Jack Lew was nominated by President Joe Biden as the US ambassador to Israel in early September 2023 — a month before Hamas’s invasion and massacre in southern Israel. He arrived to take up the post a month after that catastrophe. His time here, now coming to an end with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, has been a period of terrible crisis, as he puts it, “from beginning to end.”
On Thursday, the ambassador sat down in Tel Aviv for an unusually lengthy interview with The Times of Israel — a kind of farewell conversation, laced with as much candor as his diplomatic considerations allowed.