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Aug. 16, 2022 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
01:21:53
Middle East: Peace Beckons | David Friedman | EP 279
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The effect it's had on the people of Israel, the people of UAE, the optimism and opportunity it's brought to the Middle East, none of that has been covered at all.
And I think it's all because it came from Yeah, but that's no bloody excuse here.
That's no excuse.
Like, this transcends the political, as far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as anybody reasonable would be concerned.
And it's important to give the devil his due, and that's the case even if the devil happens to be Trump and his damned minions.
And the facts seem to me to be clear on the ground that this represents a significant and very unexpected move forward on the peace front in the Middle East.
And that's been a problem that has threatened all of us for 70 years, for longer than that, on all sorts of fronts.
Hello, everyone.
It's my great pleasure and privilege to have with me today Ambassador David Friedman.
As the United States Ambassador to Israel from March 2017 until January 2021, Ambassador Friedman successfully guided unprecedented diplomatic advancements in the U.S.-Israel relationship, including moving the United States Embassy to Jerusalem, a move that was promised by many previous administrations but never occurred, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
He is also among a very small group of American officials signally responsible for the Abraham Accords.
Comprehensive peace and normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, for which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.
Ambassador Friedman, He was recognized in each of the past five years by the Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world, coming in first in 2020.
He also was named one of the 20 most impactful persons of the past decade by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Ambassador Friedman was honored by President Trump With a rare National Security Medal in September 2020 and by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff with a Meritorious Civilian Service Medal in April 2019.
He has received numerous other honors, recognitions and awards including honorary doctorates from Yeshiva University in New York and Ariel University in the Shamron.
On February 8th, 2022, HarperCollins published Ambassador Friedman's memoir, Sledgehammer, how breaking with the past brought peace to the Middle East.
In his first week, Sledgehammer broke sales records for a book on the State of Israel.
Ambassador Friedman is also the founder of the Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength, Welcome, Ambassador Friedman, David.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
I'm very pleased that you're willing to share what you've done with me and my audience, and welcome to the discussion.
Thank you, Jordan.
It's an honor to be on your show.
So, let's start, let's jump right in.
Let's start with an overview of the Abraham Accords and people are, I'm sure that my ignorance is shared by many people.
We can start right from the beginning.
What did you do and why and what does it mean?
Well, the Abraham Accords is a series of agreements between Israel, four Muslim countries.
If you add Kosovo and Europe, it's actually five Muslim countries.
And, you know, people have heard for years, for decades, about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the most intractable, if you will, of all the conflicts.
And, you know, there was some progress made in the 1970s with Egypt.
And then in 1994 with Jordan.
And that was it.
25 years and there was no progress.
And you had the Arab League consisting of about 22 countries that reflexively would oppose Israel, not just at the United Nations, but in every diplomatic attempt made by the United States.
So the United States accepted this conventional wisdom that had been around for 50 years.
That until Israel made progress with the Palestinians, there could be no progress among any other of the Arab nations, which was in many respects counter-intuitive.
We proved it to be flat out wrong.
And as a result, the Middle East remained a very dangerous place.
With really no opportunities for any advancement, notwithstanding the fact there were more than 20 Arab countries, all with different issues, different populations, different concerns.
We knew that Israel and some of these countries already had covert contacts.
We knew that most of these countries didn't hate Israel.
Some of them didn't even know why.
They didn't like Israel.
Some of them, you know, just reflexively acted against Israel, but you couldn't do anything because of this conventional wisdom.
John Kerry was the biggest cheerleader for this point of view, that until Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, you can't move forward.
And, you know, when we came into office in 2017, we were given a mandate from President Trump to try to bring some greater modicum of peace to the Middle East.
And what we recognized was that virtually everything that was in the playbook of the State Department for the past 50 years was just wrong.
It was just wrong.
It was stale.
It had done nothing but increase the misery of the peoples living in the region.
And we started to take a different tack.
There's lots of pieces to that, and I'm happy to go through them as you like me to.
But we basically just changed all the rules of the game.
Okay, so what accounts for this remarkable intransigence on this front, lasting 50 years, The evidence for the validity of your viewpoint is that when you challenged this presumption, and you said the central presumption was there was no movement possible on the Arab-Israeli front,
or let's say on the Muslim-Israeli front, maybe to broaden it to some degree if that's not appropriate, there was no progress possible on that without movement in relationship to peace with the Palestinians.
And so that was accepted dogma, and it...
It had put things into stasis for five decades.
Now you pointed out that the countries that are relevant to such an agreement are diverse and share a very diverse range of opinions, let's say, towards Israel.
And so why was this accepted dogma On the State Department's part, and why was that accepted in some sense without question by presidents other than Trump until recently?
I mean, this is the biggest peace issue in the world and has been since I've been alive, I would say, with the possible exception of the constant clamoring on the Cold War front.
So how do you account for this?
Well, I found it disturbing and at times amusing.
I entered government from the outside.
I had briefings early on when I was confirmed as ambassador with people in the State Department.
And to them, the entire Arab-Israeli conflict was simply boiled down to Israel and the Palestinians.
First of all, that was just the accepted dog.
I challenged it.
I challenged it on numerous occasions.
And they said, look, you know, it's a great question.
You're wasting your time.
You're completely wasting your time.
The Palestinians are the issue.
If you solve the Palestinian issue, you can unlock the rest of the Arab world, the rest of the Muslim world, as you say.
If you can't solve the Palestinian issue, nobody else will even talk to you.
Now, just to put that into a bigger context, When you say the Palestinian issue, you're talking about Israel not just making peace with the Palestinian Authority, which in and of itself is a corrupt organization whose leader, as people like to say, is in the 17th year of his four-year term.
You know, he was elected for four years.
He hasn't had elections since.
He stayed on another 13 years with no democratic mandate.
He runs a corrupt government.
He respects no human rights.
The justice system is non-existent.
The financial system Transparency is non-existent.
There is extraordinary subjugation of women.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.
And those are the good guys.
Then you have Hamas, which operates in the West Bank but primarily controls the Gaza Strip.
Take all that, and they're extraordinarily violent, and they don't even accept the notion that one Jew should live anywhere between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
So these are the people, these are the organizations that the State Department says, until you get them on board, you can't move any further within the region.
And there's really no way to get them on board.
I mean, there really isn't any way.
Okay, so there's two issues at work there, from what I understand, then.
The first is what appears to me to be an oversimplified rationalization for failure to move forward, which would be the acceptance of a low-resolution ideology that you can boil down all the complexities of the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian relationship to the issue of Of Palestine.
And that because that's intractable, there's no point wasting effort on the attempt to take a more differentiated approach to bringing peace to the Middle East, combined with, and this is a mystery that we could also delve into, The fact that there seems to be a reflexive identification for many on the West with the Palestinians on the side of this conflict and it seems to me that's fueled by this equally global and
vague reductive notion that The Palestinians are oppressed and oppressed people are always virtuous.
