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Jan. 6, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:28
Amb. David Friedman: How to Deal with Iran and Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
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America is now coming in.
They can do something very simple, which is start enforcing sanctions against Iran.
I mean, Iran doubled its GDP from the end of the Trump administration to now.
So if you notice, when Trump got elected, the Iranian currency dropped precipitously to the lowest in history.
So maybe America never has to fire a shot.
Maybe America, with the combination of enforcing massive sanctions that bankrupt Iran, and with the recognition that Israel can hit Iran anytime, anywhere, it brings Iran away from its nuclear activity.
But I also believe that if they don't, if they continue to pursue a nuclear bomb, I have no doubt that America, together with Israel, will be partners in whatever it takes to stop that activity.
As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I'm sitting down with David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel in the last Trump administration, one of the chief architects of the Abraham Accords and the author of One Jewish State.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Ambassador David Friedman, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you, Jan.
Great to be with you.
So you had a pretty consequential term as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
Off the top of my head, there's something called the Abraham Accords that happened.
Of course, the embassy moved to Jerusalem.
That was something that I think nobody really expected.
What do you think of the new pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel?
What do you think he's going to face?
Well, Mike's a dear friend.
I mean, really one of my closest friends.
I think he's going to be great.
I couldn't be more excited about his pick.
Obviously, he's coming into a different period in the relationship than when I came in.
I mean, when I came in, the relationship was challenged.
Israel had a very difficult time.
During the Obama years.
And so, you know, I came in and the goal was to fix that.
And he'll have the same general focus, I think, to fix some of the problems with the Biden-Harris administration.
But then, of course, you have the war, which, you know, I didn't have.
I didn't have this October 7th massive trauma to Israel.
So he'll have to work on the rebuilding.
He'll have, I think, a more security-oriented focus.
But his commitment to Israel is absolutely rock solid, just as strong as mine.
But we both view American support for Israel as really essential, both to America's national interests and to America's soul.
So I think he'll follow much in the way that I did.
And just very briefly, tell me about the soul here you're talking about.
America, you know, it has a First Amendment, right, which we don't establish any religion.
But America's never been a godless country.
You know, America, you know, you can go to any courthouse in the United States, you'll see the words, in God we trust, you know, we pledge allegiance to one nation under God.
And the Declaration of Independence, which was a transformative document, says that, you know, the human rights that are enumerated there, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, are endowed by our creator, right?
They come from God.
How do we know what values, what rights God, you know, thought should be in doubt in every human being?
From reading the Bible.
And so, you know, people talk loosely about Judeo-Christian values, but they really are at the core of the American, you know, founding.
And where do those, you know, values come from?
From where did they emerge?
Where are they emitted?
Well, you know, Isaiah tells us that out of Zion goes forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
This is not just an ordinary relationship between two countries.
This is a relationship between America and the country from which the essential core values that animate and create the American civilization emerged.
And so that's the soul.
That's the soul I'm referring to.
And what would you say was the biggest single challenge that Ambassador Huckabee is going to face?
Well, I think...
Soon to be ambassador.
The Islamic Republic of Iran.
That is the essential challenge.
All of the bad actors that have attacked Israel recently and even going back years, they're all either funded or inspired or motivated or trained, or in some cases all for, by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
So where does Iran go from here?
I mean, we've witnessed in the last six months.
A real war, like an actual war between Israel and Iran.
Actual kinetic activity.
Israel has done some magnificent things.
But, you know, they've had 180 ballistic missiles shot at them by Iran, then 300 ballistic missiles.
None of them so far have had nuclear warheads.
But just imagine, you know, if they did.
So these are things that Israel has to now make sure it can prevent.
There's rumors that the Islamic leader just died today.
I mean, we'll find out more information about that.
There's a lot happening in Iran.
It deeply affects Israel and the United States, and I think we're getting the right administration in place to deal with that.
Maybe just tell me a little bit about what was accomplished during the Trump administration with respect to Israel.
We talked a little bit about the Abraham Accords and these peace agreements, but what else happened?
Well, look, I think the thing that was the most anticipated and probably the most appreciated was Moving our embassy to Jerusalem.
There was a Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by huge majorities in Congress in 1995. But it had a waiver clause that enabled presidents to waive the move in six-month intervals because of an argument of national security.
