeur at the Western Wall, signifying the reunification of Jerusalem. That's my background. I mean, it was, my DNA is so steeped in a love of Israel.

So to all of a sudden now, from just a law career, a commercial law career, to be in charge of the policy of the most powerful nation in the world and Israel's most important ally as it relates to Israel was overwhelming. But I couldn't wait to get involved in it. So it's hard to describe. I still kind look back on it and say, how'd you go from 0 miles an hour to 100 miles an hour overnight? You do. You jump on it. You embrace it. And thank God I had the support of the people who support I needed in order to move forward.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you were most proud of that you accomplished as ambassador. I mentioned the Jerusalem Embassy. Tell us a little bit about the story, about how that came about.

[David M. Friedman] So that is by far and away the thing I'm the most proud of. And I'm proud of a bunch of things, but that was by far and away the thing I'm the most proud of, for a whole bunch of reasons, just from the perspective of being a Jew, being an observant Jew. Look, there's not a prayer book. There's not a Jewish prayer book in existence. Orthodox, conservative, reform, reconstructionist, non-denominational, there's not a single prayer book in which we don't pray that God should restore to us Jerusalem as our capital, as our Holy city. Jerusalem is enormously, it's the last words of the hatikvah. It's everywhere, Jerusalem.

And here we had a situation where for, at that point, 70 some odd years, about 70 years at that point, no country, including America, was willing to recognize the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. And it was just an open sore that I think made people so upset, especially after 1995 when Congress passed, by this overwhelming majority, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which required that the embassy move to Jerusalem. But presidents, whether it was Bush or Clinton or Obama, refused to enforce it.

So doing that, from a personal perspective, especially, and remember, this was only, this was within a year after the United States failed to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which was a resolution which literally held that Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, including a place like the Western Wall, was illegally occupied territory. So this was the perfect rejoinder to that. And it meant an enormous amount to me as a Jew.

And I was not shy, as ambassador, of wearing my Judaism with much pride. I found that people of other faiths had no qualms about, again, we don't recognize a national religion in America. We don't establish a religion. But we're also not a godless society. "In God we trust" appears on almost every building in the United States, not to mention the fact that the Declaration of Independence says that our human rights are endowed by our creator. So we're not a godless society.

And I learned from others that it's OK to be Jewish and to make it a part of who you are as a person. My Christian friends didn't have a problem with it, and I didn't either. So it meant a lot to me, as a Jew, that the embassy was moved to Jerusalem.

On a whole other level I thought it really put us in good stead in terms of America's foreign policy, because what would be the reason not to move the embassy? I mean, President Trump had promised it along, as had his predecessors. What's the argument not to move the embassy? Because somehow you're afraid. You think there's going to be violence. You think you're going to somehow insult someone.

And I think that, when President Trump announced that we're moving our embassy to Jerusalem, I think that really resonated. And this was the argument I made to him when we were sitting in the situation room having that last discussion before he made his decision. But what it signaled was that America was going to stand with its allies. It was going to keep its promises. It wasn't going to flinch from rogue actors. It wasn't going to be worried about what they say in Jordan or what they say in Egypt or what the PLO has to say or what they might say somewhere else around the world. We're not going to flinch from the United Nations. We're going to do what we want to do, what we think is right, and what we're committed to do.

And I said, that's not just going to be valuable to the Jewish people in America or the Israeli citizens. It's going to resonate in Moscow. It's going to resonate in Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing. I mean, people are going to look at America and say, you know what, this guy is not afraid to keep his promises and to make tough decisions. And I think, again, it's too soon to tell in this, we're living in such a volatile world. But I do think that, when we look back on those four years, hopefully with the benefit a lot of time having passed by when people are willing to look at things with the fullness of time and under the calmness of history, I think one of the reasons why it was a period of relative quiet around the world, why there were no new wars or actions that were really threatening to the world, I think that our moving to the embassy was really where I think we set the right signal. So I'm extremely proud of it. And it is overwhelmingly the most important thing I did in the four years that I was ambassador.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] There was a lot of talk before the embassy was moved about how there would be incredibly dangerous short-term consequences.

[David M. Friedman] Yeah.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] We didn't really see that, right?