And since oppressed people are virtuous, the Israelis must be oppressors and wrong, despite whatever sins, let's say, the Palestinian leadership manifests, which are justifiable in any case because of the fact that they're oppressed and couldn't possibly know better.
Is that too cynical?
No, no, it's not even cynical enough.
I mean, you could take it another step, which is the Palestinians, apart from your point about, well, they must be right if they're weak, which is, of course, one does not flow from the other.
But, you know, the Palestinian leadership, the Palestinian Authority, which is, again, you know, as people say, the least dirty shirt in the closet, the Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of million dollars from its budget that could otherwise be used to build, you know, a hospital or a school.
They use that money to reward and incentivize terrorists to kill Jews.
And the United States funds the Palestinian Authority.
We didn't under Trump.
We cut that all out.
But, you know, Biden has recently resumed all that funding.
So just to put this in perspective, the United States of America, the taxpayers of the United States, are paying the Palestinian Authority to incentivize their people to kill Jews.
I mean, that's not too broad a statement.
Okay, so, okay, well, I don't often get accused of not being cynical enough, but I do appreciate that correction.
So, let's return to the Palestinian issue later, because we don't want to get sidelined entirely by that, as the whole world has been sidelined for five decades.
Let's talk about the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, and you said Kosovo.
And so these countries, for some reason, were willing to move beyond, let's say, this State Department dicta and work with you to improve relations with Israel and to improve the possibility of peace in the Middle East.
And so why were they willing to do that and why them in particular?
So let me focus.
I'll share with you a conversation I had with, because I think it's the most telling, with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, who was the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates.
And I sat with him, you know, this past summer after the Abraham Accords were already, you know, out for more than a year.
And I said to him, Is this just about Israel having common enemies with Iran and Bahrain?
Is it just about the fact that everybody doesn't like and is threatened by Iran?
Or is there more to this?
What in your mind got us started?
And what he said to me, and he said something which I thought was very profound, although probably the Russian-Ukraine war may be the exception that proves that rule.
What he said to me is, you know, In the 21st century, the real conflicts in the world are not really between nations anymore.
They're really between ideologies.
And primarily, they're between extremists and moderates.
And we in the UAE, we're fighting that battle.
And in the United States, you're fighting that battle.
And in Israel, you're fighting that battle.
You have roughly 80% of the populations are center-right, center-left, in the middle.
In the past, they've always been able to find common ground.
But now, you know, you've got 10% people crazy on the left, 10% crazy on the right.
You know, extremists willing to resort to violence to achieve their means.
That's the fight that we have to win.
And Israel and UAE and America and Bahrain and Morocco, we're all on the same side of that fight.
Our interests are completely aligned.
And I thought, you know, I mean, that's after the fact, but that's as good as an explanation as I've heard from anybody as to why the Abraham Accords came together.
But...
This is very important.
Just because there are reasons for people to align, you have to create the right environment to do that.
You have to create the political opportunity for it to happen.
The United States has to create the coverage for these countries to move out of their comfort zone.
And so it was a long process, and if I can, it began in May of 2017.
I can share with you what I think was the first step and one of the most important, if I could share that with you now.
Please do.
Please do.
So, you know, the very first trip that President Trump took to the Mideast was in...
I'm sorry, the very first trip President Trump took on foreign soil was to the Mideast.
And he went to three places.
First place he went was to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where he assembled 50 Muslim nations.
And he said two things to them, and the tape is extraordinary.
They were at rapt attention.
And he said two things, which I don't think any president has ever said before.
The first thing he said was, radical Islamic terrorism is your problem in the first instance.
I don't want to have to deal with it on my side of the Atlantic.
Don't make me deal with radical Islamic terrorism.
You solve the problem.
It's coming from here.
And if you do, you will find the United States to be an extraordinarily good friend.
That was the first thing he said, and a lot of people listened, and a lot of people acted on it.
The second thing he said is, for those of you still wasting your time thinking that Israel is going to be wiped off the map or they're not going to exist, you're wasting your time.
Forget about it.
It's never going to happen.
Israel, you should be seeking to emulate Israel.
You know, Israel as an economy, as a power, as a democracy.
You know, this is a solution.
This is a solution in the Middle East.
It's not a problem.
And those of you who still think it's a problem and think somehow you're going to shortchange Israel or get it to go away or push it into the sea, it's a pipe dream.
You're wasting your time.
It'll never happen.
And it's inconsistent with the relationship with the United States.
He said those two things.
And let me tell you, you know, at the time, We couldn't tell you how far that would go, but now looking back from in hindsight, boy, was that an important speech.
And he doesn't get any of the credit he deserves for it, but boy, was that important.
The next thing he does is he flies directly to Tel Aviv.
Now, they told him, you know, Mr.
President, we have to stop in Amman.
Why?
Because you can't fly from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
The Saudis won't let.
And the president says, I just spent, you know, two days with the king.
He's making me stop in Amman.
He's making me kind of go out of my way just for some symbolic gesture.
Tell him I want to fly straight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
And, of course, when he made that request, it was granted.
And this was the first flight ever from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
You know, Biden's making a big deal now that he's flying straight to Saudi Arabia from Tel Aviv.
The President of the United States under Trump did it five years ago.
Okay, so then he comes to Israel.
Where does he go?
He does something no president has ever done before.
He goes to the Western Wall.
He's the only sitting president to go to the Western Wall.
Why is that important?
Because presidents used to like to come to Israel and go to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Memorial.
Yad Vashem is an extraordinary place.
It's one of the most stirring places on earth.
But Yad Vashem is not the state of Israel.
Yad Vashem is not the DNA of the state of Israel.
The DNA of the state of Israel It's the Western Wall.
It's the Temple Mount.
This is what connects the Jewish people to their 4,000-year-old history.
You know, at the Western Wall, you see Mount Moriah, where Abraham bound Isaac.
You have the two temples.
This is the place where Jews have prayed for 2,000 years to be returned.
Well, Trump went there.
Again, the only sitting president ever to visit the Western Wall.
Biden wouldn't go.
I mean, he was too timid.
You know, he reverted to that, you know, that kind of stale, you know, sense of even-handedness.
He wouldn't go.
So the president goes to the Western Wall, and he gave an incredible speech in Israel, again, recognizing not just that the Jewish people have suffered, which of course Jews have suffered throughout history, but they did more than suffer.
They built something.
They restored their people to the land of Israel, fulfilling not vengeance for the Holocaust, but fulfilling a 2,000-year-old dream, unfulfilled dream of the Jewish people.
And then last but not least, he went to the Vatican, okay?
And he met with the Pope, and he incorporated, you know, the Christian theology into his overall message.
