If there were additional signs needed that the U.S. had ceded it's past claim as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, this would be one. In an effort to limit sales of military weapons to nations that commit human rights abuses (Saudi Arabia in Yemen, for example) as per U.S. law, last year the State Department asked our embassies in the Middle East to examine how weapons are used by those governments in committing possible violations of human rights. The U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman dismissed the request outright last October, saying that Israel should be exempt from such an examination. However, the recent violence in Gaza involving Israeli military units and Palestinians in which scores of Palestinians were killed have raised questions about Israel's use of lethal force against the demonstrators.
Friedman, neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump's former bankruptcy lawyer, persistently acts more like the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. rather than the other way around :
"Along with other anecdotes about his tenure, it suggests that the blunt-spoken former Trump bankruptcy lawyer sees his host country, which he has long considered a second home, as virtually beyond reproach. It also underscores the stark pro-Israel tone of Trump’s foreign policy as the president works to devise a proposal for a long-elusive Middle East peace."As if to underline Friedman's Likud/Israeli loyalties, Israel's partisan ambassador to the U.S., former Rethuglican operative Ron Dermer, had this to say:
“Ambassador Friedman has done a terrific job and is widely respected across the political spectrum in Israel,” said Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. “Israel’s leaders appreciate his close relationship with President Trump and know that he speaks to and for the president in a way that perhaps none of his predecessors did.”Dermer was Likudnik Prime Minister Bibi "Bomb Bomb" Netanyahu's point person on their failed attempt to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal in Congress, a cynical attempt to meddle in the U.S. legislative process by a foreign government which bypassed the Obama Administration.
Of anyone Rump could have appointed as ambassador, Friedman seems to be the least likely agent of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But, of course, that appears to be the desire of Israel's Likudniks and Rump.
