“I cannot think of a secretary of state that did not want to get involved in the Middle East,” Gamal Helal, a translator who served at least seven of them, said in a 2019 documentary about America’s Mideast peacemaking. “And by the way, all of them think they can reinvent the wheel, and all of them think that they can sort of ignore history and start fresh. It will never happen in the Middle East.”
Everything Helal said in the documentary, which premiered at a Colorado film festival on Aug. 30, 2019, is deeply informed by decades of personal experience — his own and that of the other star diplomats featured in the film. And less than one year later, everything Helal said was rendered obsolete.
On Aug. 13, 2020, the Abraham Accords were signed at the White House, normalizing Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates. Others followed: Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco, Sudan. Virtually overnight, the entire strategic picture of the Middle East and of Jewish-Arab relations began to change in ways few thought possible. Luckily, those few were the ones handling Mideast diplomacy during the Trump administration’s four years in Washington.
One of them was David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021. His new memoir, Sledgehammer, is not merely a readable account of historic peacemaking; it is also a manual for navigating the State Department’s long-standing obstructionism toward anyone with an original idea or a drop of sympathy for the Jewish state.
Though Friedman’s knowledge of the region and its history matches or exceeds that of his predecessors, he was dismissed as “unqualified” because he did not go through the requisite brain-deadening reeducation by international-relations professors, whose Arabist affectations were frozen in amber some time in the 1950s. Nor did Friedman spend his professional years in Foggy Bottom, absorbing groupthink and developing the approved posture of aggressive ignorance. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish attorney from Long Island who earned Trump’s trust by successfully representing him in various disputes, was not looking to ingratiate himself with what Harry Truman called “the striped pants boys.” Past ambassadors saw him as a threat and came out against Friedman’s nomination. Democratic senators and congressmen disgraced themselves by questioning Friedman’s loyalty. And then Friedman did the very thing that his critics were terrified he might do: He succeeded.
Even when Friedman would convince the president to take a specific course of action, other advisers would try to tap on the brakes. A key goal of Friedman’s was to fulfill U.S. law and move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s actual capital, Jerusalem. There was plenty of internal resistance to this move, despite it being a common promise for presidential candidates to make. The only argument against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital was a manufactured fear of Palestinian violence. This was enough to dissuade every president before Trump, but Trump didn’t believe that U.S. policy should be subject to the heckler’s veto.
After a few more tussles like this, he received a call from a senior State Department staffer with some advice: “Don’t be so Jewish. You represent the United States of America. Tone down the Judaism in your work.” The white blood cells of the State Department saw Friedman as an intruder in the bureaucratic bloodstream.
Friedman’s first meeting with the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser set the tone. The government lawyers did not understand the law declaring that the U.S. Embassy belonged in Jerusalem, so Friedman had to explain it to them. He left that meeting and reached out to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who wouldn’t take his call. Welcome to the NFL.
Though Trump was on board with moving the embassy, there was a problem: You can’t place an embassy without a building, and there was not yet a building in Jerusalem to house the embassy. Friedman proposed a two-step process by which Trump would first recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and initiate plans to move the embassy when it became feasible. The president’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, didn’t object but proposed a “risks and opportunities” memo to be drawn up.
The next day, when Friedman was handed the memo, only “risks” had been listed; there were no “opportunities.” Friedman filled them in, and McMaster agreed that they were sensible points. Then there was the interagency threat assessment to U.S. facilities around the world, and Friedman notes that this sums up much of U.S. diplomatic policy: “Everyone thought it was risky because it had always been thought to be risky but no one could identify any specific threat to the proposed action.”
With McMaster and John Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, on board, Tillerson remained the main opponent, with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis a persuadable skeptic. But Friedman doggedly saw the process through and won each argument along the way. Trump signed off on the policy change, and when Tillerson complained about a supposed threat to embassies around the world, Mattis stepped in: “Mr. Secretary, I don’t agree with the president’s decision, but it’s been made and we need to execute on that policy. We know exactly how to protect our embassies and our people abroad. No one will be at risk.” Rather than engage in turf wars and ego-padding, Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly, three generals, brought professionalism and respect for the chain of command to the Trump White House. Friedman was a trusted adviser to the president and would be treated accordingly.
Democratic members of Congress and their stenographers in the press warned of an explosion of violence if the president followed through. But follow through he did, and the threats of violence proved empty. American policy on Jerusalem had been hostage to phantoms. The path was clear to move the embassy as well, and, afraid of running out of time to do it, the administration refitted one of the U.S. consular offices in Jerusalem and made it the embassy. America was finally following its own law.
Democrats continued to politicize U.S. diplomacy by refusing to attend the embassy’s opening ceremony and then claiming only Republicans had been invited. (Friedman had not only invited Democrats but had received responses from some of them, so this was a particularly foolish and dishonest ploy.) Still, the region refused to explode into violence. “In my four years in office, Israel did not have a prolonged battle either with Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah on the Lebanese border,” Friedman writes. “The reason is simple and a good lesson for my successors: Unlike some prior administrations, we made it abundantly clear that if Israel were attacked, the United States would place no limitations on its right of self-defense. None of this ‘proportionate force’ nonsense that creates no disincentive for the enemy to attack.”
Perhaps the violence that “experts” and pundits tried to will into existence didn’t materialize, but surely such extravagant moves would foreclose the administration’s chances of making peace, right?
The name Yousef Al Otaiba should have a proper place in the history books. As Israel’s government moved forward on declaring sovereignty over parts of the West Bank under its control, alarm bells went off in Arab capitals. Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, wrote an opinion column in an Israeli newspaper raising his country’s objection. But he also laid out in surprisingly clear language that a more public embrace of Israel by the Arab states was on the table: “With the region’s two most capable militaries, common concerns about terrorism and aggression, and a deep and long relationship with the United States, the UAE and Israel could form closer and more effective security cooperation. As the two most advanced and diversified economies in the region, expanded business and financial ties could accelerate growth and stability across the Middle East. Our shared interests around climate change, water and food security, technology and advanced science could spur greater innovation and collaboration. As a global airline, logistics, educational, media and cultural hub, the UAE could be an open gateway connecting Israelis to the region and the world.”
Otaiba was serious; he followed up with a phone call to Avi Berkowitz, top aide to the president’s senior adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner, both of whom played leading roles in the deft diplomacy that led to the accords. Kushner and Friedman agreed it was a great deal for Israel while also boosting the American-led regional alliance. As other countries jumped on board, it became undeniable that what Friedman had been telling the president, his Cabinet, Democrats, the media, and anyone who would listen was true: America’s strong support for its allies makes the world safer.
Future diplomats should put politics, and their egos, aside and use Friedman’s memoir as a road map. And if America is ever lucky enough to have another ambassador with the chutzpah to face down the State Department’s legion of human roadblocks, they’ll have a much better chance of success if they keep Sledgehammer with them.
Seth Mandel is the executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