So this was the seeds that were planted that eventually got us to the Abraham Accords.
Lots of steps then along the way.
We'll get back to more with Ambassador David Friedman in just a second.
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Okay, so you said that Trump went to Riyadh, he brought 50 Muslim nations together, and he made two very blunt declarations, which was to control terrorism, to place that back, in some sense, in the domain of the responsibility of the Muslim countries.
And that is in accordance with the discussion that you described with the leaders from the UAE, that the People, civilized people of the world, let's say, are suffering from the same problem, which is how do you control a minority of extremists?
And we can get back to that.
And then Trump also said forthrightly two other things that the Americans are going to throw their weight behind Israel permanently, and So any dream of eradicating Israel as a state is a pipe dream unless you're willing to face the consequences, let's say.
And also that Israel should be regarded as a state to emulate, given its democratic structure and its thriving economy and its ability, let's say, to regenerate the desert and all of that.
And that it could be viewed as a partner to learn from and appreciate rather than as an enemy.
And then...
The emphasis on the necessity for the unbroken flight, the visit to the Western Wall, and the visit to the Vatican.
And so why in the world was Trump able to do that?
Why was he willing to do that?
And what made him, let's say, simultaneously a friend of the Jews and Israel, but also someone that the Arabs and the Muslims more broadly were willing to deal with?
Well, he was willing to do it because, first of all, he assembled a group of people that he respected and that I think were all moving in this direction.
Primarily, I would say Jared, Kushner, and me.
Two guys, no government experience, but people that he had great respect for.
We explained to him that This conflict was going nowhere.
And unless he, you know, radically realigned America's priorities, you know, he would finish his term in office the same way everybody else did.
And we had these discussions.
And I think, look, he...
He is the right president for the Middle East because he is strong.
He is fearless.
I mean, look, he worked that—those actions were manifest throughout his four years, including the decision to— To assassinate Qasem Soleimani, which, you know, was an extraordinary message he sent to the Iranians.
But the president is very strong.
He's a strong leader.
And in the Middle East, you know, we have a saying, you know, in the Middle East, you're either strong or you're dead.
You know, and everybody, everybody, even the countries that didn't agree with him, Even the Palestinians that reviled him because he wouldn't agree with them, they respected him.
And even the Palestinians said that the only guy who can make peace is Trump, because he's tough and he's strong and he backs up what he says, and none of us can pull the bull over his eyes.
What we say on the Arab street in Arabic is going to get translated.
He's going to find out about it.
He's not going to give us, you know, the wiggle room to, you know, to say nice things in English for the American press and then say something different to the Arab street.
You know, he's holding us accountable.
It's very interesting.
You know, I mentioned to you just before we started this interview a statement by Nietzsche.
Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity.
And Trump is, from the perspective of a psychologist, a person who's low in trait agreeableness, so highly disagreeable, or at least highly impolite, technically speaking.
And that's not an insult or a criticism, by the way.
It just means that he's not...
Well, it means that he's forthright and blunt and brash and able to say no.
And that does have the consequence of making him a divisive character on the domestic front.
But it's an open question how much that forthright character And stubborn strength of character is the prerequisite for the kinds of negotiations that you're describing.
And that's really something that we don't understand.
We don't understand the full complexity of human personality and what's necessary in each situation.
So why do you think...
Okay, so now we know why Trump could do it, at least at a personal level.
Why do you think he cared and made this a centerpiece of his policy?
Because he's a businessman in some real sense.
It wasn't self-evident to me, and I think to many people, that foreign policy would necessarily be an interest of Trump's, and yet he pursued this Middle East policy assiduously and carefully, and with malice aforethought, let's say, and also very effectively.
So why was this so important to him?
So, look, it wasn't something he ran on.
He ran almost entirely on a domestic agenda.
He has a real interest in Israel, both because people that he's close to have a deep interest in Israel, whether it was Jared or Ivanka or me or many of his friends that he...
We dealt with over years in the New York real estate market.
He also, I think, was intrigued by the challenge, because peace in the Middle East is considered as likely as a solar eclipse, or maybe even less likely.
The challenge, I think, was something that he saw interesting.
And look, I don't think he spent a huge portion of his time on this.
What he did is he deputized Jared and me to work the region.
Jason Greenblatt as well, when he was working there.
We worked the region.
We studied.
We thought more about what to do.
After that trip, we began to...
Move forward with some real historic pro-Israel moves, both because we wanted to do it, both because the president had promised he would do it, because they were extraordinarily important to many of the people that voted for him, and also because it would give us a real sense Of how a pro-Israel policy could be harmonized with a pro-moderate Sunni policy as well.
And, you know, it was interesting, my friend Jared likes to talk about his conversations when he spoke to a few of his Arab friends in the region about potentially moving our embassy to Jerusalem.
And they said to him, Jared, I'm not going to tell you to move the embassy or not move the embassy, but what I am going to tell you is that if you move the embassy, you'll find out who your friends are.
And that just struck me as an extraordinary observation.
Because when we moved the embassy, we did.
We found out who our friends were.
You know, again, the State Department, the CIA, much to the consternation of Mike Pompeo, who was running the CIA at the time, But the CIA analysts predicted that, you know, if we move our embassy, we're going to create an arc of violence from Morocco all the way to Pakistan.
And everything that we did on our own, all the conversations we had, suggested exactly the opposite.
But what do we know?
What do I know?
I'm a recovering lawyer, and, you know, Jared is a real estate guy.
But everything we knew, everybody we spoke to said that's not going to be the case.
Yeah, well, it's also the case that Well, it's also the case that, you know, you'd think, if you were thinking about this strategically beforehand in some sense, that the move of the embassy to Jerusalem would have scuttled any chances whatsoever.
That would be the accepted dogma anyways, that would have scuttled any chances whatsoever of moving forward with a broader peace accord.
You know, so much for expert prediction, but that's not at all what happened.
No, not only is it not what happened, but in terms of the arc of getting from that trip that the president took in May of 2017 to the Abraham Accords, one of the most important steps along the way, counter-intuitively, was moving our embassy to Jerusalem.
Why?
Because what the president was saying in moving our embassy to Jerusalem, he was delivering a few messages.
The first is, I keep my campaign promises.
I'm a reliable ally.
I told people I would move the embassy to Jerusalem.
So did Obama, so did Clinton, so did Bush.
I'm keeping that promise.
You can trust me.
Number two, I'm going to fulfill the will of the American people.
The American people have, through their Congress, voted overwhelmingly to move the embassy to Jerusalem through the Jerusalem Embassy Act.
I'm taking that view seriously.
I care what the American people think.
The other presidents have all signed waivers.
I'm going to do something different.
Number three, I'm not afraid.
Who would I be afraid of in doing it?
