By Barry Shaw
(MAY 28, 2023 / ARUTZ SHEVA) Susie Gelman is absolutely the wrong candidate for U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority maybe, but not to Israel.
In her role as chair of the Israel Policy Forum (someone will have to explain to me how she ever got that position) Gelman professed to love Israel as she works tirelessly against the best interests of Israel.
Israel Policy Forum, like JStreet, attempts to impose left wing radical policies on Israel.Susie Gelman embodies their unacceptable ideas.
She has worked to undermine the current Bibi government which she views as “extremist.”
Gelman has called Israel’s Independence Day as “Nakba Day.”
How can someone who wrote in 2018 that the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was “the highest level of brazen partisanship in U.S.-Israel relations since Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress in 2015 in which he expressed his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal,” even agree to accept the position and sit in that embassy as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel?
That would be the height of personal and political hypocrisy by Susie Gelman.
It would also indicate to Israel that we have an American enemy sitting in our capital.In her role as Ambassador to Israel she is likely to implement the Biden administration’s intention to “provide 5,000 Palestinians with commando training in Jordan and then deploy them to northern Samaria, and perhaps the South Hebron Hills.”
I live in Netanya very close to the Mediterranean Sea and I look at those South Hebron Hills from my living room and from my study, the place where I wrote this report. If I can see them, American-trained Palestinian gunmen can see me and my hometown.
Netanya is a town that has a tragic history of foolish American policies imposed on Israel and, as one of the founders of the Netanya Terror Victims organization, I say never again.
Our antennas are hot wired into identifying who is good for us and who is against us, and Gelman does not fit into the good for us category.
Wealthy Gelman and her husband have established a foundation that funds anti-Israel leftist causes. Her money has gotten her positions of influence and power within the Democrat party hierarchy.
As David Greenfield, researcher, and respected journalist, summarized, Gelman, sitting in her role in Jerusalem, would be in a position to wage diplomatic war against Israel.
If Biden or Blinken nominate Gelman to this role it will be perceived as a provocative act against the elected government of Israel.
Susie Gelman is absolutely the wrong candidate to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
Barry Shaw is International Public Diplomacy Director, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
This article was originally published in Arutz Sheva and can be viewed here.