Former envoy to
U.S. says non-Orthodox and intermarried Jews in Obama administration 'have a
hard time understanding the Israeli character.'
By Chemi
Shalev
 |
| Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., in Washington, D.C. |
Former Israeli ambassador to the
United States Michael Oren says
he pressured Random House to publish his controversial new book “Ally” now,
rather than during book season in September or October, because “Israel is at a
fateful juncture” before the deadline of the Iran talks and the vote on the French
initiative on Palestine in the Security Council. He said that one of his main
objectives was to “motivate, animate and inspire my readers” in advance of
these challenges “to do more than just stand there”.
“It’s about
saying no” to an Iran deal that “everybody in the Knesset agrees is
emphatically bad,” Oren said. He compared “this critical moment” to the
Holocaust era, when American Jews had an opportunity to “intercede and perhaps
save millions of Jews”.
Oren appeared
on Sunday night at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y before a warmly supportive
audience for the launch of the PR tour for his book “Ally”, which is harshly critical of President Obama. The book has
garnered widespread praise in America’s right wing media and harsh scorn on its
left. On Saturday, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxmandismissed some
of the claims made by Oren in his book and in an article in Foreign Policy, labeling them
“conspiracy theories with an element of amateur psychoanalysis.”
But there
were no such reservations at the 92nd Street Y. Oren was introduced by Susan
Engels as expressing “the best of the ideals” of the 92nd Street Y Talks that
she directs “to stand in solidarity with Israel and to take pride in our Jewish
heritage.” And in a soft interview which often bordered on fawning, Jonathan
Rosen, renowned author and editor of the Nextbook/Schocken Jewish Encounters
series, described Oren and his book as “gripping”, “terrific” and “powerfully
persuasive”.
Oren stated
that “Obama is not anti-Israel” but reiterated his position, widely challenged,
that the Obama administration has departed from the hitherto “sacrosanct”
principles of “no daylight and no surprises” in U.S. relations with Israel.
Oren said that both the Cairo speech in June 2009 and Obama’s speech on the
1967 borders were major policy shifts that caught Israel by surprise.
Oren, who has
ascribed Obama’s wish to engage with the Muslim world to his abandonment by
“two Muslim father figures” called on the U.S. to “stop the ad hominem attacks”
against Netanyahu. “We shouldn’t be treated this way,” he said.
Oren
discussed what he described as the unprecedented predominance of American Jews
in the Obama administration – “there were discussions in the White House in
which there were six Jews – 3 Americans and 3 Israelis, discussing a
Palestinian state - and the only non-Jewish person in the room was the
President or the Vice President.” He said that the non-Orthodox and the
intermarried American Jews in the administration – “have a hard time
understanding the Israeli character.”
Oren claimed
that part of Israeli hesitation in attacking Iran is its doubts about American
support for any campaign to neutralize Hezbollah rockets that might be fired at
Israel in retaliation from Lebanon. Oren said these doubts were raised after
the Obama administration’s “strident criticism” of Israel during last summer’s
Gaza War, the FAA decision to
steer clear of Ben Gurion Airport and its decision to delay rearmaments of
certain ammunition. “Can we rely on our ally to back us on that?” Oren
asked.
Recounting
his academic experience in America, Oren said that “1968 revolutionaries” had
taken over the Middle East and international relations departments of American
universities and that unless one published their “neo-Marxist ideas”, one would
not get tenured or published. When he came to Washington in 2009, he
encountered the same ideas in his talks with Obama administration officials in
the White House and the State Department: “I could tell what professors they
had.” Oren went on to claim that the term “Israel Lobby”, which was condemned when it was
used by Professor Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, is now an accepted term in
Washington discourse.
***
This talback of mine to this article never appeared in Ha'aretz:
Kudos to Michael Oren for his trilogy of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times and Foreign Policy. Finally Israel’s point of view is presented the way it should have been years ago.
But I have two questions.
1) Why did Oren recommend against Netanyahu’s Congress speech? After all, the only way to stop Obama’s insane Iran deal was to warn Congress.
2) In his article ‘Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes’, Oren writes: ‘As famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once observed, “Mutually assured destruction” for the Iranian regime “is not a deterrent — it's an inducement.”’ Why did he never quote Bernard Lewis in his capacity as Israel’s ambassador to the US? Was Israel intentionally avoiding the opinion on MAD of a leading western scholar of Islam?