[David M. Friedman] Now, look, I remember I spent three weeks in Washington before the announcement was made, at the suggestion then of John Kelly, who was the chief of staff. And we scoured the globe. Every day, we were on these TV screens with 24 boxes. Each box had some other government agency with three letters. Or it was an embassy from Morocco to Pakistan to Saudi Arabia to Egypt. I mean, you're talking to all the local ambassadors and obviously getting a lot of intelligence reports.

And the funny thing is that, what I learned, then, about the government is that there's so much calcified thinking, because everyone was saying, there's going to be violence. And I said, well, look, we have all these incredibly accomplished spies and intelligence experts and everything. Where's the intelligence that says that? And they said, well, people are going to be angry. And I said, well, OK, I got that. People will be angry. But not every time that people are angry is there an outbreak of violence.

And the truth is that the conventional wisdom was that you can't do it because people will be so angry that there will be violence. But we didn't see it anywhere in terms of any real intel. And we have, as you can imagine, incredibly good sources of intel.

So I reported to the president, look, I'm not seeing violence. Doesn't mean there won't be any. It doesn't mean, you can never stop. A single person can throw a hand grenade into a subway, God forbid. And you never can be fully certain. But in terms of the intel, we're not seeing it.

And so, yeah, we looked at it. This was against the advice, the president's decision was against the advice of the CIA, of the Director of National Intelligence, of the National Security Advisor. Again, without any intel, just it's not a good idea. But he did it anyway. And thankfully, really, thankfully, thank God, there wasn't any material violence.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So before we talk about the world of today, tell us a little bit about the Abraham Accords, your role in it, how that came about, and what you hope to accomplish. And you talk about it, of course, extensively in your book. So tell us a little bit about your own experience with that and how it happened.

[David M. Friedman] So, look, we had been kind of, I would say, dancing around with some of our friends in the Gulf for two or three years before the Abraham Accords were announced. Look, the, I don't think anybody will find this surprising. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, I mean, the leadership of these countries doesn't really have a gripe with Israel. They've inherited a street that is, in some cases, very pro-Palestinian, in other cases not pro-Palestinian at all. They know that, in their national interests, they're all better off being aligned with Israel because of Israel's technology, because of their brainpower, because of their intelligence and military capacities. And everyone's kind of looking for the right way and the right place to jump on board.

Every one of these countries, and by the way, it's true of Israel, and it's true of America. Every one of these countries, and this was something that was told me by Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, who's the foreign minister of United Arab Emirates. These are his words. But he said, we're all fighting the same fight in the 21st century. We're all fighting the fight. It's an internal fight within every one of our countries. We're fighting the fight of the moderates against the extremists. And the moderates just have to win, because if the extremists win, the whole world is going to fall apart.

And if that's how he looks at the world, and I share his view, and I think a lot of people share that view. So, obviously, you look at the Palestinians and certainly look at Hamas, and you say, well, they're not with us. We're not going to support them. They're the extremists. All the groups, the Muslim brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, all these extremist groups or countries are all enemies of all of us. We all have the same enemies, and we all have the same aspirations, which is to create first-world economies with stable citizenships.

So that was really the Genesis of the Abraham Accords. Now, how did they surface? What was the way to surface? Well, towards the end of the Trump administration, we were moving on a path, frankly, that I was pushing, that was part of the Trump Peace Plan, the vision, that he authored for peace with the Palestinians, which had as a component the United States recognizing Israeli sovereignty over, I would say, roughly 50% of area C. So if you think about Judea and Samaria, area A is about 20%. Area B is about 20%. Area C is about 60% So half of area C would be about 30% of the entirety of Judea and Samaria, and it would have included every single Jewish community in Judea and Samaria.

So this was a chance where we could recognize that sovereignty. It would not have prejudiced additional territorial sovereignty for Israel, but at least we were going to recognize that. Now, that caused a lot of agita among the whole world, including lots of people in America, lots of people throughout Europe.

As we were moving down this path, lots of things are happening, including, I mean, if you go back to what things were like in 2020, it seems like 100 years ago. But Israel was on its second or third election. The Israeli public was confronting COVID at the time. This issue about Israeli sovereignty over any part of Judea and Samari was not as popular as we thought it would be. I think, largely, people just wanted to, did not think it was the right time to be dealing with it.