I'm not afraid of rogue nations.
I'm not afraid of the threats of rogue nations.
I'm not afraid of terrorists.
I'm not afraid of rogue actors.
I'm going to do what's best for America.
I'm going to do what I promised.
And if somebody wants to complain, you have my phone number.
But I'm doing what I think is right.
Right, and as you said, you get to know then who supports you and who complains in a real concrete sense, right?
Because it's no longer abstract.
It's something that actually happened, something that was in some sense, let's say, provocative, but also justifiable, especially from the democratic and legislative perspectives.
And so you know who complained?
I mean, apart from some, you know, perfunctory words of complaint that were kind of meaningless, you know, who complained?
Hamas, you know, a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction.
Nobody else complained, even the PA. So we don't care about that.
In fact, we're happy about it, because you always want to irritate the right people in some real sense.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we now did a couple of things.
We proved that we would keep promises.
We proved that we would stand with our ally Israel and recognize what the American people have recognized for two decades, that Jerusalem's the capital of Israel.
We're not afraid, okay?
And we're willing to...
So what happened?
What happened was a lot of countries took notice And instead of being angry, they said, wow, America can really be a good friend to its allies.
It can be counted upon under this president.
How do we get in on this?
How do we join this circle of trust that seems like a whole different America?
This guy Trump, I want to be with him.
I don't want to be against him.
I see, I see.
So, okay, so let me ask you another question here that's a little bit of a sideways move.
Okay, so as I mentioned when I introduced you, you know, my ignorance knows no bounds.
And I want to talk a little bit about Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt.
So I'll tell you right off the bat that I know very little about Jared Kushner, but I can tell you what I do know and how I learned it.
And what I know is that he's a reprehensible individual who was never suited for his job, and he was a nepotistic appointee by the Trump administration, and that there was nothing good about him on any front.
And I learned all of that, I would say, from my casual interactions with the legacy media, whom I've learned to trust about absolutely nothing.
And so what I'm curious about is I need to know more.
I would like to know more about Jared and why you and Jason Greenblatt, and more about Greenblatt as well, why you outsiders, first of all, were brought in, and why you were able to, you know, what was Trump's justification for bringing you in?
Why did you agree to do this?
And why were you able to and willing to move the logjam?
In some sense, it makes sense, right?
If something's been stuck for 50 years, maybe you don't want to stay working with the same people who've been stuck for 50 years.
And so outsiders, arguably, at least can look at something different.
The counter-argument would be, well, you guys were, in some real sense, I don't think this is overstating it, but foreign policy and policy amateurs.
And so...
Why did the teamwork between the three of you work?
What positive attributes, I suppose, and negative attributes did you bring to bear on the problem?
And why did it work?
So, you know, that question probably requires a book to fully answer.
And I have some of that in my book.
But I would say that, first of all, starting off kind of on a macro level, I don't think you have the Abraham Accords without Jared Kushner.
I think Jared did two things that were essential for the Abraham Accords.
The first of which was just generally, I think he established really important relations of trust with these countries.
Now, how do you know that?
We announced the Abraham Accords, the first one, with the UAE on August 13th of 2020.
We did it from the White House.
We did it from the Oval Office.
This was an Oval Office that was plagued by leaks, you know, as well as me.
Leaks every day.
I mean, every single day somebody was running to the press with something about Trump, what he was about to do, something unflattering, or even something good.
I mean, but the leaks were just rampant, all right?
When we were working on the Abraham Accords, really from the day we began, we were working on our agreement with the UAE for over a month.
When we announced the deal with the UAE on August 13th, it really shocked the world.
Nobody saw it coming.
Nobody.
Why did no one see it coming?
Because Jared and I, and Jason had already left the government at that point, but Jared and I And the president and Mike Pompeo, Robert O'Brien, Mike Pence, that was it.
That was the universe of people in America who knew about this.
Israel, you know, probably Netanyahu and Ron Dermer and his national security advisor, three or four people in the UAE. The level of trust that we established, and Jared was really, I would say, the key to all that, creating that level of trust.
The trust was extraordinary.
It wouldn't have got done without trust.
The second thing that Jared did, which is, I think, maybe even more remarkable.
We put out a peace plan in January of 2020.
Most people consider it to be extraordinarily pro-Israel.
In my view, I think it was the maximalist position that could be given to the Palestinians in a deal that involved Israel.
It had the support of a right-wing Israeli government, which the Palestinians ran to the Security Council and ripped it up.
When we announced this deal, There were responses from Saudi Arabia, UAE, a bunch of Morocco, other countries.
And Jared worked day and night to make sure that even though the Palestinians were going to trash this deal, we got more of a positive response from the moderate Sunni nations.
And we did.
I mean, we got a response from Saudi Arabia that said, this is a good start.
We think this should be the basis of future negotiations under the supervision of the United States.
And that's from Saudi.
Saudi was the author of the Arab Peace Initiative, which had been their default position for 30 years.
I mean, it was a one-page document that Israel could never accept.
So, you know, Jared was able to work these countries in a way How?
How?
How?
How did he do it?
So, you know what?
I actually think it was in the relationship.
I think, first of all, he had huge credibility because, you know, in the Gulf, almost always the guy who's sort of the second in command at the Gulf in any of these Gulf countries is related to the king, right?
So, I mean, I think they saw Jared, you know, as a prince.
You know, this is a guy who really, you know, we can trust him.
He can deliver for the president.
The president's never going to leave this guy hanging.
So he's credible.
Okay, so he's credible for a variety of reasons.
Very, very credible.
Also, look, Very, very smart.
This, unfortunately, doesn't come across.
Jared doesn't do much media, but very, very smart.
He's got a book coming out in August.
I can't wait to read it.
Oh, I should interview him.
You should, because I don't know what it says.
I'm really looking forward to reading it.
But very, very smart, and with his eye on the ball, extremely loyal to Israel.
His grandparents are Holocaust survivors.
His parents have invested huge amounts of their philanthropic dollars into Israel, but at the same time made many trips to the Gulf and just developed credibility.
So I think that's really the heart of it.
And this, okay, and so let's talk about this relation issue.
So he was meeting people in person, I presume, and how did he pick the people and what is it that he offered them?
Because we also haven't talked about the details, the specific details of the Accords themselves, which we have to get into, but I'm very interested in the process.
And so, okay, so he was credible, he was close to Trump.
People assumed that he had the power to do what he said he was going to do.
Yes.
Then I think a lot of this was You know, face-to-face meetings and discussions.
You know, what are you concerned about?
What do you guys need?
What do you think is important for the relationship with the United States?
I mean, it's really a lot of talking and a lot of listening and a lot of getting to know each other and trying to find out where there was common ground.
Now, you know, in the early years, in 2017 and 2018...
Some of these countries were saying to Jared, look Jared, we need to find a way to get there.
