David Friedman’s profound disrespect for the Holocaust, besides abetting Holocaust denial, casts doubt on his abilities as a diplomat.
David Friedman, President Trump’s nomination for American ambassador to Israel, has apologized for his offensive, inaccurate and harmful remarks about Jewish leftists and the Holocaust.
Too little, too late?
Friedman’s remarks were so beyond the pale that it will be difficult for those he disparaged, and all those disgusted with his words, to move on.
It is not that we think a right-wing Friedman is disqualified from being this country’s ambassador to Israel, any more than we thought that left-wing ambassadors were disqualified on account of their politics. It is not that a supporter of Jewish communities on the West Bank is thereby disqualified to be America’s ambassador to Israel, any more than a supporter of Peace Now would thereby be disqualified. Our issue with Friedman is beyond politics.
Friedman doesn’t like Israel-oriented liberal Jewish activists. Fine. He is entitled to his politics. But did he have to call them “worse than kapos”? It is difficult to conceive of anything, short of a Nazi himself, acting worse than a kapo, coerced though the vast majority of kapos were.
Friedman’s point seems to have been that kapos were robbed of agency, while adherents of J Street freely choose their politics — which Friedman sees as traitorous. If Friedman’s argument got lost in the uproar over his invocation of Nazi terminology, if damned denunciation figuratively buried his argument, then the onus is his alone. His own choice of words rightly elicited the uproar.
As to his argument, it is nothing but a sign of weakness to oppose another’s politics by impugning his motives. Friedman’s comparison of Sen. Chuck Schumer to Neville Chamberlain, who facilitated Hitler’s success, was but a smidgen less offensive and misguided.
The use of the word kapo to disparage Jews is hateful, inaccurate and profoundly disrespectful of the Holocaust. The reason why Friedman’s argument, such as it was, was buried under a barrage of criticism is because to call someone a kapo is to call someone a torturer at best, a murderer at worst.
A kapo was a Nazi collaborator, a traitor to his people, albeit an unwilling one. Yes, kapos greased the Nazi killing machine, but not out of any allegiance to the Nazis. They did so in order to survive the ghastly and creatively inhuman choices that the Nazis foisted on Jews in the concentration camps not sent immediately to the gas chambers: Torture your people or we will kill you.
To use the word kapo as an insult is to to fail to understand the Holocaust on any level. Anyone who has seen the Oscar-winning Hungarian film “Son of Saul” can attest to this.
To use Holocaust terminology to address non-Holocaust related issues is part of the worrying trend of Holocaust exploitation — something long set forth on this page and online on the IJN blog. Especially when perpetrated by Jews, any exploitation of the Holocaust weakens the Jewish community’s arsenal against the obscene use of Nazi symbols and imagery by anti-Israel activists and by today’s neo-Nazis.
Not that the exploitation of Holocausts terminology is limited to Jews. Just last week, the mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, used the word “Gestapo” to describe legislation backed by the city’s supervisor. The mayor later apologized, but the damage was done. Personally, one can walk back Nazi terms, but the foul impact of this usage remains. The haters rejoice.
All the moreso in Friedman’s case, as his own apology was more like a half apology. At the Senate hearings to confirm him, Friedman said he “regretted” his words; he said there was “no excuse,” but he didn’t use the word “sorry” or “apologize.” He also mitigated his hateful language by calling it “partisan rhetoric” — providing, in a sense, the “excuse,” even though he said there is “no excuse.” Can someone whose behavior has “no excuse” be an effective diplomat?
Sen. Ben Cardin rightly called out Friedman on his choice of words in defending himself. For just what is “partisan” about exploiting the Holocaust? What is partisan about ad hominem attacks? In what way does a “partisan” presidential campaign justify pure, over-the-top hate speech?
There are plenty of “partisans” on Friedman’s side of the aisle who would never use his language; they do not think of their political opponents in Nazi terms. By Friedman contexualizing his comments as springing from a heated presidential election campaign, he degrades elections, campaigns and partisanship.
If the only way Friedman can participate in a partisan campaign is with the worst kind of ad hominem attacks, we have serious doubt as to whether he is suited to be an American ambassador to any country.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Bravo on your calling out David Freedman on his loose and inflammable language invoking the Holocaust. He should not be rewarded for his language and for his promotion of Jewish settlements on disputed land. He is an embarrassment to the Jewish community.