And so as this thing is all coming about, our discussions with the UAE were such they said, look, if you guys, this might be the right time for us. If you can suspend this sovereignty effort, not permanently, just for like three years or four years, if you can just put it off to the side, that gives us enough cover to tell the Palestinians, look, we did something for you. We got this off the table. And that might create the opening for us to normalize with Israel.

And so we had those discussions. It was very quick. It was probably three weeks. It involved, I think, among all three countries, a maximum of 10 people. I doubt 10 people were aware of it during all these discussions. I fought hard for the issue I cared about the most, which was to make sure we could get this sovereignty movement back on track and within a reasonable time. But we got the language we wanted. And then on, I think it was, August 13 of 2020, we made this announcement, and we did it from the Oval Office.

And I mean, we really shocked the world. And just as a note to, I'm emphasizing the secrecy because one of the most inept things that I've seen over the last six months has been the public discussion about Israel normalizing with Saudi Arabia. And I can tell you that, had we publicized Israel's normalization with the UAE or with Bahrain or with Sudan or with Morocco or with Kosovo, at any point in time before we announced it publicly, it never would have happened.

So this whole thing with Saudi Arabia, I think, I mean, there's maybe lots of reasons I'm not involved, maybe lots of reasons why it's not there yet. Obviously, it's not going to move forward in the circumstances that we're in right now. But these things have to be done very delicately and very discreetly and quietly. And I hope that if they go back and renew these efforts or if the next administration renews these efforts, it'll be done with much more discretion, which I think is really critical.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Sure. So before we go on to what's going on in the world today, you did mention earlier something about your Christian friends. So how closely did you work with Christian groups when you were ambassador? And what did you learn, and what's your impression?

[David M. Friedman] So I knew nothing about Evangelical Christians before I started this job, and I began to meet them. And of course, what's most important about them, writ large, is there are 60 million Evangelical Christian voters in the United States, which makes them maybe the largest single voting bloc in the country.

And every one of them has as their, on their top five list is Israel. And there's the famous reference. There's God's covenant to Abraham in the Book of Genesis, where he says, I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. That is known, that verse is known by every single Evangelical Christian. They believe that blessing Israel, supporting Israel is a path to God's blessings.

What I found most impressive about them, which I've tried to incorporate to some extent in my own life, they are not even remotely squeamish about taking positions, taking public positions, that are in accord with what they believe to be God's will, as expressed in the Bible. And I had always felt, when, again, I'm a son of a rabbi, grew up an Orthodox Jew. The Jewish community, we are always trying to rationalize our support for Israel in a way that is entirely rational. And I use the word "rational" in contrast to "biblical." Biblical, it doesn't matter whether it's rational. God says what he says, and we follow his will.

We talk all the time in Israel, the Israelis do this, too, and I've had these discussions with them. We talk all the time about why Israel has to be a certain way because it's essential for Israel's security, how Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. We make great hay of the fact that Israel has the largest LGBTQ convention or parade in the Middle East, which, again, I have no problem with, but is that the reason why Israel exists? No.

I mean, we make arguments about all the great things Israel does about, and they do all these great things, and I don't mean to minimize it. But I think, too, sometimes we bury the lead. The lead is that this land was given to the Jewish people by God in the Bible. And the Bible still sells, I just checked it out. The Bible sells 2,400 copies an hour. That's the popularity of the Bible.

Now, we never talk about the Bible. The Christians talk about the Bible all the time. If you're writing a brief, that would be point one, would be God gave this land to the Jewish people in the Bible. If we were writing a brief, it would be point five, or point six. And I think that we, and I'm not saying that, this is not, to me, a theological point. It's really more of a political point.

I'm not saying people need to be religious. I don't really care how people observe. And to be honest with you, I don't care whether people think that the Bible is the inspired word of God or whether it was just written by some really smart person 3,500 years ago. However that Bible came to be, that is the book that has sustained the Jewish people when no other people has been sustained for 3,500 years. That book is our book, and it's what kept us together through all kinds of challenges for 3,500 years.