It's complicated, it's difficult, but let's just stay in touch and keep working this relationship and find ways to get closer.
It wasn't like Jared said, here's what I want you, here's a piece of paper, sign this, here's what I want you to do.
It was much more touchy-feely in the first couple of years.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's so important today.
I mean, it's also the case that it's very necessary not to have the details of this sort of process worked out on paper by bureaucrats who actually have no power whatsoever to transform it into policy, but to find decision makers who, like Kushner, are close enough to actual sources of power so that when the discussions occur, The probability that the agreement is going to be transformed into action is extremely high.
And that's a very difficult thing to negotiate if you're only dealing with mid to lower level bureaucrats.
I mean, Jared was there often, and he had three or four major portfolios, and this was one of them.
And look, Jason, while Jason was in government, would trek over there as well.
He'd sit and listen.
Jason's a great listener.
He's very non-threatening.
I would say I'm much pushier and more aggressive than him, so I'm sure people were happy to listen and host him.
And he listens and he heard and he would come back with thoughts.
We were told by everybody, don't put out a plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians because it's not going to go anywhere.
And after all these conversations, we came to the conclusion that if we can come up with a plan, which at least Israel is willing to accept and explain why this is reasonable— And if the Palestinians aren't going to go for it and they're going to kind of blow themselves up on the world stage, even that, I think, will go a long way to convincing some of these other countries that the time has passed the Palestinians by.
It's time to move on.
I mean, we don't give up on making peace with the Palestinians, but if Israel is willing to really go forward with a serious plan and the Palestinians just want to rip it up, That gives everybody a certain amount of cover to start doing what's best for their own people.
Well, yeah.
Well, you guys removed the power they had in some sense.
If the State Department had assumed that peace was only possible through the Palestinians, then that put a tremendous amount of authority and power in their hands.
And so by walking around them in multiple directions, you eliminated that ultimatum power in some sense that the Palestinians had always expected.
The first thing we did, I think your viewers might be interested in knowing, the first thing we did was back also in May of 2017, you know, there were a number of people that were speaking to the president and they were saying that the Palestinians were ready to make peace.
It's Netanyahu who's the difficult one in this relationship.
Go to Israel, beat up on Bibi and, you know, make him more reasonable and the Palestinians will come to the table and you'll win a Nobel Prize.
And a lot of people were telling him that, including people inside government.
And so when the president comes to Israel, I went to, I did something which I got a lot of heat for afterwards, but I went and I told, I said to Netanyahu, look, just so you know, there are people, the president's being told that you're the problem, that you're the troublemaker, you're the guy that won't make a deal.
And he said, well, that's not true.
And I said, well, look, if you want to convince the president, what I would suggest you do is let's make a two-minute video of some of the worst things that Mahmoud Abbas has said.
I mean, he's supposed to be the peacemaker.
Let's put together a film, nothing out of context, only the actual statements he's made about how, you know, the blood of every terrorist is holy and it will never stop happening.
Helping our holy terrorists, and we won't give up one inch of Israel, and we're going to take all of Jerusalem.
I mean, let the president see it.
And he said to me, David, you know, I've met with countless world leaders.
I've never made a video for them.
I said, well, just make it.
Maybe we won't use it.
Maybe we will.
We got into a room.
Got into a room.
And the video was there.
I was there with Tillerson and the McMaster and Jared.
And I said to the president, did you see the film?
And he said, what film?
And I said, let's play the film.
And he looked at the film and he was shocked.
And he said, this is the guy?
Is this the same guy that I met with in Washington?
This is the guy that everybody's telling me is ready to make peace?
And then the next day, he goes to Bethlehem to meet with Abbas.
And for starters, Abbas doesn't let me attend.
He banishes me from the meeting.
Yeah, I bet.
Which got the president very angry.
And then the president just really let him have it.
But also signifies an intent, doesn't it?
The fact that he didn't let you come.
That's a very interesting and I would say counter-strategic move on his part.
It was a mistake.
Because it certainly indicates the sort of person that he is.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a mistake.
And it got the president angry, and the president said to him, look, you know, you're not going to pull the wool over my eyes.
There's too many people watching you right now.
You know, you told me you wanted to make peace.
I see this video.
It says exactly the opposite.
I want to know who you are.
Okay?
Don't do this to me.
It's a big mistake.
Don't play both sides.
I'm not stupid.
I can, you know, I form judgments very quickly.
You know, who are you?
And that also really changed the dynamics of the relationship.
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I want to move in two directions, one after the other here.
Let's talk a little bit more about the details of the Accord.
So what is it exactly that this agreement is?
Puts forward in principle or binds the signatory states to UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
We can talk about the commonalities across the states and the differences, but can you give us all a description of the fundamental nature of the Abraham Accords?
Sure, so the Abraham Accords are structured in two parts.
There is the There's the Abraham Accords Declaration, which is the same for every country, in which there is a recognition that the parties will end their state of conflict and their state of hostilities.
They will recognize each other's sovereignty.
They will normalize relationships in all different ways, whether it's cultural, economic, political.
They'll engage in strategic cooperation on matters of common interest for their respective national securities.
They'll open up embassies, reciprocal embassies in the two In their countries, and they'll exchange ambassadors.
So it's basically, it's a full normalization of peaceful relations.
Then, and now that's the overall, if you will, common Abraham Accords.
Now with each country, if you look at it, the way I tend to look at it is each Abraham Accord is like a triangle.
You have Israel and a Muslim country at the base, and you have America at the apex.
And in each case, You know, something different is happening.
I'll give you some examples.
Like with Sudan.
With Sudan, they wanted to be taken off the terror list.
And the Sudanese government had done significant things to combat terrorism.
By getting them off the terror list, the terror watch list, the United States was able to help them with some basic humanism.
They needed grain.
I mean, it's a very poor country.
So in the case of Sudan, we helped them kind of end their status as a terrorist pariah.
They deserved it.
And by the way, it's incredibly important for Israel because most of the arms that were heading up into Hamas were going up through Sudan, through Sinai, into Hamas, into the Gaza Strip.
So that's Sudan.
In the case of Morocco, Morocco had a long-standing territorial dispute with a group called the Palisario in the Western Sahara.
We had felt for years that the world was better off with Morocco having sovereignty over this territory.
A lot of other countries didn't recognize that sovereignty.
We recognized Morocco's sovereignty over certain parts of the Western Sahara.
That was sort of the lubricant that got them to the table.
In the case of UAE, UAE is looking for some advanced weaponry.
We said, look, there was a...
Israel is entitled by law to a qualitative military edge.
That assessment will be done by professionals, but clearly to the extent that there are no hostilities and you've normalized with Israel and you have diplomatic relationships, that's certainly going to fare well in the calculus.
