Not only in my own face, but in the faces of at least half the Israeli population.

He has appointed a bankruptcy lawyer named David Friedman to the job of US ambassador in Israel.

This sounds like a bad joke. But it is brutal reality. It sets a precedent unknown in the annals of international diplomacy.

First of all, it is bad practice to appoint an ambassador to a country with which he has a deep personal connection. You don't send a Cuban-American Castro-hater to be the US ambassador in Havana. You don't send Kuomintang Chinese from Taiwan to be US ambassador in Beijing.

True, it is not the first time an American Jew has been appointed ambassador to Israel. There have been two or three, who could just as well have served as Israeli ambassadors to Washington. But they were far less opinionated than this specimen.