Former US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, spoke to Newsmax after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced criminal charges against the leaders of Hamas over their roles in murdering American citizens during the October 7 attack against Israel.
Friedman wondered why it had taken so long for these charges to be announced.
“You know, I’ve been practicing law for 35 years. I could have written an indictment on Yahya Sinwar on October 8th. I mean, what did they find out afterwards that took so long to issue the indictment? And you know, what about Iran? Iran financed Hamas. Why isn't he indicting Iran? I can make the case that maybe they ought to be indicting people in the United States and the US government who turned on the funding of UNRWA. You know, President Trump turned it off because we saw UNRWA as a willing partner of Hamas. We turned off the money, and the United States government turned on that funding. And that also assisted and financed the Hamas terror attacks. So I got a lot of questions about this, both in terms of who he chose to indict and why now. It really just reeks of political opportunism,” said Friedman.
The former Ambassador noted the absurdity of the Biden administration pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire deal with Hamas, while indicting the same Hamas leaders with whom he is supposed to reach an agreement.
“You know, they're trying to get a deal. They're blaming Netanyahu for not doing more to get the hostages back. And yet they're indicting, for terror funding, the guy that he's supposed to be making a deal with. Why would anybody think that someone who brutally murdered 1,200 people and kidnaped another 250, and engaged in rape and murder and child burning and the worst assaults against human rights in decades…You're going to negotiate a deal with that guy? And he cares about whether he comes across as being good faith or bad faith or whatever? It's just completely asymmetric,” said Friedman.
“Two days ago, Biden blamed Bibi and there was a huge outcry from everybody. You know, on the day that Israel is burying six of its most beautiful citizens, that we've gotten to know for the last year and prayed for their return - and of course, as they were almost rescued, they were murdered in cold blood - on that day he is telling the Israeli people ‘Your elected leader didn't do enough to save them.’ A horrible, cheap political stunt. So now he's got backlash from that and he's saying, ‘Oh, what am I going to do? I got an election coming up in two months. Let me try to throw something Israel's way.’ So he calls Garland and Garland indicts Sinwar, which is an entirely futile and nonsensical act. It's just it's just people out of control who are flailing around, trying to play both sides of the coin, to try to garner votes in an election. That's all this is. There's no substance to this,” he added.
“Israel is fighting this, not America, but what America is doing is just really inept. You know, when you have a battle between good and evil, you got to pick a side. You can't start placating the voters in Dearborn, Michigan, and the rioters at Columbia and on the West Coast. You got to just pick a side,” said Friedman.
“People would have respected Biden and Harris far more if they just would have said, ‘Look, Israel is our ally. They are the only democracy in the Middle East. They were assaulted as no nation should have been assaulted. They experienced something in proportional terms, far worse than 9/11, and we stand with them and we're going to help them win this war. And we're not going to have any daylight, and we're not going to tell them how to fight, because we don't know any better than they do.’ Frankly, they would do better in the elections because they've just offended everybody by what they're doing,” he added.