So whether it was under Clinton or under Bush or under Obama, they promised during their campaign that they would move the embassy because it was very popular among American people, but they never did it.
And they always use this national security waiver as the way down.
So we changed that.
A year into the Trump administration, the president stopped signing waivers, and he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
We had a ceremony opening the embassy on May 14th of 2018, 70 years to the day of Israel's independence.
I think we had 100 million people watching it live on television.
It was such a momentous and popular event, and it really just kind of...
It was just the right thing to do, especially in response to so many of Israel's enemies simply denying any historical connection between the Jewish people and the city of Jerusalem, which is just disproven textually, archaeologically, for all kinds of ways.
So that was the first thing.
Then there were other territorial disputes that we dealt with, such as the Golan Heights, which is...
Incredibly strategically important.
There's a dispute between Israel and Syria as to who has sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Israel had declared its sovereignty back in 1981, but the US and other countries didn't accept it, so he changed that.
So President Trump recognized the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Then we turned to the West Bank that we were just talking about, and the question was, well, did the Jewish people have the right to live there or not?
Because the State Department, back to 1978, had a policy.
That, written by a guy named Herbert Hansel, that it was illegal for the Jewish people to live anywhere in the West Bank, which, by the way, extends as well to the old city of Jerusalem.
He said it's all illegal.
It's all illegally occupied territory.
That was really a call for Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, to look at that, and he did.
And we spent about eight months researching and looking at it.
And he came out with what's been referred to as the Pompeo Doctrine, where he reversed all that and said the Jewish people have the right to live.
In Judea and Samaria, which is their biblical homeland.
So those are, you know, that plus the Abraham Accords is sort of, I would say, the four things that are mostly closely associated with the president's pro-Israel position throughout his first term.
Do you expect that Saudi Arabia might join into something like the Abraham Accords during this future administration?
I think so.
I think Saudi would have joined if we probably had another six months or so in our first term.
But I think they will join.
I think they have every interest in joining.
There's a lot to be gained from Saudi normalizing with Israel.
It's, I think, a very strong bulwark against further dangerous activity by Iran.
There's also a lot to be gained from Saudi increasing its ties.
With the United States, and there's a lot to be gained from Saudi moving closer to, I would say, modernity.
I mean, they're doing a lot now trying to move forward, you know, from a fairly non-modern society.
I think all that is good.
I think it hopefully leads the Muslim world, because the Saudis are the leaders of the Muslim world, leads the Muslim world, I think, out of the dark ages, which unfortunately so many Muslim regimes have kind of, you know, facilitated.
So, yeah, I think we're heading in that direction.
Mr. Ambassador, just a quick sec.
We're going to take a break, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.
Something that we've heard a lot about is UNRWA. I've actually done a number of episodes on the topic.
And we know now that there were some of these UNRWA employees that were involved in the October 7th activities.
And of course, the Trump administration kind of famously defunded it.
Then it was refunded.
What should happen with UNRWA? I just bury it and start again.
It's so deeply flawed.
I think that comes from the top down.
I think it comes not just from UNRWA in Gaza, but the UNRWA establishment all the way back to a couple blocks from where we are now at the UN. I should just mention that this is, for those that aren't aware, it's this agency specifically for refugees, Palestinian refugees.
Right.
And I guess maybe clarify it even a little further, which is that the UN has an all-purpose refugee organization that tries to settle refugees.
It's called the UN High Commission for Refugees.
And that's for all the refugees in the world except for one group, and that's the Palestinians.
And UNRWA is the singular.
It would extend, technically, to somebody like Gigi Hadid, who's a supermodel in Beverly Hills, but who came from Palestine before 1948. It's not just a waste of money, but it does sponsor schools that really inculcate people with deep hatred for...
For Jews, I mean, I can tell you one.
Fourth grade school played, and half the kids dress up as Jews, you know, with like beards and, you know, big noses put on.
I mean, the worst caricatures of Jews.
And then the others dress up as terrorists with, you know, machine guns and, you know, fatigues.
And the guys with the machine guns shoot the Jews.
The Jews fall down dead.
And then the guys with the guns take a bow, and the parents all applaud.
This is a fourth-grade play, and it's all under the supervision of UNRWA. So I think it's broken.