It may or may not be enough, that's not for us to decide, but that will certainly fare well in the calculus of your relationship with the United States.
In the case of Bahrain, they were actually the easiest.
There was nothing in particular that was on the table, but they thought, and I think correctly so, that their people would be advantaged by all the opportunities that stem from the relationship with Israel.
Remember that Israel has extraordinary I mean, they're a world leader.
I would say that in cyber, they may be tied with America.
I mean, in water technology, they may be number one.
So, I mean, there's a lot that Israel can provide once these relationships begin to bloom.
As a trading partner, right, right, right.
Yeah, okay, okay.
So, great.
Well, that all sounds extremely positive, and it's very interesting to see the commonality The declaration of peace that's explicit, the mutual recognition of sovereignty, that's a big deal.
The cooperation and normalization of political relationships, including the establishment of embassies and the opening of doors to communication.
And then the cultural cooperation, which allows, for example, for Israel to be Treated and to become a genuine trading partner, which you could see.
I mean, if Israel is in some sense the Silicon Valley of the Middle East, which I think is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at it, that could be of incalculable economic value for the surrounding Arab people.
And so, hooray for that.
Jordan, if you go to Ben-Gurion Airport on any particular day today, and you look at the flight board...
There are more flights leaving Israel for Abu Dhabi in Dubai than I think almost any other location around the world.
I mean, it's really extraordinary how this has blossomed over the last couple of years.
And who do you think, I like to give credit where credit is due, and so we've talked a little bit about the Americans who were signally important in bringing this about, and including in the background, from what I understand, Mike Pence.
So who on the side of the UAE, you mentioned some of the leaders there, how about in Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, who played a signal role in those countries?
So, you know, I think in Morocco, it was the foreign minister who was at all times taking his instructions from King Mohammed VI.
In UAE, they have a very skillful ambassador to the United States named Yusuf al-Otaibo.
who really took the lead, I think, on behalf of the UAE, but of course subject To the approval of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who was the crown prince and the ruler.
In Sudan, they had a civilian government and a military government as well.
They had to reconcile in order to do this.
They've since split.
There's since been a military coup in Sudan.
The United States, under Biden, doesn't seem to recognize anymore the Abraham Accords with Sudan.
But Israel does, and frankly, the military of Sudan But, you know, this was done, and I think you know this intuitively, but this was done at the highest levels of government, of every one of the governments.
Right, right, right.
All right, so let's talk about consequences.
So as far as you're concerned, what have been the present consequences of the Abraham Accords as they've rolled out so far?
Well, I think they've done enormous good for American national security, for Israel's national security, and for the national security of all the Sunni nations.
Because with this surfacing of diplomatic relations, has also come a good deal of additional cooperation with regard to sharing of intelligence.
And, you know, when you look at the region and you see Iran as really a threat to everyone, including the United States, it's the largest state sponsor of terrorism anywhere in the world.
And so, you know, the winners here are the moderate Sunni nations.
The loser is Iran.
Iran now has a much more coordinated Yeah, well, who...
Yeah, yeah.
Who's next on the list?
Well, look, you know, it could be Oman.
It could be Indonesia.
But the real, you know, big fish is Saudi Arabia.
Because Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Muslim world.
It's the custodian of the two holy sites in Islam.
And I think that We backslid horribly over the last two years with Saudi Arabia.
And you just saw that over the last couple of days when you saw a very, very unimpressive visit by Biden.
You know, he goes there and...
Not only does he kind of fumble some complaints about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, but he gets a lecture from the Saudis in return about Abu Ghraib.
So, you know, that didn't go well and got no relief at all.
So what should have happened in your estimation?
So the Saudis, like I'd certainly seen the Abraham Accords as, and I've talked to some Saudi leaders as well, and my understanding is that there's quite a large contingent there that would like to normalize relations with the Western world more broadly and to move Saudi Arabia out of its relative isolation into something and my understanding is that there's quite a large contingent there that would like to normalize relations with the Western world more broadly And you'd think that would be a big deal, you know.
And so what should have happened in Saudi Arabia?
Well, I put out a tweet a few days ago saying if I were Biden, after I went to Israel and met with the acting prime minister, Yair Lapid, I would take him with me on Air Force One.
I'd fly him off to Saudi Arabia.
and I would sit with him and MBS with Mohammed bin Salman, and I would do something big.
I would announce some big trilateral agreement.
That's there for the taking, if you know how to do it.
And Biden fumbled that, obviously miserably.
Why?
Why?
This is obvious.
This is obvious.
If I can figure this out, and I don't know anything about this, if I can figure this out, I can't understand why Biden and his people can't figure this out.
And I can't see anything that's more important than doing this in some real sense.
Yep.
And it's like, frankly, I don't say it's low-hanging fruit, but it's not high-hanging fruit.
I mean, it's hanging fruit.
Right.
Look, Biden, you know, he boxed himself in during the campaign saying that he would treat the Saudis as a pariah state.
He showed up here kind of hat in hand and he got nothing on oil anyway.
Wouldn't have made a difference because inflation is, at this point, so rampant beyond oil.
I'm not sure what makes a difference.
But the main thing, I think, is that, you know, Biden has been told in no uncertain terms by sort of the progressive left You stay away from Saudi Arabia.
He's politically boxed in on Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, well, he isn't boxed in unless he wants to continue to kowtow to the radical elements of his party and the progressives.
He's not boxed in at all because, as you pointed out earlier in this conversation, the radical types...
You said 10% on each side.
I think it's far smaller than that, to be frank, although I think it's bigger on the left than on the right.
There's a tiny proportion of radicals that he's kowtowing to, and he doesn't need them.
And the fact that the Democrats will not separate themselves from the radicals has only ensured their electoral defeat in the fall and probably for the next presidential election.
So, like, I just think that's complete rubbish, is we can't do this because the progressives don't want us to.
It's like, No, that's not true practically.
It's not true strategically.
It's definitely a mistake ethically.
There's no grounds for it whatsoever, especially, as you pointed out, given that the path forward with Saudi Arabia in relation to Israel and the rest of the Western world seems clear.
So it's an abdication, as far as I can see, an absolute abdication of responsibility on the part of the Democrats, let's say.
So, look, I agree with you and I think a lot of this is political.
I mean, it starts with, you know, Barack Obama making this terrible deal with Iran that has, you know, insignificant verification rights and inspection rights and expires, at this point, would expire in just a few years.
When Trump got out of that deal and Biden comes in, so Biden politically says, I'm going to go and try to reinstate this deal.
He's been chasing the Iranians now for a year and a half, trying to get back into the JCPOA. It makes no sense, but he's doing it because, you know, that's the deal that he and Obama, you know, came up with and they want to validate that.
They want somehow to resuscitate that.
