‘Enormous Progress’: Former U.S. Ambassador On Israel’s Multi-Front War

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on a special Sunday Edition of Morning Wire. 

It’s been a year since Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 Israeli citizens and kidnapping hundreds more, including American citizens. Since that terror attack, the worst in Israel’s history, Israeli forces have systematically taken out Hamas terrorists – and, more recently, directed their forces against Hezbollah terrorists to their north. The result has been the dramatic weakening of Iran’s terror proxies. In this episode, we talk with former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman about the state of the conflict in the Middle East one year since October 7.

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JOHN: Joining us now to discuss the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, and the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks, is former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Thank you for joining us.

DAVID: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

JOHN: Now, we’ve seen a lot of action between Israel and Iran’s proxies, and now Iran directly. First, the Israeli military began a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah terrorists last week despite threats of retaliatory strikes from Iran. First, was this the right move by Israel?

DAVID: Oh, absolutely. Without this, there’s no way to bring quiet to the North. Israel’s done a good job of decapitating the upper echelons of Hezbollah, but there are still a lot of soldiers and a lot of rockets there. Most importantly, along the North what they’re discovering now are a series of terror tunnels just as ornate and threatening as you have in the south in Gaza. So, in order to really create a meaningful buffer between Israel and Lebanon, where the people who live in northern Israel can sleep at night with some comfort, you really have to clean out a good 10 to 20 kilometers of southern Lebanon, and you can’t do it any other way but on the ground.

JOHN: And for those who haven’t been tracking as closely, what has been the situation for the Israeli citizens who were living in northern Israel over this last year?

DAVID: Well, the assault by Hamas started on October 7, and by October 8 as Hezbollah started to shoot rockets from the north, the Israeli government evacuated 60,000 people from their homes in northern towns. They haven’t been home since. They’ve been living in makeshift hotels in people’s houses and with relatives. Kids haven’t gone to school. It’s been almost exactly a year of being refugees in their own country. And so this is a primary objective of Israel’s defense is to bring these 60,000 people back home and to bring quiet to the north.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

JOHN: Now, the White House has warned Iran that there will be severe consequences for their retaliatory ballistic missile strikes on Israel. What actual consequences might there be for Iran from the U.S.?

DAVID: It’s hard to say. There haven’t been any consequences yet for three and a half years of malign activity. The sanctions that should be enforced on Iran are not being enforced. There’s no secondary sanctions, which means that Iran can sell its oil to other countries with impunity. They’re selling billions of dollars of oil to both Russia and China, which is sort of self-defeating for America. We’re trying to help Ukraine defeat Russia. And we’re also helping Iran sell oil to Russia, which Iran then takes that money and funds all the malign activity all throughout the Middle Eastern Crescent. So, I don’t know what America is prepared to do. I know what we would have done if we were still in office, but that’s certainly not what the Biden administration is doing. So, I don’t know what the threats mean. They’ve been observed in the breach over the last three and a half years.

LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Ambassador David Friedman on Morning Wire.

JOHN: You mention sanctions – President Trump has leveled a lot of accusations against the Biden administration, accusing them of mishandling the Iran situation, particularly when it comes to sanctions. Do you think that these criticisms are fair? 

DAVID: Yes, I think it’s the most obvious and the most consequential failure of the Biden administration. When we left office, Iran had a GDP of under $200 billion, and now they’re over $450 billion. It’s not because they discovered some technology that they’re somehow doing all this great business. It’s all because we’re allowing Iran to sell oil to our greatest adversaries, and they’ve more than doubled their GDP, they have all this extra money, they use it to fund Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis, and make the world a more dangerous place. I think it’s been the single greatest foreign policy failure of the Biden administration, among many, but I think it’s been the single greatest failure because it was the easiest not to do. There was no point in doing it. There was no point in relieving Iran of these sanctions. We had them bankrupt, we had them on the ropes. And Biden made them a very powerful country again.

JOHN: And what about the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel? Do you think they’ve shown adequate support of Israel over this last year?