I think it's irretrievably broken.
I don't know how many UNRWA employees were Hamas terrorists, but it's not a small number.
And I just start from scratch.
And so what do you expect the U.S. will do?
I think under the Trump administration, I know they're going to be very circumspect about any organization that purports to...
Inject money back into the Gaza Strip without getting real assurances that the money is going to go to the right places.
I think we need another country to come in that has some credibility.
Again, I'm not sure why anyone wants to jump into this mess, but the idea that America is going to throw money at this without real assurances that it's going to lead to a better outcome, I think I'd be very skeptical.
Without further ado, let's jump into the one-state solution.
Or the one Jewish state.
Sure.
Well, why don't you kind of lay out the argument for me?
Sure.
You start with the conclusion that we can't have a Palestinian state.
It is an existential risk to Israel.
It's probably an existential risk to Jordan as well.
The last thing the world needs is a terror state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Palestinians have proven themselves ineligible.
To have a state in which they control their airspace, their borders, their electromagnetic spectrum.
I mean, they just can't.
There's too much of a risk to the entire region.
So now we're sort of in the business of collecting resumes, right?
Who's best equipped to be sovereign?
Someone's got to be sovereign.
Ambassador, let me just jump in for a moment.
But basically you're saying that the Palestinian people do not have a right of self-determination.
Is that what you're saying here?
On a national level?
Yeah, I would say that, sure.
And I'm not sure why they're any different from other peoples.
I mean, there are lots of peoples around the world that don't have their own country, that are living good lives and are content with their environment.
And I would also say that the Palestinians have never really expressed a serious desire for national self-determination.
That's different from controlling...
Your own local taxes, your own local zoning, your own local curriculum, assuming it's not, you know, malign.
I don't think anyone would deny any people the right to have local autonomy.
But national self-determination, you know, where they get an army and they get the ability to act, you know, potentially against their neighbors?
No, because they've shown no capacity to live in peace with their neighbors for a period of decades, many, many decades.
The low point being on October 7, 2003. But the other thing I would say, Jan, is that their leadership, Mahmoud Abbas, who's supposed to be the better one, the better leader of the bunch, right?
He got a phone call in to President Trump after the election.
He's in like the 19th year of a four-year term, right?
I mean, he was elected for four years.
He stayed on for 15 years.
He hasn't called elections.
He's shown a massive capacity.
For corruption and enrichment of his cronies.
So I think that, you know, from the perspective of the Palestinians, of which I have a decent perspective, having spent four years in the region and meeting a lot of Palestinian people, I think a lot of them have no particular confidence in the ability of a Palestinian government to act appropriately, to make their lives better and more prosperous, more freedom, more dignity.
So I think you have to look at this.
Not in terms of absolute rights.
It's a question of reality, facts on the ground, and what's happened in the past.
And on this record, I would say the Palestinians do not have a right of national self-determination.
Essentially, you're arguing for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
Right.
I am.
But Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank does not mean the absence of a right of the Palestinians to live there.
The West Bank is divided into areas A, B, and C. And areas A and B are entirely Arab.
And areas C is mostly Jewish, although Arabs have encroached into it.
My view is that, get rid of all those fictions.
One large territory governed by Israel, where Israel will export to this region the values of democracy and freedom and opportunity that it has in its own legally recognized country.
And the Palestinians who live in this territory...
We'll continue to live there, as will their children and their grandchildren.
They'll have the rights to be permanent residents in this territory.
And their lives will improve dramatically.
I think this is a very important point, because people love to use the A word, the apartheid word, when they talk about Israel generally.
And people should study apartheid, because apartheid was efforts by the South African government, the racist South African government, Black people, pull them out of their homes, move them into shanties without running water or electricity, and move them all into these substandard areas.
This is the opposite.
This is a plan where the Palestinians who live in the West Bank will live there, will have the legal entitlement to remain there, their children, their grandchildren as well.
Their lives will be improved because Israel will then, once it has sovereignty over this area and it owns it, it will have the capacity to then inject better roads and highways and schools and hospitals.
So it's an end to the notion of a Palestinian state, right?
Because obviously if Israel takes sovereignty over the entirety of the land, that would have been, at least in part, earmarked for a Palestinian state.
