Julian Pecquet publishes an article in AL Monitor on the US nominee for the Israeli ambassadorship and his links to an Israeli settlement, using the financial disclosure form the nominee submitted to the Senate:
The form’s most interesting feature is Friedman’s role as president of the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, a West Bank outpost of 1,300 families a stone’s throw from Ramallah. The hilltop settlement was first established in 1977 near the biblical Bethel, where Jacob dreamed of a stairway to heaven.
Friedman, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, has called Bet El a “critical component in our collective battle for the safety, security and unity of the State of Israel” and poured millions into developing the township. Plaques with his name and those of family members adorn buildings throughout the town. …
The disclosure form obtained from the Office of Government Ethics merely lists Friedman as the president of American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, with no description of the nonprofit’s purpose. Separate tax filings with the federal Internal Revenue Service simply describe its mission as aiding “the students, faculty and administration of Bet El Yeshiva.”
The nonprofit’s main annual expense, according to its IRS filings, is its annual fundraising dinner for Bet El. In 2014, American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva spent $171,000 for the dinner and sent $2 million to Israel under the rubric of “general support for school.” …Those records suggest that Friedman’s nonprofit is deeply involved in supporting the Israeli settler movement beyond merely helping students with their religious studies. A website for the dinner, a $500-per-couple affair touted as “the largest and most prestigious New York dinner of any Israel organization,” confirms that impression with a long list of causes that stand to benefit from the glitzy fundraiser: from the settlement’s Israel Defense Forces preparatory academy, to a family tourism operator, to a 120,000-circulation newspaper.
For me, there’s a line between expertise and special interest, and this appears to suggest that Mr. Friedman has a special interest in the politics of Israel and Palestine, and this is inappropriate in an ambassador because it appears to be religiously based – and the United States is a secular nation. If we were a religious nation, and the religion of Mr. Friedman was congruent with the national religion, and his views congruent with the current leadership, he’d be fine.
But this is not so in the first instance. Our national interests, which he would naturally represent and promote, may be at variance with his deeply held opinions – thus representing a certain lack of trust, since ambassadors also report back to the President. President Trump has already shown unexpected plasticity in his positions, such as the One China Policy which he had earlier disdained, but has now endorsed. It would ill-serve President Trump to deploy an ambassador who may be working at cross-purposes with the President.
