Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and Israel

The former US ambassador has written a predictably unsubtle memoir, aimed squarely at the 2024 Republican primary.

Lloyd Green

David Friedman, Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump leave bankruptcy court in Camden, New Jersey, in February 2010. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

David Friedman was Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. But that job title alone fails to adequately convey his proximity to the 45th president and his impact on US policy. Their time together marked a repudiation of Barack Obama’s vision for the Middle East. Sledgehammer, Friedman’s memoir, reminds the reader of all of this as insistently as its title suggests.

With Friedman’s assistance, the US helped forge the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries. The US also moved its embassy to Jerusalem and left the Iran nuclear deal. As for the Palestinians, put it this way: they no longer occupy rent-free space in the Republican conscience.

J Street to present Jimmy Carter with peacemaker award at its annual conference

Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his cancer diagnosis during a news conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Aug. 20, 2015. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

(JTA) — J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group, is presenting Jimmy Carter with a peacemaker award at its conference, recognizing the former president, who has frequently tangled with the mainstream pro-Israel community, for brokering the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace.

“By helping to broker the incredible Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, President Carter demonstrated that determined American diplomacy can end decades of conflict and bring together even the most determined foes,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said Monday in a release sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

J Street and Abbas deserve each other

The group completely misunderstands the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, buying into the simplistic “two people competing over one land” narrative. They ignore the psychological, historical and religious roots of the conflict.

MITCHELL BARD

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas delivers a speech regarding the coronavirus outbreak, at the P.A. headquarters in Ramallah, May 5, 2020. Photo by Flash90.

(April 28, 2021 / JNS) It was telling that J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby, would invite to its annual conference Mahmoud Abbas, the anti-Israel, anti-peace, Holocaust-denying president of the Palestinian Authority. The lobby, whose hallmark is gullibility, soaked up the familiar propaganda from Abbas and joined him in castigating Israel while ignoring the tyrant’s intransigence and persecution of his own people.