Brad Sherman Rejects Friedman, But Backs Moving Embassy to Jerusalem

Brad Sherman

By Nathan Guttman December 21, 2016

For California Jewish Democrat Brad Sherman, a staunch supporter of Israel in Congress, it’s more about what David Friedman believes in than about where he will sit as ambassador to Israel.

In an interview with the Forward on Wednesday, Sherman made clear that while he supports the call by Friedman and by president-elect Donald Trump to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the ambassador-designate’s rejection of a two-state solution should alarm senators when they debate his confirmation for the post.

“The policy of trying to box in Netanyahu and force him out of the two-state solution, which is the official policy of his government, is not something that the Senate is going to want to see,” Sherman said. “What we don’t need is someone playing a foreigner’s role in Israeli politics, trying to egg on Israeli into a belief that somehow they can announce to the world that they are permanently going to govern millions of Palestinians but somehow not let them vote.” Sherman compared the idea of abandoning the two-state solution to similar notions raised in the past by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The next ambassador to Israel, Sherman added, should be someone who acts as “an honest, low key, diplomatic source of communication” between the two countries.

Sherman is the sixth Jewish Democratic member of Congress to speak out against Friedman’s appointment as ambassador to Israel. On Wednesday, California’s Alan Lowenthal said that Trump’s choice of Friedman “does damage to our credibility and makes peace more difficult.”

Sherman, however, found one key point of agreement with Trump and Friedman – relocating the embassy to Jerusalem. “It makes sense,” he said, noting that the site of the future embassy is clearly in West Jerusalem in an area that had always been under Israeli control. “People will get over it and realize the silliness of this controversy once the embassy is moved,” Sherman predicted.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

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. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO