Former Ambassador Oren Publishes Book on U.S.-Israel Relationship

Former Ambassador Oren Publishes Book on U.S.-Israel Relationship

by JPUpdates Staff




Israel’s former Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, writes of his experience as the man in the center of the strained relationship between President Barack Obama and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a new book set for release this month.

Oren, who now serves as a Knesset Member for the center-right Kulanu party, was Israel’s Ambassador from 2009 to 2013. His  book, ‘Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,’ will be released on June 23.

In excerpts of the book, posted by the New York Post, Oren writes of several incidents where the Obama administration seemingly pissed off Israel, holding them accountable for issues that had nothing to do with them.

Oren recalls an odd exchange with the administration as the Palestinian Authority made moves toward seeking a declaration of statehood at the United Nations in 2011, which would’ve triggered a law shutting down their US mission and suspending all aid to the PA and to UN agencies that recognized them.

Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides called Oren into his office and screamed at him: “You don’t want the f - - - ing UN to collapse because of your f - - - ing conflict with the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f - - - ing Palestinian Authority to fall apart either.

”The ambassador responded that Israel didn’t want the United Nations to collapse, “but there are plenty of Tea Party types who would, and no shortage of Congress members who are wondering why they have to keep paying Palestinians who spit in the president’s eye.”

Even after Israel helped the relief mission in Haiti following the devastating earthquake, Obama failed to mention the Jewish State when listing the countries that offered help, “because the president was angry about something having to do with the peace process,” the Post writes.

Oren writes that the friendship of the Obama administration towards Israel is more a mutual interest to keep Israel close so it should act openly against America’s interest.

But speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Oren spoke quite fondly of the United States’ support towards Israel. “At the end of the day, Israel has no substitute for the United States of America as its ultimate ally. The U.S. is not only the supplier of vital strategic support such as Iron Dome as we saw last summer, the United States is also our source for diplomatic Iron Dome in international organizations that are not always amenable to the Jewish state,” he said.

Oren, born in the United States, made Aliyah to the Jewish State in 1979.

“Ally is the story of that enduring alliance—and of its divides—written from the perspective of a man who treasures his American identity while proudly serving the Jewish State he has come to call home,” the book description reads. Oren was born in the United States and moved to Israel in 1979.

“No one could have been better suited to strengthen bridges between the United States and Israel than Michael Oren—a man equally at home jumping out of a plane as an Israeli paratrooper and discussing Middle East history on TV’s Sunday morning political shows. In the pages of this fast-paced book, Oren interweaves the story of his personal journey with behind-the-scenes accounts of fateful meetings between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, high-stakes summits with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and diplomatic crises that intensified the controversy surrounding the world’s most contested strip of land,” the book’s description reads.



06/10/2015 3:14 PM by JPUpdates Staff

http://jpupdates.com/2015/06/10/former-ambassador-oren-publishes-book-on-u-s-israel-relationship/

A new inside account of Obama’s Israel ire
By John Podhoretz
June 9, 2015 | 8:04pm


President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: Reuters


When it’s released June 23, the new book by bestselling historian Michael Oren is going to be the talk of Washington and Jerusalem — not to mention everywhere people take an interest in the relations between the United States and Israel, which is to say, in many if not most places on the planet.
It’s called “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” and I’m not sure that in the annals of diplomatic history there’s ever been anything quite like this astonishing account of Oren’s four years (2009-2013) as Israel’s ambassador in Washington.

It’s an ultimate insider’s story told while all the players save Oren are still in place; the Israeli prime minister he served still holds office and the administration to which he was the ambassador will remain in power until January 2017.

It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state.
What makes the details especially credible is that Oren is no flame-breathing Israeli right-winger but very much (and at times distressingly) an Establishment creature and one, moreover, who makes it clear he drank the Obama hope-and-change Kool-Aid in 2008. (Indeed, he now serves in Israel’s Knesset not as a member of Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud but of the new centrist Kulanu party.)
On major matters, the administration seemed to hold Israel accountable for problems it had nothing to do with.

Example: The Palestinian Authority made moves toward seeking a declaration of statehood at the United Nations in 2011, which would’ve triggered a law shutting down their US mission and suspending all aid to the PA and to UN agencies that recognized Palestine.