There can no longer be a Palestinian state.
That's a good thing.
That's a good thing for Israel, it's a good thing for Jordan, it's a good thing for the world, and it's a good thing for the Palestinian people as well.
Look, inside of Israel right now, there's a 20% Arab minority, right?
There's about four or five elite universities in Israel, maybe better than some of our most elite universities.
More than 20% of the students in these elite universities are Arab, right?
Arabs have achieved the pinnacle of law, medicine, commerce, business, academia.
So, you know, Israel has a track record of empowering its minorities and treating them well.
And my argument, and that's why I'm very careful about the words I use for the book, one Jewish state.
There's 30 or 40 Muslim states around the world, right?
There's Christian states, Buddhist states, Hindu states.
We're just talking about one Jewish state, just one, right?
It's the size of New Jersey.
And my argument is there ought to be room in this world for one Jewish state on the land.
As to which the Jewish people have the greatest historical entitlement in any people anywhere in the world.
If Israel's going to absorb this territory, you run the risk that Palestinians are going to elect a non-Jewish regime for the one Jewish state.
So we have to find a way to thread this needle.
And I believe it's threadable.
There's no government in the world.
That hasn't created some negotiated regime around the goals that the government sought to achieve.
So, for example, when America was formed, there was a concern about just having a House of Representatives, which is the most populist body of our branches of government, because it's picked directly by people in every single congressional district.
So they created a Senate.
What does a Senate mean?
The Senate means that If I live in Montana, where I am one one-thousandth of the population of the United States, I still get to pick one-fiftieth of the United States Senate.
Is that a democracy?
These are the various interests that came together to create our country.
It's not a pure democracy.
So we can come up with ten different ways to thread this needle.
What we can't do is create a governance mechanism that jeopardizes The one Jewish state.
Short of that, you know, the Palestinians would have autonomy on civilian matters.
I think that would, frankly, give people a lot of pride as to how the Palestinians were able to run their lives.
I think you're suggesting they wouldn't have voting rights.
Is that right?
Not on a national level.
Arabs in Israel have that right.
Citizens of Israel have that right.
I had one example.
I pointed out the fact that, you know, in America and Puerto Rico, you know, they also don't vote.
This isn't necessarily such a new idea, right?
I mean, Caroline wrote a book about it.
There's people that are advocating for it.
But it's just something that you don't hear very much about on this side of the pond, so to speak.
Right.
So why is that?
Well, a couple of reasons.
First of all, there's only so much appetite people have to really deal with a problem that's been around forever.
For everybody's collective memory, it's always been a problem.
I think, you know, people might productively spend their time elsewhere.
The other thing is the two-state solution has, you know, become, if you will, the, you know, certainly it's the mother's milk of the Democratic Party and probably other than Trump, the, you know, the mother's milk of the Republican Party.
I mean, this is, somehow people kind of got this idea back from the early 90s that this was the idea.
You know, you put the Jews over here, you put the Palestinians over there, they live, you know, equal measures of whatever you think is important of, you know, autonomy and dignity and they live side by side and we'd have peace and, you know, Kumbaya.
It's just a fantasy.
I mean, it's the lazy man's approach to the Middle East, because, you know, you just say, yeah, why don't we just split, you know, they're having a dispute on land, they're split it up, draw a line, split it up, everybody gets what they get.
And then, you know, it's just, it's not what the conflict is about.
Palestinians, you know, do not want...
To live peacefully in a state, side-by-side Israel.
The Palestinian movement from the day it was created is a movement to destroy the state of Israel.
It's not a two-state solution.
It's really their one-state solution.
When you hear everybody yelling on college campuses, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
That is the Palestinian goal.
From the Jordan River to the sea, which means extinguish the state of Israel, replace it with Palestine.
I think that people don't want to confront that unpleasant reality, because once you confront it...
And you've got to deal with it.
Well, you know, it makes it much harder, right?
You lose your convenient, you know, split-the-baby argument.
Nobody has managed to construct a two-state solution that won't be an existential threat to the state of Israel.
Well, Ambassador David Friedman, it's such a pleasure to have had you on the show.
It's been a great conversation.
Thank you, Jan.
Thank you all for joining Ambassador David Friedman and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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