DAVID: No, of course not, not at all. I think there’s been a huge disconnect between the platitudes and the facts on the ground. For example, you’ll hear a statement repeatedly from Kamala Harris saying, “Israel has the right to defend itself,” which is essentially a meaningless statement. There’s no country in the world that doesn’t have the right to defend itself, especially against the type of attacks that Israel experienced. So there are these words that kind of sound good, but you look at the policy towards Iran, you look at the refunding of UNRWA, you look at the consistent interfering with Israel’s prosecution of its defense. That famous line where she said, “I’ve read the maps. Israel can’t go into Rafah.” I could have drawn the map on a napkin. It’s as if she had undertaken some major academic effort. Of course Netanyahu, to his credit, didn’t listen to them, and went into Rafah. Had he not gone in he wouldn’t have saved five hostages, and he also wouldn’t have discovered the smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza that were the primary source of Hamas’s weapons. So, they will say enough to placate the most naive, least informed, most insecure members of the Jewish community or the pro-Israel community. But when it comes to actually helping Israel win this war, they’ve caused Israel both to be delayed by months – I think this war in Gaza would have been over many months ago. They’ve caused Israel to take efforts that I think no army would have taken, putting their soldiers at greater risk and exposing them to both death and being injured. And I think they’ve done nothing to convince Israel’s adversaries that America will be there with Israel, there’ll be no daylight. There’s been constant daylight, which has only empowered Israel’s enemies and frankly, it’s raised the price of all the hostage negotiations. Every time Biden blames Netanyahu for not making a deal, it just raises the price and makes it harder to make a deal. And of course it’s not true. So, I’m quite critical of what Harris and Biden have done. I think they really made it much harder for Israel to win this war. And, unfortunately, Israel’s paid a heavy price for that malfeasance.

Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

JOHN: Let’s turn to the infamous day that started this entire conflict over this last year, October 7. It’s been nearly a year since the deadliest terror attack ever on Israel. At the time, Israel put together a war cabinet and hoped for a short conflict. Do you believe they’ve made progress in their goals?

DAVID: I think they’ve made enormous progress. Hamas was a terrorist group, but they were a hell of a good terrorist group. I say “good” meaning threatening. They had created for themselves the largest, most powerful home court advantage in the history of ground warfare. Israel could not have defeated them without going in on the ground, and I think Israel maybe they knew about it, maybe they discovered more than they were aware of, but the extent of 350 miles of terror tunnels with advanced weaponry I think was something which posed an enormous challenge to Israel. They have largely destroyed that apparatus, both the soldiers, the equipment, the tunnels, and the leadership. Sinwar, we don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but he’s obviously not able to have the kind of command and control that he once had. So, I think this threat was greater than what Israel appreciated on October 6. It took them a while to really respond effectively because they were caught by surprise, but they’ve done great work in the aftermath of that attack. And because they weren’t caught by surprise with Lebanon — they were on the receiving end of rockets for almost 11 months — they had a lot of time to plan. And the kind of response that they were able to generate in Lebanon — whether it was through the exploding beepers or the walkie talkies or blowing up meetings of top level Hezbollah commanders or killing Nasrallah — the actions taken by Israel in the last, say, three weeks against Lebanon, against Hezbollah, I think will be talked about and written about for a hundred years. They were so creative and effective. So, I think the Israeli army has done a very good job. I think ultimately we’ll need a better answer as to how this happened in the first place on October 7. But since that happened, I think they’ve performed incredibly well.

JOHN: Is it too optimistic to say that Hamas is effectively over?

DAVID: Look, I think Hamas has been deeply degraded. It’s hard to say “over” because Israel lives in a very dangerous neighborhood and throughout its history, as it defeats its enemies, others continuously pop up. There’s plenty of money behind the desire to hurt Israel. There’s plenty of evil in the world. There’s plenty of misguided clerics who will continue to teach their parishioners to hate Israel and to maybe give their own lives in killing Israelis and killing Jews. So we’re not going to destroy anti-Semitism. We’re not going to destroy anti-Zionism. So, people will continue to pop up because there’s a lot of money behind it. And unfortunately that’s a reality. But is Israel safer today than it was on October 6? Undoubtedly. It’s like a patient that discovered it had cancer, and it went and it took the therapies. The therapies may have been painful. They may have thrown up, they may have lost their hair, whatever, but on the other end of that therapy, they’re a lot healthier than never discovering the cancer and letting it just eat away at you. So I think on October 6 the Israeli body, if you will, was wracked with cancer. And I think that today much of that cancer has been eliminated. Just like a cancer patient, Israel will have to get checked every couple of years. They have to check themselves and check their surroundings to make sure it doesn’t come back. But I think they are definitely healthier than they were before October 7.

JOHN: Where do you see the issue of who controls Gaza going forward? How can a sustainable situation be attained in the coming months?

