David Friedman - Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

T he prophets Isaiah and Micah each use identical words to describe the ultimate in diplomacy: They shall beat their swords into plowshares. Converting the equipment of war into tools of peace is the goal of every American member of the foreign service. But most overlook the fact that the prophets didnt use the phrase convert their swords, they used the word beat (a more literal interpretation of the Hebrew would be crush). The prophets suggested a less-than-delicate approach to peacemaking might be necessary, something requiring more than a scalpel or a file. Perhaps even a sledgehammer.

As US ambassador to Israel, that was my approach. It led to a once-in-a-generation series of peace agreements between Israel and five Muslim countries. This book tells the story of how those peace agreementsthe Abraham Accordscame to be.

I didnt choose this sledgehammer metaphor; it chose me. It began fifteen years ago with a burst sewage pipe in the City of David, an eleven-acre ridge just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The City of David, one of the most archaeologically excavated sites in the world, is Jerusalem centralthe very place where the kings of the Bible ruled and the prophets of the Bible preached.

Local plumbers were called in to determine the source of the water break. As they excavated the terrain, they realized that there was something unusual below street level. As often happens in Jerusalem, this prompted a call to the Jerusalem Municipality, which in turn resulted in a rushed visit from the Israel Antiquities Authority. As the experts examined the hole in the ground, they realized that they had stumbled upon a discovery of literally biblical proportionsthey had uncovered the ancient steps leading to the Pool of Siloam.

The Pool of Siloam was originally built by Hezekiah, king of Judah, in the eighth century BCE, and fed by the Gihon Spring through the Siloam Tunnel. Hezekiah built the water tunnel to ensure an adequate water supply to the ancient City of Jerusalem, especially in the event of a threatened siege from Judahs enemies to the north. The Babylonians apparently destroyed the pool at the end of the sixth century BCE, but the Hasmoneans rebuilt it. King Herod enhanced it about two hundred years later.

Archaeologists and scientists concurred that this discovery was the Pool of Siloam. The pool was the public bath where Jewish pilgrims would purify themselves before ascending to the Temple. According to Christian tradition, the Pool of Siloam is where the New Testament records that Jesus cured a blind man.

Discovery of the Pool of Siloam prompted a follow-up inquiry as to how the pilgrims ascended to the Temple once they had cleansed themselves. Further excavation then revealed something even more amazing: an almost perfectly preserved flagstone road ascending directly from the Pool of Siloam to the southern entrance of the Temple Mount, its construction attributed to Pontius Pilate in the year 30a few years before the crucifixion of Jesus and approximately forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the subsequent expulsion of the Jews. It was indeed a significant archaeological find with great spiritual significance to Christians and Jews alike.

Palestinian opposition to this project, however, was intense. They protested that the archaeologists were weakening the foundations of homes in the City of David community, although little evidence supported this claim. What really agitated Palestinian leadership was the impending reality that their favorite narrative that Jews had no historical connection to ancient Jerusalem was about to be further discredited and exposed as a lie. Even though Jerusalem is mentioned more than six hundred times in the Old Testament and not once in the Koran, decades of Palestinian leadership successfully had espoused the argument that Jerusalem is holy only to Muslims and Christians but not to Jews. This was always a self-contradictory argument, since if Jerusalem was holy to Christians, it is because Jesus prayed there as a Jew. Although this falsehood was accepted by UNESCO and other international organizations, the City of David excavations, along with other projects throughout Jerusalem, were creating scientific proof that, to the contrary, ancient biblical Jerusalem was real, it was vibrant, it was Jewish, and sites mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments do exist.

By 2019, nearly half of the ancient street from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple had been excavated. I was given a rare opportunity to view this thoroughfare, dubbed the Pilgrimage Road, early that year. What I saw was astounding: ancient flagstone steps matching exactly the steps at the southern entrance to the Temple Mount.

Ive been to countless museums displaying Jerusalem antiquities. But to me, the Pilgrimage Road was very different from those displays behind glass cases. Those were merely a shard of glass, a piece of clay, or a shred of parchment. The Pilgrimage Road presented a unique opportunity to immerse oneself in a world destroyed some two thousand years ago and walk the steps of thousands of Jews who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year for the major festivalsincluding the historical Jesus. Walking the Pilgrimage Road was an opportunity to feel the anticipation of the pilgrims as they prepared for a deeply spiritual experience. It was a way to step back in time into the world of the Bible.

The world of the Bible is not just significant to me because I am Jewish. I am an American deeply concerned that we as a nation have become untethered from our founding principles. This world of the Bible was the world drawn upon by our Founders in creating the great American Republic. The Declaration of Independence, perhaps the most profound document since the Bible, contained the guarantee to every person of unalienable rights endowed by our Creator. These rights werent just a good idea that found their roots in the political discourse of Thomas Hobbes or John Locke or the Federalist Papers or the Magna Cartaor even the Code of Hammurabi. These unalienable rights endowed by God were his will as revealed in the Bible. And the word of God, as described by the prophet Isaiah, was first expressed in the City of David: For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:3).

The City of Davidthe center of Jewish life in the days of the Biblethus meant as much to me as an American as it did as a Jew, and I was determined to make sure that American political leaders were exposed to this great monument to our Judeo-Christian heritage. On January 15, 2021, just days before I left office, I formally recognized the City of David as an American heritage site. It was a fitting final act.