And that book says that we own the land of Israel. Now, I'm not saying it's the end of the discussion. I'm not saying it's even entirely persuasive. But it's a really good point that we've been given. And I hate the fact that we never use it, and the Evangelicals use it all the time, and they get great mileage out of it, and we're afraid to.

So this is where I've really taken some inspiration from them. I think they're right. And I think those of us who love Israel should not shy away from the biblical heritage we have. And by the way, just to finish this point, all of our new Muslim friends agree, meaning the UAE and the Saudis and the Moroccans, they're all deeply religious people. And they have their book, and they care very much about that book.

And when they see that the Jewish people, for example, are willing to trade away, let's pick a place. They're willing to trade away Hebron, which is, let's call it the second holiest place in Judaism. I mean, it's right there. Abraham purchased it. It's where three of our matriarchs and all of our patriarchs are buried. When they see that the Jewish people are willing to give it away, they scratch their heads and say, well, we wouldn't have done that. Like, why are you giving away your most holy sites?

So I think it's something which I learned very much over the four years that I was ambassador. And I believe it's very admirable that, I have great admiration for people who consider the Bible relevant to the ultimate resolution of how we look at the state of Israel.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So let's turn to what's happened more recently. In Sledgehammer and in a lot of your writing and other people's writings, there was a lot of very positive thought about the Abraham Accords, which I think were an incredible accomplishment. And you've talked a little bit about some of your ideas about sovereignty in Israel and Judea and Samaria, but it's very clear that the idea that somehow the status quo could be managed changed very much on October 7.

And of course, the terrible nature of the terror attacks, the tremendous inhumanity, and the success, I think, made things a lot more difficult to deal with, not just for the individuals, of course, who suffered and are still suffering in captivity because of it, but in terms of the implications for what's going on in the region. And this idea that, which I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but I'm simply going to summarize what some have said, particularly perhaps the Israeli government has said, that, well, we can compartmentalize the Palestinian problem, make peace with Arab countries and the Abraham Accords, move things forward in the Middle East, and things are going to be OK.

In some ways, October 7 seemed to belie that. And we're now in a terrible situation where Israel's fighting a bloody war, where captives are still there, where Iran is acting up horribly. And anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States, and college campuses have turned into, as you alluded to earlier, in some cases, dangerous places for Jews.

So, in retrospect, do you think that there's something that could have been done differently to avoid the October 7 attack, other than, obviously, we're not going to, neither of us are security experts. I'm not interested in talking about the elephant in the room, which is, how could this happen? But, rather, is there something that, in retrospect, you think we could have done differently to forestall it?

[David M. Friedman] Yeah. So you're not the first one to ask me that question. It's a good question. But I want to answer it in a way that you don't want me to, which is to talk about security in the first place. This happened because it happened. It would have happened on October 6 of '23. It would have happened on October 6 of '22. It would have happened at any time over the last, I mean, when did Gaza, when was it taken over by Hamas, in 2007? So, whatever, 16 years. It would have happened at any point over the last 16 years or maybe even before.

Why did it happen now? the short answer is it happened now because of a massive failure on the part of Israel. That fence had never been breached before. The head of the Southern Command during most of that period of time is now the head of the Jewish Agency, Doron Almog, he never let anybody cross over that fence. And he had buffer zones in place, and he had tanks that were entering and leaving the Gaza Strip all the time to make sure that this wouldn't happen.

So it's not that we did the Abraham Accords, we ignored the Palestinians, they got mad, and they attacked us on October 7. That's, I think, a very incorrect reading of the sequence of events. What happened is the Palestinians, from the day that the Hamas took over in Gaza, maybe sooner, I mean, but I was taught from then. The Palestinians, from the day the Hamas took over in Gaza, could have only dreamed of inflicting upon Israel on any one of those days, any one of those 16 years, the kind of damage they inflicted on Israel on October 7.

And the reason they succeeded on October 7 was because they did and because Israel dropped the ball. If Israel had not dropped the ball, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. We'd be talking about the Abraham Accords in a very different light. So that's the first point. Now, if you want to ask me that, Did you solve all the problems in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords? Of course not. Of course, we didn't.