DAVID: Look, there’s a short-run and a long-run. The short-run, there needs to be a lot of rebuilding, a lot of money needs to be put there. The people who live there have to either find a way to live there safely and securely, or they need to leave and hopefully other countries will take them in. Unlike the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of refugees were taken in by Turkey and other countries, because of this anti-Israel sentiment, I don’t think there’s going to be that much appetite to take in Gazan refugees. I know that when I was in office, we used to ask Egypt to help and they’ve never been willing to help. Jordan’s not willing to help. So, Gaza will have to get rebuilt as best as possible. Now, the long-term question is how do you run Gaza? Look, my view is you run Gaza the same way that Israel ought to run the West Bank, to run Judea and Samaria. I think Israel is the only sovereign that has the ability to rule over these territories in a way which both brings security to Israel, but also potentially brings prosperity and security and human rights to the Palestinian people. Israel’s population, as you know, is 20% Arab and more than 20% of the students at Israel’s elite universities are Arab. Israel has a track record of empowering an Arab minority, and I think that’s important. Israel is the best candidate. That’s very controversial right now. My book “One Jewish State” came out three weeks ago and advocates for Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. I hope that’s the model for Gaza as well. But I think Gaza, unlike Judea and Samaria, is still too raw and still has too many unanswered questions. So it’s hard to say what the long-term answer is, but I think Israel is the only sovereign in the area which has the ability to run these places in a way that doesn’t cause them to return to their terrorist hotbeds.

JOHN: You noted the role of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in this. Since October 7, do you believe anti-Semitism has gotten worse in the U.S. and abroad?

DAVID: Oh, of course, by massive powers. Yes, like nothing we’ve seen before.

JOHN: So, is it even more challenging on the international stage for Israel now, post-October 7, than it was before?

DAVID: Well, yes and no. Look, I think there’s been a lot of anti-Israel sentiment that’s been fomented in a very well-financed, very orchestrated manner in America. I think there is a lot of homegrown anti-Semitism in places like London and Paris, largely because of the immigration mistakes that they’ve made over the last 10 years. It’s gonna be harder than it was before. But I think the flip side of it is there’s now much more clarity to the situation than there had been before. I think Israel knows who its friends are. It knows who its enemies are, and knows what it can accomplish, what it can’t accomplish. I think Israel has to stop trying to justify its existence. I don’t think there’s any country in the world that’s put through those paces of justifying their existence. Israel exists – it’s a fact. It has to take care of its citizens. It has to create whatever strategic alliances it can. It’s obviously very important for Israel to be on good terms with the United States, its most strategic asset. That’s always better under a Republican administration. But it’s got to find a way to deal with both alternatives. But when you’re kind of fighting for your life, when you’re fighting for your existence, you kind of obsess less about all these other issues, and you just basically protect your citizens, you get stronger, you worry about the right things, and you basically tell the world, “Look, you can join us or you can fight us.” But I think with that kind of self-respect, I believe Israel will restore a lot of the respect of the world. It’s an incredible country with a lot to be proud of, but it has to pursue its agenda from a position of strength in self-respect and not beg other countries to be nice to it. It’s just not necessary, and I think it’s counterproductive.

JOHN: Final question: How has the sequence of events over the last year changed our understanding of the situation in the Middle East?

DAVID: Well, a couple of things. I think it’s told us that Israel’s enemies — mostly the same as America’s enemies – were not going to negotiate some deal with them. They’re just not. They hate us, they are fanatical, they have a warped sense of religion and God. And we need to focus more on defeating them than placating and appeasing them. That’s on the negative side. On the positive side, the Abraham Accords have held. There’s been writing at Columbia and Harvard and UCLA. A lot less so in UAE and Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Challenges in those countries for sure, because of what they’re seeing, but the part of the countries that joined the Abraham Accords haven’t left it and have indicated that they don’t intend to leave it. So our friends are our friends, our enemies are our enemies. The same is true for the United States. I think we need to empower our friends more and we need to make sure their enemies never again get these opportunities to hurt the U.S. or to hurt the state of Israel. Again, the clarity is there. We know what needs to be done. We need to be much more cognizant at home, domestically, of the forces that are getting these students to really hate Israel because they hate America as well. I noticed the demands at Columbia — in the spring, the demands were “Palestine from the river to the sea.” Now they’ve come back after summer break and their first demand is to eradicate the American colonial empire. That’s where they’re going. These are Marxists, anarchists. They hate America, they hate Israel, but they’re on American soil. They can do a lot of damage to us here on American soil. And I think that the Biden and Harris administration will continue to look at them, in the first instance, as potential voters, and then only after that, really take a stand against what they’re doing. That’s horrible. A lot of these people are foreigners. A lot of them need to be deported. A lot of them are committing crimes. A lot of them need to be prosecuted. There’s just been too much indulgence of this internal cancer that we’re facing in America.

JOHN: Ambassador, thank you so much for talking with us.

DAVID: My pleasure.

JOHN: That was former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman – and this has been a Sunday/Extra edition of Morning Wire.

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LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Ambassador David Friedman on Morning Wire.