The gala event on Monday unveiling the Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength in Jerusalem was a rare scene for 2021 Israel: a crowded, unmasked, high-profile public event.
At times, it felt like the year was 2019, and not only because of COVID. The main stars of the event were all former officials in the Trump administration. They had come here not just to attend an opening, but to enjoy a reunion.
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman worked the VIP room as his guests mingled and sipped cocktails. Outside, the room buzzed with gossip.
There were comments on the seemingly random sports celebrities present, including U.S. quarterback Peyton Manning. The evening’s biggest celebrities, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, parachuted in only for the first hour of the reception, quickly winging their way back to the United States after a whistle-stop visit to Israel that had lasted less than a day.
The couple had unexpectedly shown up for the inaugural meeting of the Knesset Caucus for Promoting the Abraham Accords (the signature diplomatic achievement of the Trump administration). At that event, the couple was photographed smiling beside Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu.
Together with the Friedman event, it lent the entire day a “back to the future” vibe. The only prominent member of the current government to make an appearance at the gala was Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked.
There was also much comment on the spacious and dramatic venue, Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance, which, like Friedman’s institute, was also making its big debut.
Books, TV shows, high-tech
While Jared and Ivanka were snapping photos with the Netanyahus, Friedman was in his Jerusalem apartment on Monday morning, tending to last-minute details ahead of the launch. He also found time to speak to Haaretz, a newspaper he once described as lacking any decency, about his institute.
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Since the end of his ambassadorship last January, Friedman hasn’t been idle. His “full-time job” is heading the tech investment firm Liberty Strategic, founded by former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin – who along with Pompeo, was the other Trump cabinet member to attend Friedman’s big night.
He has also written a book, “Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East,” due out in February. But he is clearly most excited by his new role as a TV producer. Following the cocktail schmooze came the premiere of the 38-minute, condensed version of a five-episode documentary series, “The Abraham Accords,” which Friedman co-produced with the Christian network Trinity Broadcasting Network.
The program, in classic Christian TV-style, is full of quotes from the Bible and dramatically frames the story of the Abraham Accords around the actual Abraham, opening and closing with the barefooted figure outside his tent, warming himself at a campfire.
The story of the Accords is recounted as a triumphant biblical tale, one in which a scrappy group of political outsiders in the White House defied all expectations, rejecting conventional wisdom that the Gulf states would ever normalize relations with Israel without the Palestinians on board.
With Friedman as narrator and interviewer, key players weigh in, including Netanyahu and Donald Trump, and top Emirati and Bahraini officials.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino, left, Steven Mnuchin and David Friedman at the launch of the Friedman Center for Peace Through Strength in Jerusalem last night.Shauli Landner
As always, there is an irony behind the veneration of the Abraham Accords by the Israeli right and their sympathizers in the American Jewish community. The crowd at Friedman’s event included passionate proponents of Israel’s claim to “Greater Israel,” but it was the Accords they celebrated that required them to sacrifice the dream of settlement annexation.
In the summer of 2020, Friedman had intensively engaged with then-Prime Minister Netanyahu, pushing massive annexation forward as a follow-on to Trump’s “deal of the century” plan.
Leaning back on a sofa, Friedman unpacks the reasoning behind his pivot. In his telling, it all changed when he understood that the groundbreaking normalization deal with the Gulf states would only be possible if the push toward annexation was halted.
“The problem we saw was this: Less than 40 percent of Israelis thought this was the right time to pursue any form of sovereignty,” he explains. “The government at that point was led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister [Benny] Gantz and Foreign Minister [Gaby] Ashkenazi – and two of these three leaders of the government were against annexation. So you put that into your calculus. Now, at the same time, we have this opportunity to do this extraordinary deal with the Emirates and probably more countries. And the cost of it is to give up something, which is probably not ready anyway.
“And so I factored all those things together,” he continues. “Notwithstanding my own personal beliefs, I came to the view that this was better for America, better for Israel, better for the region, and better for the president. I adopted that view – and I’m very comfortable with the decision I made.”
That decision was surely influenced by the fact that Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and close adviser, was also opposed to Netanyahu moving quickly toward annexation.
Kushner recently unveiled his own nonprofit, the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace, co-founding it with former Trump Mideast peace envoy Avi Berkowitz and Democratic Party megadonor Haim Saban.
