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By: Yoni Kempinski – israelnationalnews.com
Former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman joined Arutz Sheva – Israel National News to speak about his book “One Jewish State,” which contains his proposed solutions for some of the longest-lasting problems facing the Middle East and about the upcoming elections in the USA and their implications for Israel.
Regarding the approaching Presidential elections, he claimed that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris poses more of a danger to Israel than people realize. ”She has no particular feelings of warmth towards the Jewish state. The depth of her knowledge of the subject matter is very shallow. America’s enemies don’t fear her. I don’t think anybody – Iran, Russia, China – are in any way concerned about what a Harris presidency would look like.
”The most important thing for Israel is a strong America. If America is strong, Israel will be strong, if America is weak then unfortunately people view Israel as being weak. Trump is very impressed with the Israeli people, and he will undoubtedly be far more supportive in enabling Israel to defeat its enemies and to extend the Abraham Accords.”
Friedman said that history will not look kindly on the current state of relations between Israel and the USA. ”The USA has provided good support on occasion, but that’s not new. When push comes to shove, I think America was not helpful in micromanaging this war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to his credit, did not listen to Harris or to Joe Biden. I think it’ll be clear in hindsight that America did not serve Israel’s interests.”
Regarding his book, Friedman explained: ”Whether you’re religious or an atheist, believe in God-given sovereignty for the Jews or the interests of the Palestinians, this book is for you. By now, everyone’s assumption is that there can’t be a two-state solution. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor any of the surrounding states can realistically hold sway over either Gaza or Judea and Samaria. The Gulf States – they’re not going to be sovereigns from so far away and they have no historic basis for sovereignty. But what about Israel?”
Israel’s record, he claims, is far better than that of its neighbors. ”The only successful nation in empowering an Arab minority is Israel. It just works. Those ideals can be exported from inside the Green Line to Judea and Samaria.”
Friedman addresses the status Arabs would be given under his plan. ”The right of self-determination in Israel belongs to the Jewish people already, by law. Israel needs to be the one Jewish state, and people need to kind of live with it. Just because it’s a Jewish State doesn’t mean that everybody who lives there doesn’t have basic human rights. It’s about getting to a place where Israel will always be Jewish, and the people that live there have to accept that, but within that framework, they’ll have better human rights and societal benefits than they would under any other circumstances.”
Friedman notes that the model works in another notable country as well – the USA. ”The USA has full sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa, and the people there have lots of autonomy, but they don’t vote in the electoral college – only locally. There are Buddhist states, Hindu states and Moslem states, so there is no reason there should not be a Jewish state.”
The book is to be translated into Hebrew as well. ”If I could have written this book in Hebrew, I would have because I think the Israeli audience is more important. It’s their country and their decision to make. It’s not an easy decision to take sovereignty over millions of Palestinian Arabs who have historically been enemies. It’s not a plan to be executed tomorrow. You need to respect the views of people who feel differently and convince them. I can’t talk to millions of Israelis about the idea at once, so I wrote the book. It is a matter of where Israel’s eastern border will be – it must be done through national consensus.”