We understood that we were leaving open the Palestinian issue, but we were also signaling to the Palestinians that, while they are an issue, they're not the only issue in the Middle East. And it was, I think, a great blow to their leverage. And I think, if we hadn't suffered this massive assault, which I think is going to change all the calculations of leverage for at least the next few years, but I think that we could have gotten to a point where the Palestinians might have gotten more realistic.

Now, let me just be clear, because what do I mean by that? I'm of the view, and I was of this view before October 7, that there can never be a resolution to the Palestinian conflict, which in any way is based upon trust. It cannot happen. There will never be a basis for trust, not in my lifetime, certainly. And I'd be surprised if in the lifetime of the next generation. There's just too much there. There's too much hatred.

Now, what I would do, to me, the resolution sort of looks like this. Think about Israel and its neighbors right now. Israel is surrounded by Gaza, GDP per capita of probably $3,000. Lebanon, about the same, failed terrorist state, still at war with Israel. Syria, about the same, also a failed terrorist state, still at war with Israel. Jordan, a very cold peace with Israel and a GDP per capita maybe $8,000. Egypt, the same as Jordan. And where's Israel? It's got about, I don't know, $50,000 to $60,000 GDP per capita, top 10 economies per capita in the world.

Now, if you have any hope at all of de-radicalizing the Palestinians, it can only be by enabling the Palestinians to have more interaction with Israel, to work inside Israel, to take jobs, to have more commerce and more trade. You can't do that unless Israel has total security control from the river to the sea. I mean, if people really want to shout from the river to the sea, it should be a different mantra. It should be, Israel with security control from the river to the sea is the only pathway whereby Palestinians have any chance of somehow sharing in the great economic miracle that is Israel.

So my view is let Israel be in charge of the security. Let's get our friends in the Gulf to help build better infrastructure, better hospitals, better schools, create ports and trade in all kinds of ways for Palestinians to make more money and to be more prosperous. And let's just forget about the politics for at least a generation and let Israel have to have total control. That, to me, would have been the path that I think would have been accelerated. At least if we would have had an administration where I was continuing to be involved, that would have been the path that I think we would have taken.

Look at East Jerusalem. It's a great little microcosm of Palestinian society. In East Jerusalem, you have three choices, the people that live there have three choices, they can be Palestinian citizens, they can be Israeli citizens, or they can be permanent residents of East Jerusalem, where there's no risk that they will lose their homes. They have the same civil rights, let's say, of any Israeli.

The vast majority of them opt for that middle ground. They don't want to be citizens of Israel because it's kind of embarrassing to do that, and they get flak from it. But they don't want to be Palestinians. And every time there's talk about a two-state solution and potentially a wall that might divide East and West Jerusalem, they freak out because they all work in East Jerusalem. I'm sorry. They all work in West Jerusalem. They travel every day from East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem without a barrier.

So the model of being a permanent resident and having access to the Israeli economy is the only one that I think works as long as Israel controls the security. And it actually has some biblical sources. There's this whole idea about being a [NON-ENGLISH], about being a permanent resident.

And that is the model, I think, for Palestinians for a generation while we try to rebuild Judea and Samaria and Gaza. But the idea that there'll be a Palestinian, I mean, the last thing, and by the way, this isn't just my view. This isn't just a view of Netanyahu. This is the view of Hussein, of, I'm sorry, of King Abdullah and President El-Sisi and Mohamed bin Zayed in UAE and MBS in Saudi Arabia. They all know. They may not say it publicly. The last thing they want is to create a terrorist state, which is what it will be, in between Israel and Jordan.

That state will be taken over by Hamas or al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas or whatever. It is the last thing that Israel needs or the entire region needs. And so that is, and that's true, and that's only been amplified and proven by October 7. But if you knew the area, you would have known that before as well.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Yeah. But, of course, the danger to what you're describing is that Israel had increased the number of work permits for residents of Gaza, and there's at least the suspicion, I haven't seen the original data, that a lot of the intelligence that Hamas accumulated was because those workers were able to move freely around Israel and gather intelligence.

[David M. Friedman] Yeah, there's lots of evidence of that.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So the situation you're describing has some dangers to it, because even with, quote, "security control," there's no guarantee that there won't be continued terrorism or resentment unless we can come up with something that tones down the conflict.