Its stated goal is similar to Friedman’s own institute: to deepen the normalization pacts between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Friedman rejects any suggestion of rivalry or competition for credit, painting the two groups as being far apart in scale and ambition, and working in cooperation. “There’s the famous saying that success has many parents,” he says, adding that it was only natural that “lots of people are working on making them better and stronger.”
The Kushner-led group, he says, is “doing great and important work” by “establishing numerous metrics to see if they can achieve scaling of the Abraham Accords with the fields of commerce, education and trade.
“I think I’m probably a little bit more in the ‘touchy-feely’ kind of category,” he adds. “I’m focusing primarily on Jerusalem and trying to change the view of Jerusalem in the Muslim world.”
Jared Kushner, right, making a whistle-stop visit to the event in Jerusalem last night as Ivanka Trump looks on. Shauli Landner
With daily flights from Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and a recently opened nonstop route to Morocco, the former ambassador, 63, says he wants to do what he can to open the floodgates for Muslim tourism to Jerusalem, in cooperation with existing organizations.
“I’m looking to take my little organization and to have a lot of impact and punch above our weight. We’re never going to operate on a budget anything close to any of the large NGOs that operate here – it will be a tiny, tiny percentage of that.”
‘I’d love bipartisan support’
Another clear difference between Friedman’s and Kushner’s groups is bipartisanship – or lack thereof. While Kushner has prominent Democrats and the Biden administration publicly on board, Friedman’s high-profile supporters seem to come largely from the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
“I’d love bipartisan support for what we’re doing,” Friedman says. “I don’t want to mention names, but I invited lots and lots of Democrats to get involved in what I am doing. I haven’t had much success yet. I’m going to keep trying, because I think this should be a consensus bipartisan issue. Jared seems to have succeeded more than I, maybe because he partnered up with Haim Saban, who has deep connections to the Democratic Party.”
However, Friedman doesn’t hide his criticism of the Biden White House. He says it is “great” that Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced over the weekend that he plans to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Wednesday. But Friedman, like other GOP leaders, believes the new administration sidelined the Accords in its first months.
“I think there was a clearly reflexive opposition to all things Trump when [the Biden team] came in, and I think the Abraham Accords got thrown into that,” he says. “Looking ahead, if the Biden White House manages to make progress in expanding the Accords in scale and including other countries, I’ll be the first guy to congratulate them. And I hope they do.”
Still, he says he is sure that if Trump had been reelected, there would have been more progress on the Accords, and that “the Saudis would have been on board by now.”
‘A little bit testy’
By remaining in Jerusalem, Friedman was able to distance himself from the continuing fallout from the January 6 Capitol riots and his former boss’ refusal to accept the 2020 election results.
Asked about those events, Friedman says he “wishes it hadn’t happened,” and that it overshadowed the administration’s accomplishments. When asked about his own view of the election results, he replied – “On the one hand, I’ve certainly seen anecdotal evidence of irregularities. On the other hand, no one has shown me that those irregularities altered the outcome. Does that mean that I know? I don’t.”
As Trump’s former bankruptcy lawyer, working for an outside firm, he says he has no fear of being implicated in the unfolding financial case against Trump, for which Trump organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was recently charged.
“I’m not aware of wrongdoing of any kind” on Trump’s part, Friedman says, stressing that he was never employed by the Trump Organization and that “there has not been a single question ever, ever sent my way from any kind of law enforcement.”
Attendees posing with David Friedman, cemter, at the event in Jerusalem last night. Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked was the only member of the current government in attendance.Shauli Landner
Friedman, seated by his wife, Tammy, seems at home in his expansive Jerusalem apartment, where they live when they are not at their Florida home. Two of their children currently live in Israel: one daughter, Talia, took Israeli citizenship in 2017 and lives in Tel Aviv.
In an exit interview with the New York Times after leaving the ambassadorship, Friedman was asked if he and his wife might follow their daughter’s lead. He replied that he wanted to remain “American only” for at least four years – leaving the door open for a U.S. government position in 2024. He still says he would be happy to serve his country “in a role where I can be effective.”
But if that isn’t in the cards, he wouldn’t rule out making aliyah?
Friedman immediately responds: “I don’t think any Jew should rule out aliyah.”
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