In response, Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides called Oren into his fancy Foggy Bottom office and screamed at him: “You don’t want the f - - - ing UN to collapse because of your f - - - ing conflict with the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f - - - ing Palestinian Authority to fall apart either.

”To which Oren replied that Israel didn’t want the United Nations to collapse, “but there are plenty of Tea Party types who would, and no shortage of Congress members who are wondering why they have to keep paying Palestinians who spit in the president’s eye.” He reports that Nides “slumped into his Louis XVth chair.”

Oren also writes about bizarrely petty offenses. In 2010, Obama left Israel off a list of countries he mentioned as having helped in the wake of the Haiti earthquake when it was the first nation in the world to dispatch relief teams and get them to the disaster sites — because the president was angry about something having to do with the peace process.

Even when the administration is acting friendly, Oren senses it is doing so not out of genuine fellow feeling but to keep Israel close — hugging it to prevent it from acting, especially when it came to Iran’s nuclear program.

Only when Israeli diplomats were at risk of being killed by rampaging Egyptians during the Arab Spring, and when Israel’s north was engulfed by forest fires, did Oren witness acts of unmitigated support from the Obamans. And note, in both cases, that they came when Israelis were powerless or ill-equipped to act on their own.

Throughout his tenure, Oren believed he was uniquely well-equipped to explain Israel to Americans and America to the Israelis. But how to explain a president who recently said that the Israel he admires is the Israel of kibbutzim and Golda Meir — a ludicrously rosy and unrealistic image of the Jewish state on par with wanting to look like Disneyland’s Main Street USA?

There was and is no good way to explain the views of the man in the White House on this matter except to use ones Oren never uses but implies throughout:

For ideological reasons, Obama doesn’t like the Israel that exists. Period.

http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/a-new-inside-account-of-obamas-israel-ire/

Michael Oren, widening the American-Israeli divide

The DC Report
By Douglas Bloomfield

As one who read and enjoyed Michael Oren’s fine book on the Six-Day War, I was shocked and disappointed to see the slipshod job he has done telling about his experience as Israeli ambassador to Washington during Barack Obama’s first term. Where a scholarly analysis is called for, he provides readers with the literary equivalent of a drive-by shooting.


Michael Oren

“Unjustified And Insensitive?”
Oren has been writing articles and doing interviews to promote his new book, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, about the United States-Israel relationship. What has been seen so far appears to more hatchet job than history, rife with glaring inaccuracies and psychobabble.

The Anti Defamation League)’s (ADL) Abe Foxman had it pegged. He recently said that some of Oren’s claims are simply “conspiracy theories with an element of amateur psychoanalysis,” complete with “unjustified and insensitive” charges.

Oren’s focus on Obama’s “Muslim heritage” and suggestions that his foreign policy was dictated by an “upbringing in the Muslim faith,” makes him sound like a border-line birther.  Especially when he suggests Obama’s desire to improve U.S.- relations with the Arab world was motivated by his feelings of “abandonment” by “two Muslim fathers” and a need “to seek acceptance by their coreligionists.”  Obama’s writings, according to Oren, show he harbors anti-American attitudes and a lack of “reverence” for American exceptionalism.

From Day One Obama’s agenda was “championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran,” Oren said.

Foxman urged Oren to “walk back these unjustified attacks,” but the former ambassador seems to be charging ahead full tilt. Especially after his book got a virtual endorsement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Disservice To Both Nations
Regardless of whether you’re a Netanyahu. loyalist or an Obama loyalist, Oren’s trampling of facts and history does a disservice to both nations.

Oren is a freshman member of Knesset representing the center-right Kulanu party, which is part of Netanyahu’s coalition. Kulanu leader and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon repudiated Oren’s attack on Obama and said he does not speak for the party.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro called the book “an imaginary account” by a politician “who wants to sell books.” Netanyahu rejected Shapiro’s plea for an official apology for the attacks on Obama.

Oren said he wrote the book to “motivate, animate and inspire” people, particularly Jews, to oppose any nuclear deal Obama makes with Iran.

A major theme is his charge that Obama has abandoned two “sacrosanct” principles of the U.S.-Israel relationship —no surprises and no daylight (public disagreements) —and thus is no longer a reliable ally.

