Ambassador to Ambassador: Friedman addresses Huckabee’s Comments on Settler Violence

Fmr Ambassador David Friedman | X

To my dear friend Mike Huckabee,

No one doubts where your heart is. Your support for Israel is unwavering and historic.

There is violence in Judea and Samaria — there has been for many years. But Jews don’t wake up in the morning saying “I’m going to go kill a Palestinian today.” The opposite, of course, is not true — hundreds and hundreds of Jewish residents of J&S have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Most Palestinian residents of J&S cheered 9/11, 10/7, support Hamas and want to push the Jews out of all of Israel, not just J&S.

So of course there is violence between Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria. But the two questions are 1) why does it exist, and 2) how is it being used by Israel’s enemies?

It exists for the reasons described above — Jews need to defend themselves. Some acts of defense are debatable, some may be inappropriate. But they are acts of defense nonetheless against ruthless thugs that simply refuse to live in peace on any terms with their Jewish neighbors.

The “settler violence” libel is being used, as you recognize, as part of a coordinated PR effort by the same people who falsely accuse Israel of genocide. The Palestinian-Americans who had no difficulty building beautiful houses in the area are now draping American flags on their houses so that attacks against them — which they instigate — can be filmed as attacks against America.

It’s all a cynical campaign and its roots go back more than a century.

Of course I agree that settler violence hurts Israel’s “standing” in the world, but it hurts less than giving Palestinian terrorists free rein to kill more Jews.

Unfortunately, labeling the Jews who fight back as “terrorists” is a win for the anti-Israel PR machine who then create a moral equivalency between both sides. Your correct observation that the Jews committing acts of violence are a tiny fraction of the total Jewish population is a distinction entirely lost on the media, who have a false narrative to uphold.