The more Biden chases the JCPOA, which he'll fail at anyway, I mean, there's nothing to be achieved there, but the more he chases that, And chases this, you know, this fantasy of diplomacy with the Iranians, he pushes the Saudis further away.
He pushes the Israelis further, pushes everybody further away.
And so it's this kind of, you know, misguided chasing after the fantasy of a diplomatic outcome with Iran that precludes Saudi Arabia.
How much do you think this reflexive identification with the Palestinians as victims is driving the necessity of turning to the Iranians instead of the Saudis?
Or is that a separate issue?
Well, it may be a separate issue, but it's the same people.
It's exactly the same people who hold both views.
Right.
Well, that's why I'm curious about the connection.
I have to tell you, the last few days have been a frustrating experience for me because what I saw over the last few days was a complete reversal of all the things that we did that made the Middle East a much more safe and stable place.
You know, all the things that we did were kind of reversed in just a few days.
Throwing money at the Palestinians, not demanding any accountability, refusing to recognize Jerusalem as the capital, all of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Then running to Saudi Arabia, you know, and, you know, You know, resuscitating complaints that just resulted, you know, the Saudis aren't dumb.
They have answers for this, you know?
I mean, so they go back.
Now Biden's on his heels trying to defend Abu Ghraib because he brought up Khashoggi.
And from there, it just went nowhere.
He went home with his hat in his hand.
Nothing.
He got nothing out of it.
And we could have gotten so much more on this trip.
I don't even know why they had the trip.
I mean, why would you orchestrate a trip like this if you're just going to insult your allies and come home empty-handed?
Well, my Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, tends to orchestrate a trip like that when the scandals and inflation on the domestic front get so unbearable that he needs to distract people.
Yep, yep.
Well, that sounds like that's exactly what happened here.
Okay, so let's talk about an elephant under the carpet here.
So you talked a lot about making peace with the Sunni moderates.
Where are the moderate Shiites in all of this?
And what is the fact that they're not at the table?
Like what lurking catastrophes are associated with that and how might that be rectified?
Well, look, the Shiites that are relevant here are kind of half of Iraq or slightly more than half of Iraq.
Hezbollah in Lebanon...
And in Iran.
And in all three cases, but especially in Iran, but I mean, true of Hezbollah as well, they're not moderate.
There's nothing, there's not the slightest thing moderate about them.
And they, you know, they are at this point, you know, look, are there radical Sunnis?
Of course, you have ISIS, you have Hamas is a Sunni, Although they're being funded by Iran.
But, you know, the primary, and I'm not suggesting that there aren't moderate Shiites, I'm sure there are, but the ones that make noise are primarily, you know, in Iran and in Hezbollah, and they're the farthest thing from moderate.
I mean, they represent existential threats to the state of Israel and elsewhere.
So why did you guys have no luck with them?
And what do you think might be done by someone who was competent if they were inclined to I don't think there's anything that can be done with either Iran or Hezbollah except from a position of real strength.
And Hezbollah really is just a proxy for the Iranians, as are the Houthis in Yemen.
And they're very dangerous.
And they don't accept any count.
Look, I'll give you an example which is kind of heartbreaking.
Lebanon's a very poor country.
They have a significant offshore gas deposit that can be commercialized very much for the benefit of the people in Lebanon.
There's a question of who owns it.
I mean, it's kind of right on the seam of Israel's territorial waters and Lebanon's territorial waters.
Israel is willing to make a deal.
To solve that maritime dispute where, you know, they'll get some of the gas and Lebanon will get some of the gas.
Lebanon would get a lot of gas.
It would make a big deal for their economy.
Hezbollah won't let them make the deal.
What about behind-the-scenes negotiations?
If the political leaders in the Shiite community can't pull this off, then is there another level of people in Shiite culture or in other countries?
As you reached out to the UAE and Sudan and Morocco, etc., could you walk around Iran in the same way?
No, no, unfortunately not.
I mean, I'm sure, again, I'm sure there are people of the Shiite faith who are reasonable, but the Shia who control weaponry are, you know, in Iran and in Lebanon.
And in Syria, and in Iraq, and in parts of Yemen.
And they're all militant terrorists.
They all take their instructions from Iran, and there really isn't an opportunity there.
It's for the moderate Muslim world to unite with America and with Israel, and this threat can be defeated.
I have no doubt this threat can be defeated, but I don't think right now it can be solved except through the strongest of positions taken by our allies.
Okay, okay.
So let's close this up, maybe, with discussion about the response in the West.
I was a late learner about the Abraham Accords.
I mean, the world's been pretty weird in the last couple of years, and I was also very ill, and I sort of emerged from that and was informed about the Abraham Accords by some people on the ambissadorial front and became extremely interested in them for three reasons.
First of all, because Well, look, peace is breaking out in the Middle East, and so that was one, and isn't that surprising?
And then also, curious, because given that this is, as far as I can tell, a truly historic accord, I would have hoped that it would have been like front page, two inch type news on the New York Times, for example, and that everybody everywhere would know about all its details.
And then furthermore, that the people who structured it were not only nominated for the Nobel Prize, which is not that difficult to process to be nominated, but actually to be nominated, but actually awarded it since this actually constituted peace.
And I couldn't help in my cynical...
What would you say?
Musings.
Contrast that with the willingness of the Nobel Committee to give a peace prize to Barack Obama before President Obama even had a chance to demonstrate whether or not he was a peacemaker on the international scene.
And so, what in your estimation has been the response in the West among intellectuals and the press and then among, well, let's say the American people and people in the West more broadly?
Well, the attention from the press has been disappointing.
We had a ceremony on September 15th on the South Lawn of the White House.
That day, the picture of Trump and Netanyahu and the leaders of Bahrain and UAE, it made the front page of all the major papers.
So we got one good day out of it.
But the way it's been expanded and the way it's flourished, The effect it's had on the people of Israel, the people of UAE, the optimism and opportunity it's brought to the Middle East, none of that has been covered at all.
And I think it's all because it came from Yeah, but that's no bloody excuse here.
That's no excuse.
This transcends the political, as far as I'm concerned, and I think as far as anybody reasonable would be concerned.
And it's important to give the devil his due, and that's the case even if the devil happens to be Trump and his damned minions.
And the facts seem to me to be clear on the ground that this represents a significant and very unexpected move forward on the peace front in the Middle East.
And that's been a problem that has threatened all of us for 70 years, for longer than that, on all sorts of fronts.
And so the fact that people don't want to give Trump credit for this because he's Trump, that is still utterly inexcusable.
I don't, I really don't understand it because it means in some real sense that the narrow political enmity that was directed towards Trump, for better or for worse, for warranted or unwarranted, I don't really care.
That's not the issue.
The issue is that under Trump, this extremely significant event occurred.
I think it's significant in the same way that the fact that Trump didn't entangle the United States in any stupid wars for four years was significant and also extremely underplayed.