[David M. Friedman] Look, it's very hard to, you're a doctor, right? A guy comes to you with some very, very, very acute disease that's flaming out of control. You're going to try not to operate that day. I mean, right now is not the time to operate on the patient in Israel. I mean, it's just everything is flaming out of control. It will come down. Hopefully it will come down with a decisive Israeli victory.

And then we do have to figure out what things look like. I think, talking about or two states or three states, whatever it would be, is a huge distraction and an inappropriate reward to the Palestinians for bad behavior. I think that you're right, that letting people in to work can be very dangerous.

There was a lot of pressure brought on Israel by America over the last couple of years to give the Gazans work permits. And there's very significant evidence of a lot of those workers coming in. In fact, there were workers that came in that had known these families for years, because a lot of the families down there were very interested in working with their Palestinian counterparts. And unfortunately, they didn't really know what was in their hearts.

So, look, that's all very, very dangerous. I also think that you can identify where there's less of a threat. Remember, in Judea and Samaria, there are no security barriers, and there's no checkpoints. So you got 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria today. And they're living up the hill or down the hill from Palestinian neighbors. Now, it's pretty dangerous right now to be there in some places.

But there is a history of Jews and Palestinians working together, living together, without security fences, without checkpoints, in relative peace. Now, we have to find ways to enable that to continue, drop all the politics, give Israel full control, full sovereignty over the entire territory, and control the security, but at the same time take ownership of every single human being that they're responsible for. Again, it's a big lift. It's a lot of money.

But take ownership and find ways to separate the good guys from the bad guys. I mean, I think the message, in simple terms, is, OK, all you Palestinians out there, if you want to kill us, if you're hell bent on killing us, we're going to kill you first. If you don't want to kill us, you want to work with us, we'll find ways to work together. I think we need to really find ways to bifurcate those aspects of society as best we can.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] We've only alluded to Iran in today's conversation. How much do you think Iran is responsible for what's going on? And do you think we need to take more aggressive action to try to counter Iran and its allies, the Houthis, who have been bombing ships, Hezbollah that's been throwing rockets into Israel, and, of course, Hamas? How would you handle that if you were advising the current foreign policy team?

[David M. Friedman] Well, it happens to be a subject that I worked on a lot when I was more relevant to these issues. And I can tell you, first of all, the answer to the first part of your question is that Iran's fingerprints are all over this, and their responsibility for terrorism in the region is in the high 90s, 90%, in terms of their responsibility. Now, if you go back seven years or six years, Iran was selling, I don't know, $2 billion of oil a year, maybe. We had the most drastic sanctions that we could come up with. Every month, we try to come up with new sanctions, try to identify shipments of oil, other things that we could impose sanctions upon.

And, of course, President Trump authorized the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, who was the architect of all the terror activities in Iran. Under the Biden administration, Iran is now selling $60, $70, $80 billion of oil a year to our other enemies, to Russia and China primarily. And they've become a very wealthy nation. And they are, through proxies, as you point out, the Houthis are shooting into the Red Sea almost every day. I think they've attacked 12, 13 ships. None of them were Israeli. They attacked them anyway. They're attacking American ships.

Hezbollah is attacking from the north, and Hamas is attacking from Gaza. And there are attacks coming out of Iraq as well. And every single day, there's armaments that are flowing from Iran to Iraq to Syria into Lebanon, to Hezbollah. So we know how to deal with Iran. I mean, we know how to bankrupt them and to force them to choose between malign activity and an internal revolution because they can't feed their own people. The formula is very, very straightforward.

But look at the last, look at where we are since August. To put this in perspective, right now we're kind of trying to get through a $14 billion aid package to Israel, which it desperately needs. It went through the House with a couple of strings attached. It died in the Senate, at least in the first vote. The Democrats voted 51. All 51 voted against it. I'm assuming that someone will find a way to bridge this gap, but that's $14 billion.

In August, America gave $6 billion of sanctions relief to Iran to free five American hostages. And then this past week, we gave, or two weeks ago, we gave around another $10 billion of sanctions relief. So Iran's got $16 billion since August. We're talking about $14 billion for our ally, Israel. We're giving $16 billion to one of our greatest enemies in Iran.

