Israel has never had a home in the U.S. State Department and diplomats dispatched there are generally “Arabists” who don’t bother to understand the Jewish state, former U.S. envoy to Israel David Friedman told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.
“The State Department has historically not been hospitable to the state of Israel or its supporters,” Friedman said.
Israel finds itself in the State Department’s bureau of near eastern affairs, the former envoy explained, which is comprised of Middle Eastern countries that are more often than not hostile to it, adding, “Israel is only one Jewish state and it finds itself in a bureau in a state department with other countries that historically have been anti-Israel.”
U.S. diplomats serve in places like Egypt or northern Africa, or, in the old days, Damascus, and after three or four years in those countries they are transferred to Israel, he explained.
“They’re all Arabists and they come to Israel and find the environment different from what they’re used to and they don’t really take the time to understand it or appreciate it,” Friedman told Breitbart.
File/U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman is pictured as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo departs Ben Gurion Airport on November 20, 2020. Pompeo became the first top American diplomat to visit a West Bank Jewish settlement and the Golan Heights, cementing Donald Trump’s strongly pro-Israel legacy. (PATRICK SEMANSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty)
In his memoir, Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, Friedman reveals how he was told to tone down his Jewishness by State Department officials.
He also reveals how he was at loggerheads with some of Trump’s senior appointees about pro-Israel measures, including National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who both opposed fulfilling a campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
When it emerged that Friedman wanted to make a stop at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, after arriving in Israel, he was warned by his colleagues at the State Department, “Mr. Ambassador, don’t be so Jewish.”
Friedman cites one senior official as saying: “Don’t be so Jewish. You represent the United States of America. Tone down the Judaism in your work.”
A senior staffer at the State Department told then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman in 2017, “Don’t be so Jewish.”
Friedman recollects his angry response: “Do you think I am under any disillusion as to who I represent? I’m not a politically correct person but I have to ask you, why do the laws of political correctness not apply to Jews?”
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told Breitbart in an interview earlier this year that Friedman’s revelation came as no surprise.
“I worked with the State Department for years. And before that, I studied it, I even wrote my thesis on it,” Oren told Breitbart.
File/U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks at a ceremony at the American Embassy in Jerusalem, on Friday, October 30, 2020. U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem can now list Israel as their birthplace in American passports as a result of President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the embassy to Jerusalem. (DEBBIE HILL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Oren went on to say that for many years, the State Department was “judenrein,” referencing a Nazi term to mean free of Jews. Former President Harry Truman even called out the State Department for its antisemitism, Oren noted.
In recent years, even though Jews have a much stronger representation at the State Department – even disproportionately so – espousing openly Jewish loyalties would not be something to be readily abided, Oren said.
“The State Department wouldn’t be sympathetic to David [Friedman], who’s an orthodox Jew who speaks openly about God,” Oren said.
“David broke the mold.” Oren added.
“But telling him to tone down his Jewishness? Well that’s like telling the ambassador to the Holy ‘See in Vatican City, ‘don’t be too Catholic.’”
“Or else telling the Muslim Ambassador to Cairo, ‘Don’t be too Muslim. It would never be said,” Oren concluded.
Speaking to Breitbart last week, Friedman concurred. “I don’t think Israel ever had a home in the State Department,” he said. “And it certainly doesn’t have one now.”
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