His broadsides also show the complete contrast between his view of the duties of an American ambassador to Israel and those of Friedman.
The difference goes beyond the fact that Friedman was a supporter of the settlement movement prior to taking up his post, and Nides’s confession that Peace Now’s efforts to promote pressure on Israel’s government to make concessions to the Palestinians are “where my heart is.”
Rather, it is that Nides understands his position in the same way as every other US ambassador prior to Friedman. Unlike those sent to virtually every other country on the planet, American ambassadors to Israel are not there to foster better relations between the two governments. Instead, they act as imperial proconsuls whose task is to order client states around. Instead of helping Israel, they have sought to treat its democratically elected governments as wayward children who don’t know what’s best for them and to impose harmful policies on them regardless of the will of the Israeli people.
People like Nides and his Peace Now fan club are living in the past, as if the events of the last quarter-century in which the PA has repeatedly sabotaged and rejected efforts for peace and fostered terrorism never happened. The truth about Palestinian rejectionism contradicts their ideas about forcing Israel to make suicidal concessions, so they ignore it and demand that the Israelis do the same.
Though derided as an ideologue, Friedman was a realist. He had a better understanding of Palestinian political culture than those who claim to be devoted to empowering them. He rejected the proconsul role and instead sought to help Israel’s government make its case to the State Department and the president. In doing so, he did more to promote US interests than any previous ambassador to Israel.
As his recently published memoir Sledgehammer indicates, Friedman was up against a State Department apparatus that was as ignorant (he wrote that staffers had actually given Secretary of State Rex Tillerson a briefing book for a meeting about moving the embassy with Trump that claimed Israel united Jerusalem in 1996, rather than 1967, and the secretary didn’t recognize the mistake) as it was prejudiced against Israel’s best interests. He succeeded in helping push Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, to demand accountability from the PA for its support of terror, to recognize that the settlements were legal under international law, and to uphold Israeli sovereignty over the Golan. Rather than set back the cause of peace, Trump’s moves helped facilitate the Abraham Accords in which the Arab states made it clear they were no longer willing to be held hostage to Palestinian intransigence.
Friedman was, like the overwhelming majority of Americans that he represented in Jerusalem, a friend of Israel. He wanted to help it. Nides is there to tell Israelis who know more about the situation than he does that they are too “stupid” to understand what’s good for them. Rather than assist in moving the region forward to a more peaceful future, he’s intent on repeating the tragic mistakes of the past that Israelis have paid dearly for in blood.
Above all else, Nides’ comments ought to be a wake-up call for Israel’s divided government. Both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have sought to avoid criticism of Biden’s policies even if, as with his appeasement of Iran, they are aiding an existential threat to the Jewish state. But the notion that this administration is friendlier to Israel than that of Obama must now be seen as wishful thinking.
For his Peace Now rant, Nides deserved to be hauled into the Israeli Foreign Ministry for a dressing down. That’s what any sensible nation, including the United States, would do to any foreign ambassador who behaved in such an undiplomatic and offensive manner to their host government. But as long as Israelis accept the status of a client state, they must understand that — barring the election of a genuine friend as president — they will be subjected to more such demeaning efforts to undermine their security and sovereignty from those sent there as diplomats.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter @jonathans_tobin.