So our policies are wrong. They're wrong, and they're destined to continue a very, very difficult situation. We have to rid ourselves of this fantasy of coaxing Iran back into the community of nations where they will

Act in a responsible way. We tried that. We tried that with the JCPOA in 2015. They got all these great gifts, and they didn't take the money and build hospitals or schools, you know, or highways. They used every one of their dollars to build ballistic missiles, to enrich uranium, and to fund their proxies around the world. So, yeah, we're not tough on Iran right now, not at all, just the opposite. And I think that's probably the single most significant flaw in the current administration's Middle East policy.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Let's assume that, as I think we all hope, the Gaza-Israel war ends. How long do you think, what do you see in the future, and how long do you think it's going to take to perhaps get back to a situation where we could consider expanding the Abraham Accords again?

[David M. Friedman] Well, I think the Abraham Accords could expand way faster than Gaza will get rebuilt. I mean, I think what's likely to happen in Gaza is you'll see an Israeli occupation, military occupation. I contrast that with Judea and Samaria because Israel, I think, has legal rights to be there. I think, in the case of Gaza, Israel left the Gaza Strip and renounced any claims to it. So now it'll go back in as a military occupier, which means it has to ultimately hold it for the benefit of the Indigenous people.

But I think it's going to hold it for a very long time. I think it's going to hold it for years before somebody will emerge that's willing to run it. As I said many times, there is no Martin Luther King within the Palestinian society, nothing close. There is nobody out there, and I've met them all. I've spoken to them all. There's nobody out there who I have any confidence in who can lead the Palestinians into a transparent, democratic, non-corrupt environment.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So, right now, just so people understand, the Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to be the better of the two groups relative to Hamas, the Palestinian authority criminalizes homosexuality. It's completely misogynistic. It doesn't give women equal rights. It punishes by death the sale of a house to a Jew. It has a pension system which pays terrorists to kill Jews. It's a terrible and corrupt organization. And its leaders, as people know, are billionaires.

So finding someone to take over Gaza will be very, very difficult. The Egyptians don't want it for obvious reasons. They know the people there. They don't want any more of those people in their territory. It's going to take a while to figure that out. Israel will run it as a military occupier until it has a better idea. And I don't think that's going to, in any way, inhibit the Abraham Accords if the occupation in Gaza is relatively quiet.

But listen, there's a big, open sore now in Judea and Samaria, a lot of hostility, a lot of rioting, a lot of problems. And I think really needs to get its arms around that. I think it's a good time for Israel to be proactive, not in terms of statecraft, but I think in terms of trying to find ways to create better facts on the ground for Jews and Palestinians alike in Judea and Samaria so people can calm down a little bit and think less about killing each other.

So we only have a couple of minutes left. I want to turn for a moment, you're a resident of the United States. You were a US ambassador. Is what's going on in the United States, both on and off college campuses, does it surprise you?

I'm surprised by the level of, I'm really surprised. And I hate to admit being surprised because it means that I must have missed something. I hate to admit that I missed anything, but I obviously did because I would have thought that after October 7 the sympathies would be with Israel for a longer period of time. I understand how things tend to move, and I understand the view of the progressive left with regard to the perceived rights of Palestinians.

But I didn't think it would be this bad. I just did not think we would see this level of anti-Semitism. And by the way, it popped up with the flick of a switch, which tells me that this is very well organized. I think it's very well funded. My own research, which is not complete, tells me that this was very much a very clever use of intersectionality, if you will. I think that what the Palestinian movement did was they saw in America a movement arising, kind of a Marxist movement arising.

Primarily, it began with the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, with Black Lives Matter. But I think all these other kind of similar groups got together, and they all kind of joined forces in this general hypothesis that white people are colonizers and evil and people who are of a different color, Black, Brown, whatever, are the good guys. And of course, it's so silly as it applies to Israel because Israel is not, it's not a white country. I mean, it's a whole, God bless Israel. It's a diverse mixture of all kinds of shapes, sizes, and colors.