Obama, in his view, “altered 40 years of U.S. policy” by endorsing a peace agreement based on the 1967 lines with land swaps. Wrong. That has been American policy since 1967 and Security Council Resolution 242. Contrary to other Oren charges, every administration has considered settlements illegal, and Obama was not the first but the third president to endorse Palestinian statehood.
Both leaders made “mistakes,” in Oren’s view, but Obama’s were “deliberate” and Netanyahu’s were unintentional, with one exception, which was really Obama’s fault. That was a “premeditated misstep,” namely secretly arranging with House Republicans for Netanyahu to address Congress to lobby against a possible Obama deal with Iran. The prime minister’s purpose was to humiliate Obama and essentially accuse him of selling out Israel to the Islamic extremists in Tehran.

Both Sides
Oren’s accusations simply do not stand up to scrutiny. The past six decades of U.S.-Israel relations are replete with surprises and daylight coming from both sides. Some examples:

• In the ’50s Eisenhower threatened to isolate Israel during the Suez War;
  
• In the ’60s there was Nixon’s surprise Rogers peace plan;
  
• In the ’70s was Jerry Ford’s “reassessment” of the relationship and Carter’s secret deal with the Soviets to call a peace conference;
  
• In the ’80s Ronald Reagan started out with the Saudi AWACS sale, joined with Saddam Hussein on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s Osiraq raid, embargoed delivery of F-16s as punishment for that attack and later sprung a peace plan that Prime Minister Menachem Begin loudly denounced. Capping it off was Reagan’s surprise recognition of the PLO that left Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir livid;
  
• In the ’90s it was George H. W. Bush who blocked loan guarantees in an effort to force a settlement freeze;
  
• In 2000 William Clinton proposed a peace plan after negotiations stalled, and in the first decade of the new century George W. Bush publicly endorsed Palestinian statehood.
  

All those surprises predate Obama, who has had a few of his own. What most irks Oren seems to be a call for a settlement freeze and Washington secretly negotiating with Iran without informing Israel in advance.

Oren, who has forgotten the cliché about glass houses and throwing stones, overlooked Israel’s surprises as well. Washington was kept in the dark about negotiations on the 1993 Oslo Accords; the 1981 Osiraq attack; the IDF entry to Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon war, an endless string of settlement announcements often timed to poke a finger in the American eye; Netanyahu’s collusion with the Republican opposition in Congress —with Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years and more recently with John Boehner—to undermine the policies of a sitting president.

Who can forget Netanyahu’s persistent meddling in partisan domestic U.S. politics, his endorsement of Mitt Romney, his congressional speech attacking Obama’s Iran policy and his rude Oval Office lecture on live television for a lesson on Mideast history?

Blasts Liberal Jews
Oren concedes Obama “significantly strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish state” and unlike his predecessor, has faithfully vetoed every anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution— something he predicts is “likely” to change this year when France offers a measure calling for creation of a Palestinian state.

He seems to view the “no daylight, no surprises” rule as a one-way street.  He blames America, particularly Obama, for violations of that rule and absolves Netanyahu of any responsibility. Netanyahu’s attitude seems to be: Do as you’re told while I do as I please.

It’s not just Obama’s Muslim heritage that troubles Oren, it’s also the Jews around him.

Non-Orthodox, intermarried and liberal Jews in the administration and outside it “have a hard time understanding the Israeli character,” he wrote, and for that reason, he suggests, Israel can no longer count on American Jews. Jews, in his view, also are “disproportionately represented in the U.S. media” and “are largely responsible for American media’s anti-Israel coverage.”

That attitude, no doubt shared by Netanyahu and others on the right, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and accelerate the growing polarization of American politics toward Israel.

Look for Republicans to quote Oren extensively in the 2016 campaign as part of their ongoing effort to turn Israel into a partisan wedge issue. Netanyahu and Oren fail to understand how that weakens the U.S.-Israel alliance and alienates Democrats, especially progressives, a faction that still claims the support of 70 percent of the Jewish community. Progressive Democrats know, even if Israeli politicians don’t, that Israel is not a top priority for most American Jews and as much as they profess love for Israel. Republicans are simply on the wrong side of nearly every other issue important to Jewish voters.

http://jewishworldnews.org/michael-oren-widening-the-american-israeli-divide/