The Trump administration’s proposed new ambassador to Israel is to use a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to apologise for highly controversial comments he made against left-wing Jews, according to the US media.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that David Friedman, a long-time attorney for Donald Trump, will discuss his labelling of the left-wing advocacy group J-Street as “worse than Kapos” in an article he wrote for Israel National News.
According to the Times, Mr Friedman’s representatives informed Senator Benjamin Cardin, the Jewish Democratic Senator for Maryland and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that he will express regret for his language.
“Are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos?” Mr Friedman asked, in his article last May.
“The answer, actually, is no,” he continued. “They are far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps. The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.”
Earlier this week, a letter signed by more than 30 Holocaust survivors was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations committee, who will be questioning Mr Friedman on Thursday.
It called Mr Friedman’s “Kapo” comments “slanderous, insulting, irresponsible, cynical and immensely damaging to our people.”
Mr Friedman will need to receive the support of at least 11 of the 21-strong committee in order to be confirmed as ambassador. It is unclear whether US senators considered sympathetic to the views of Aipac, the most influential pro-Israel US lobby group, will be positively disposed towards Mr Friedman. Aipac continues to lobby US politicians to support the concept of a two-state solution, which Mr Friedman has vocally opposed in the past.