But in any event, I was quite struck by the efficiency and the speed in which the anti-Israel movement got together. Clearly, it was in the works before October 7. And it's frightening. It's really frightening. I think, look, all these colleges, ours included, presumably are the places where the leaders of tomorrow are learning. And they're just, the idea of critical thinking, thinking about issues from multiple sides, and confronting unpopular views, and really kind of analyzing them with the benefit of real intellectual rigor, we're not seeing that anymore. I'm seeing it in any of these schools.

And so, yeah, I'm really concerned about it. And it's sort of, I know it's easy to say this, but it suggests that, like the Ottoman empire, like the British empire, the American empire has an arc. And this is certainly symbolic of being on the downward edge of that arc. I hope I'm wrong. But I'm really nervous about America.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] One of the things we talked about in our last webinar was the role of bots and artificial intelligence in driving this. As you pointed out, it happened so quickly. And some people believe that a lot of this was indeed driven by bad actors who managed to use bots and artificial intelligence to drive, on October 8, I agree with you. On October 8, it's extraordinarily bizarre that after 1,200 people were raped, murdered, tortured, brutalized, others taken captive, others injured, that suddenly there's this outpouring of anti-Israel sentiment. And I do think that there may be some things going on on social media that will come to light or are beginning to come to light which could partially explain it.

I think the other thing that. I wanted to just close by running by you is, look, in wars, there have always been civilian casualties. And it's unfortunate. And of course, when civilians are used as human shields or when there are narrow spaces, those casualties will be worse.

The difference now, of course, is that they show up on everybody's phone in five minutes. And even ignoring the ones that aren't real, you're getting a firsthand look at the horror of war, of course, started by Hamas, which we didn't have in other conflicts. And I think that that has also driven a lot of the sentiment which we perceive as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, which I think to some extent it is, but with the calls for a ceasefire fire, ignoring what Hamas did on October 7 and ignoring the future implications of an immediate ceasefire.

[David M. Friedman] Yeah, that is the, within the world of not, I don't think that every person going for a ceasefire is anti-Semitic. I mean, I share your view. There are people who are just, they're anti-war, and their view is that there's no political or national goal that justifies people dying.

OK, listen, it's a point of view. That point of view has been around for a very long time. And the people who feel that way, they're not bad people. But those people, if they're going to take that view, they do need to articulate an alternative by which Israel can survive, because you can't ask, by the same token, don't say to Israel, you have no right to survive. If Israel does not eliminate Hamas, then they're not a country. The people, they've got 200,000 displaced people from the North and the South that were brutally, in the case of the South, that were brutally murdered and worse. And in the North, they just had to leave because they had to get out of harm's way.

If they can't go back home again, then what Israel is essentially saying is we cannot defend our citizens against terrorists. Imagine for a country to say, we can't defend you against terrorists. Who would want to live in a country where the government can't defend the people against harm?

And so I think any caring person cares about civilian casualties. But you also need to know that, just because there weren't iPhones around in the 1940s, just because war photographers were the only source of information, they didn't get in to a lot of the places, doesn't mean that there weren't massive casualties in Berlin, in Japan, in places where, were those events not to have occurred, by all accounts, people might still be speaking German in France and England. We might have lost another million Americans in the Pacific Theater.

So I understand that, looking at a wounded child or, God forbid, a dead child, I understand that that's a very impactful scene. But we can't be hypocrites either. We can't say, well, since we see this, but, we're against it, but all the other things that we can't see, can we see the brutalization of a million Uyghurs in China? No, because the Chinese won't let anybody in to photograph.

Is anybody out there protesting the brutalization of the Uyghurs or all the horrible atrocities that are occurring all around the world because those people don't have iPhones or those people don't have, or the media doesn't care to publish that because it doesn't fit a narrative? We need to be caring people, but we also need to be honest about what the world is really like. And I understand iPhones. I understand cameras. But I also understand that lots of bad things are happening all over the world that aren't being photographed but that are probably as bad or worse and certainly far less justified.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] David, I think we could probably talk about this all night. We've sort of indirectly addressed some of the questions that the audience has asked. But it's after 9 o'clock, so I want to thank you for joining us tonight. And I think we all hope for a speedy resolution and the ability of people to live together in peace and security. And let's hope it can happen, even though the path may not be easy.

[David M. Friedman] Amen, brother.

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