I mean, at least he managed that, and that's not nothing.
But then to also cap his four years, which were definitely conducted under extreme duress and intense corrosive cynicism, again, regardless of his flaws, to cap that with the Abrahamic Accord, and then to be ignored by intellectuals in the West, denigrated and At minimum, damned with faint praise, and then also to be ignored by the Nobel Prize Committee.
That's not just politics.
That's a kind of willfully blind corruption that's unforgivable in its depth.
You won't get an argument out of me.
You know, I've...
Well, am I overstating it?
I mean, are there reasons...
Are there reasons that you and I aren't delving into why this hasn't been more celebrated?
Because I don't want to devolve into the narrowly political here, you know?
I'm really trying to understand this.
The Abraham Accords, they're enough to bring a tear to your eye if you have any bloody sense.
Well, look, let's just be clear.
This was not a question of neglect.
This was an affirmative decision by the media and by the Democratic Party to minimize the benefits and the impact of the Abraham Accords.
Remember, early on, the first year of the Biden administration, the State Department spokesman was asked about the Abraham Accords.
And he would say, yes, these are normalization agreements.
We're going to work on advancing normalization agreements.
And the reporter would say, why don't you just say the Abraham Accords?
I mean, why don't you use that phrase?
And he said, well, what do you mean?
I mean, I'm...
Referring to them as normalization agreements.
That's what they were.
I mean, they played this silly game of cat and mouse.
They wouldn't even use the words Abraham Accords because, frankly, it's a very powerful brand for these agreements.
Yeah, that's for sure.
It's a great phrase.
It's a great title.
Who came up with that, by the way?
So that's a great story.
So, you know, we were about to go live just on August 13th.
Again, there's five or six of us who know about this.
We're about to go live with a telephone call between Trump and the head of UAE and the head of Israel.
And it's like 10 minutes before we go live.
And a guy comes running in.
He's General Miguel Correa who worked with us on this.
He's a two-star general.
He came running in and said, we need a name.
And I said, why do you need a name?
And he said, well, you know, these agreements all have names.
Oslo Accords, Camp David Accords.
And I said to him, do you have any ideas?
And he said, how about the Abraham Accords?
You know, Abraham was the father Of the Jewish faith, the Muslim faith, the Christian faith.
I said, wow, that's terrific.
So we quickly called up the Israelis and the Emiratis and they signed off on it.
And that's how we got the name.
Yeah, well, getting the name right is really important, so that was a very wise move on his part.
Yes.
So, I should mention, too, to everyone that you wrote a book about this.
Yes.
Sledgehammer, what's the full name of the book?
Sledgehammer, How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East.
And when was that published?
It came out a little over five months ago, on February 8th of this year.
It had the biggest week of any book on Israel in the last ten years, is what the publishers report.
Thank God it's been a very successful book.
Well, that's good.
Have any of the intelligentsia, so to speak, which is a hated name as far as I'm concerned at the moment, has anybody reviewed it seriously?
And how has it been received?
It's been received well.
It didn't get, you know, it wasn't reviewed by, you know, the New York Times or some of those.
Yes, well, why would it be?
Right.
It's just about peace in the Middle East, you know.
Why would you review a book about that by one of the authors of The Accord?
It was also a book, I think, about the inner fortitude it took to fight the conventional wisdom, the headwinds, if you will, of the State Department and the Defense Department and how important it was that I had this support.
Of the president, because, you know, whether it was moving the embassy or recognizing sovereignty over the Golan Heights or the peace plan or changing our view on the legality of settlements in the West Bank, I mean, we did all these different things, and every one of them was opposed by numerous government agencies.
So it really was about the runway, the support, the confidence I was given by the president, because at the end of the day, If you have the president's support, you don't need the support of any of these agencies.
It's only when the president goes on to some other thing, which he considers more important, that you're stuck in the morass of the agency.
Well, the president gave me huge amounts of authority and runway, and that, I think, was the cue to a lot of the success.
So, right.
So he gave you some autonomy and some trust.
And so, well, kudos to you, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt.
Anybody else you want to include in that inner circle on the American side who was key to the success of this?
You did mention Mike Pence.
Anybody else you thought was...
I know there's a huge team, but...
Well, it actually wasn't a huge team.
I mean, Mike Pompeo was essential, because at the end of the day, you know, Jared and I, you know, we have a relationship with the president, we have authority, but we're not the Secretary of State.
We're not in charge of the U.S. foreign policy, so we needed Mike to really jump in and engage.
And provide the types of assurances that as much as we were trusted, I mean, the right messaging needed to come from the State Department.
We had a young guy, Avi Berkowitz, who worked for Jared, who was on the phone day and night, you know, working the lower level relationships.
And it was very helpful.
And that's about it.
I mean, that's about it.
It was a relatively small group of people that worked, you know, really day and night, especially towards the end of the Trump administration, getting this done.
Well, thank you to all of them, that's for sure, from everybody in the world who has any sense, I would say.
So let me just summarize what we discussed, and then maybe you can add a few additional comments if you'd like.
The Accords involve, at minimum, declaration of mutual peace, recognition of mutual sovereignty, the establishment of a framework of cooperation in principle and reality, including The exchange and establishment of embassies and also cultural cooperation that could bring the benefits of mutual trade to those countries.
It's a major accomplishment.
It looks expandable perhaps to countries like Oman, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, especially on the Sunni side.
And it's an amazing achievement, and I would like to shame the Nobel Prize Committee for making a tremendous error in failing to note with the prize that should have been awarded for what appears to me a signal...
A signal accomplishment of the first part of this new millennium.
You know, my job was very much on the U.S.-Israel side of the relationship.
I think we proved something which I fear that the, you know, kind of the left-wing elites are sliding back on.
But what we proved, and I said it at the beginning and President Trump said it at the beginning, Is that Israel really is a solution in the Middle East, not a problem.
And for 70 years, the State Department viewed Israel as a problem to be managed, not as an opportunity to be harnessed.
And I think we're sliding back in that direction right now with the last few months of U.S. policy.
But, you know, we advanced all these extraordinary initiatives on behalf of our ally, our cherished ally, the State of Israel.
Not only did they not bring violence, but they brought peace.
And I think that message is one that we can scale and extrapolate going forward, and I really hope we do.
Well, let's say amen to that and all pray that this does move forward as it should and that wise heads prevail outside of the domain of narrow politicking and partisan advantage.
So I'm going to follow up this conversation, for those of you who are listening.
I do a behind-the-scenes 30-minute interview with everybody I talk to now on the Daily Wire Plus platform, and I'm going to talk to Ambassador Friedman in a more personal sense, I would say, and detail out the...
I'd like to give people some insight into how people who have accomplished signal achievements have come to that position.
Hello, everyone.
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