RUTHFULLY YOURS

President-elect Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, the attorney David Friedman, has been received in some quarters with contempt and disbelief. Mr. Friedman’s presumed failings are said to be many. As a lawyer, he has no diplomatic or foreign policy experience. He is a right-wing “extremist,” supposedly because he supports expanding settlements and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

At its core, criticism of Mr. Friedman reflects the erroneous notion that only professionally trained diplomats can do the job. That is simply false. Modern diplomacy—which I experienced as Canada’s ambassador to Israel—is an anachronistic system of entitlement and privilege aligned with the aristocratic sensibilities of the late 19th century. The “foreign service” model that prevails today was the institutional response to a surfeit of well-bred, indolent men needing something to do. So they were sent abroad to underwrite fancy parties and salons, in the name of the King, Queen or Republic.

Two world wars made a hash of the old order, but Western diplomats have held fast to their entitlements. They indulge a posh lifestyle that mostly disappeared from the private sector as governance standards were enhanced. It is difficult to explain layers of servants and personal drivers to shareholders, never mind taxpayers.

Diplomats used to be important emissaries for their governments. Today that role is greatly diminished. Communication is instant and world leaders are overexposed, like rock stars on MTV. Forty years ago presidents and prime ministers might have attended one international meeting each year; today they are on a summit treadmill. They phone one another and cultivate personal relationships. Diplomats are often sidelined and left to churn out reports that circulate in a bureaucratic vortex.

Diplomacy still turns on the exercise of geopolitical power, as it always has, and on trade, which has changed completely in 50 years. Yet tradition-bound foreign services disdain the sullied world of commerce. In their world view, they—and they alone—are destined to solve the great issues of our time. As a result, there is a notable deficit of business acumen, one of the key elements of modern diplomacy, in many foreign services. Private-sector talent and experience are desperately needed but maligned when recruited.

I know neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Friedman other than through the media. But I do know that Mr. Friedman has been selected to represent America’s democratically elected president. He will serve at the pleasure of Mr. Trump and represent the president’s policies. Mr. Friedman is not anointed to go rogue and indulge in personal fantasies.

In the final months of the presidential campaign, a popular refrain at Donald Trump rallies, ‎second only perhaps to “Lock Her Up,” was “Drain the Swamp.” The chant ‎ostensibly referred to clearing out the bureaucratic/lobbyist control over the ‎federal government, which had resulted in a government committed to serving the ‎needs of the protected few at the expense of the unprotected many and ‎debilitating America’s future growth prospects in the process.‎

There is no reason, however, why the term should not apply equally to the stale ‎thinking that has permeated diplomacy in the Middle East for decades, enabling ‎nonsensical beliefs to remain accepted and unchallenged. The fierce reaction to ‎the announcement that Trump adviser David Friedman will be the next ambassador to Israel is ‎evidence that among those who have actively participated in perpetuating failure ‎in the supposed Israeli-Palestinian peace process there are many now worried ‎about their jobs, their influence, or worse — that common sense, if given an ‎outlet and applied to the region, may produce something outside the allowed set ‎of acceptable policies to which they have adhered for so long.‎

In “Ike’s Gamble,” Michael Doran’s excellent book on the Eisenhower administration’s fumbling and errors ‎in the Middle East, Doran quotes Britain’s then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill in ‎considering why American policy in the region was such a mess. Referring to ‎U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Churchill said: “He was clever ‎enough to be stupid on a rather large scale.”

It would be hard to find a more apt ‎description for the thinking of New Yorker Editor David Remnick, New York Times columnists, or J Street spokespeople in their sustained ‎apoplectic states since the Trump election victory, now reinforced by the Friedman ‎nomination. These people will always make the same arguments, and draw the ‎same conclusions, regardless of the facts, so their current panic mode is not a ‎surprise. ‎

It is worth examining some of the long-running issues that Trump and Friedman should move on, ‎which really belong in the dustbin of history. ‎

Jerusalem: The U.S. Embassy belongs in Jerusalem. In 1995, when Bill Clinton was president, Congress passed the ‎Jerusalem Embassy Act, which called ‎for the embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but provided a waiver for ‎the president to delay the move due to political or diplomatic considerations. ‎Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama chose to make use of the waiver each year of ‎their presidency, though each had campaigned promising to accomplish the move. ‎Ambassador-designate Friedman has been clear that he expects to perform his ‎duties from Jerusalem, perhaps starting work in the U.S. consulate in the city.‎

In a speech to the UN General Assembly on September 20, President Obama declared that Israel should recognize “it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.”

If cast here by Obama in starker form than usual, seemingly to stake a legacy position, the statement is yet another rendering of a theme he has returned to on many occasions throughout the eight years of his presidency. But the essence of that theme is a lie: Israel has neither occupied nor settled “Palestinian land.”

In fact, for all the posturing on the subject by the Obama administration, by the EU and European states, by the UN, and by other nations and international bodies, there is no such thing as “Palestinian land” in international law, or at least there was not before the Oslo process, formally initiated in 1993.

To the contrary, international law supports Jewish claims to the so-called occupied territories. The League of Nations, in creating successor entities to portions of what was formally the Ottoman Empire, established the “Palestine Mandate” for the lands between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and the right of Jews to claim and settle in those lands.

Indeed, it called for “close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands.” Article 80 of the United Nations charter subsequently preserved the application of the League of Nations Mandate’s stipulations.

One could argue that the Jews’ governmental body, by accepting the 1947 partition plan for Mandate Palestine, essentially gave up any claim to, including the right of settlement in, areas not allotted to it.

However, the Palestinian side rejected the plan and failed to establish a successor government in the areas that were to fall under its control. Subsequently, Judea and Samaria were occupied (with the killing or expulsion of all their Jewish residents) and annexed by Transjordan, which then renamed itself Jordan.

But only two nations, Britain and Pakistan, recognized Jordanian sovereignty in the territories. In 1967, Jordan – as King Hussein himself acknowledged – launched hostilities against Israel, and Israel, in its response, gained control of Judea and Samaria. In effect, whatever claims and rights Israel was prepared to give up in 1947 became irrelevant when no legitimate alternative government of Judea and Samaria emerged, and so the rights enshrined in the Mandate and in Article 80 of the UN charter remain in force.