Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Will David Friedman Apologize For Calling Liberal Jews ‘Kapos’?

President Trump’s pick for Israel envoy, David Friedman, is expected to apologize for calling liberal American Jews “worse than kapos” at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, the New York Times reported.

Friedman doubled down on the disparaging comments about supporters of J Street, the dovish Israel lobby, in an op-ed last year on the pro-settler Israeli news site Arutz Sheva, in which he also accused then-President Obama of anti-Semitism.

The New York Times said that representatives of Friedman told Maryland Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as other officials, that Friedman would say he regretted the “kapos” comment at his hearing.

Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who opposes the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, is a settlement supporter through his position as the head of American Friends of Beit El Institutions, which brings in about $2 million a year for the settlement near Ramallah, according to Haaretz.

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.