Netanyahu and the president both made mistakes, but only one purposely damaged U.S.-Israel relations.
By MICHAEL B. OREN
June 15, 2015
‘Nobody
has a monopoly on making mistakes.” When I was Israel’s ambassador to
the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was my standard
response to reporters asking who bore the greatest
responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.
I
never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while
neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them
deliberately.
Israel
blundered in how it announced the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods and
communities in Jerusalem over the border lines that existed before the
Six Day War in 1967. On two occasions, the news came out during Mr.
Netanyahu’s meetings with Vice President Joe Biden. A
solid friend of Israel, Mr. Biden understandably took offense. Even
when the White House stood by Israel, blocking hostile resolutions in
the United Nations, settlement expansion often continued.
In
a May 2012 Oval Office meeting, Mr. Netanyahu purportedly “lectured”
Obama about the peace process. Later that year, he was reported to be
backing Republican contenderMitt Romney in the presidential elections.
This spring, the prime minister criticized Mr. Obama’s Iran policy
before a joint meeting of Congress that was arranged without even
informing the president.
Yet
many of Israel’s bungles were not committed by Mr. Netanyahu
personally. In both episodes with Mr. Biden, for example, the
announcements were issued by midlevel officials who also caught the
prime minister off-guard. Nevertheless, he personally apologized to the
vice president.
Mr.
Netanyahu’s only premeditated misstep was his speech to Congress, which
I recommended against. Even that decision, though, came in reaction to a
calculated mistake by President Obama. From the moment he entered
office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian
cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran. Such policies would have
put him at odds with any Israeli leader. But Mr. Obama posed an even
more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core principles of
Israel’s alliance with America.
The
first principle was “no daylight.” The U.S. and Israel always could
disagree but never openly. Doing so would encourage common enemies and
render Israel vulnerable. Contrary to many of his detractors, Mr. Obama
was never anti-Israel and, to his credit, he significantly strengthened
security cooperation with the Jewish state. He rushed to help Israel in
2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire. And yet, immediately
after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel and
America.
“When
there is no daylight,” the president told American Jewish leaders in
2009, “Israel just sits on the sidelines and that erodes our credibility
with the Arabs.” The explanation ignored Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from
Gaza and its two previous offers of Palestinian statehood in Gaza,
almost the entire West Bank and half of Jerusalem—both offers rejected
by the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama also voided President George W. Bush’s commitment
to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within
Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a total
freeze of Israeli construction in those areas—“not a single brick,” I
later heard he ordered Mr. Netanyahu—while making no substantive demands
of the Palestinians.
Consequently,
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas boycotted negotiations, reconciled
with Hamas and sought statehood in the U.N.—all in violation of his
commitments to the U.S.—but he never
paid a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr.
Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had
agreed would remain part of Israel.
The
other core principle was “no surprises.” President Obama discarded it
in his first meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly
demanding a settlement freeze and Israeli acceptance of the two-state
solution. The following month the president traveled to the Middle East,
pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the Muslim world from Cairo.
Israeli
leaders typically received advance copies of major American policy
statements on the Middle East and could submit their comments. But Mr.
Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the
Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power,
without consulting Israel.
Similarly,
in May 2011, the president altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing
the 1967 lines with land swaps—formerly the Palestinian position—as the
basis for peace-making. If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture the
president the following day, it was because he had been assured by the
White House, through me, that no such change would happen.
Israel
was also stunned to learn that Mr. Obama offered to sponsor a U.N.
Security Council investigation of the settlements and to back Egyptian
and Turkish efforts to force Israel to reveal its alleged nuclear
capabilities. Mr. Netanyahu eventually agreed to a 10-month moratorium
on settlement construction—the first such moratorium since 1967—and
backed the creation of a Palestinian state. He was taken aback, however,
when he received little credit for these concessions from Mr. Obama,
who more than once publicly snubbed him.
The
abandonment of the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles climaxed
over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my years in Washington, I
participated in intimate and frank discussions with U.S. officials on
the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration
statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly
struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to deter Israel
from striking Iran pre-emptively.
Finally,
in 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been
secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an
interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a “bad
deal” with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though, insisted
that Iran was a rational and potentially “very successful regional
power.”
The
daylight between Israel and the U.S. could not have been more blinding.
And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president pledge that he “had
their backs” and “was not bluffing” about the military option, only to
watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that “a military solution cannot
fix” the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been
greater.
Now,
with the Middle East unraveling and dependable allies a rarity, the
U.S. and Israel must restore the “no daylight” and “no surprises”
principles. Israel has no alternative to America as a source of security
aid, diplomatic backing and overwhelming popular support. The U.S. has
no substitute for the state that, though small, remains democratic,
militarily and technologically robust, strategically located and
unreservedly pro-American.
The
past six years have seen successive crises in U.S.-Israeli relations,
and there is a need to set the record straight. But the greater need is
to ensure a future of minimal mistakes and prevent further erosion of
our vital alliance.
Mr.
Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States and a member of
the Knesset, is the author of “Ally: My Journey Across the
American-Israeli Divide” (Random House, 2015).
Are American Jews in ‘galut’?
It is time for American Jews at the grassroots level to become more assertive and make their presence felt.
The exceptional response to my recent column,
“American Jewish leaders fail to respond to Obama’s threats,” combined
with further developments on the American scene, has brought me to the
sad conclusion that when the chips are down and when faced with
adversity, American Jewish leaders in the greatest democracy in the
world cannot shake off their “Galut” (Exile) mentality.
The multitude of communications I received from Jews at the grass-roots level is evidence of the fact that committed Jews are confused, distressed and angered at the failure of their leaders to respond to the outrageous statements expressed by US President Barack Obama within the framework of his “charm offensive.” (That in no way detracts from the counterproductive, boorish behavior of the Jews attending The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York who jeered US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.)
The failure of the Jewish leadership to cautiously condemn the flow of distorted and biased anti-Israeli statements by the president was heightened last week with the interviews and articles relating to former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s forthcoming book, Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide. They provide a chilling insight into the bullying and aggressive role Obama adopted against Israel, and his championing of the Palestinian cause. Even the most hardened Obama supporters who retain any pro-Israel sentiments will be stunned to read of his calculated abandonment of the Jewish state on the political level, “Which would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader,” as Oren writes.
Oren wrote that from his first inauguration, “Obama put daylight between Israel and America,” publicly disagreeing with and condemning the Jewish state, and “by endorsing the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, the White House overnight altered more than 40 years of American policy.” Repeatedly, the administration accused Israel of lack of progress on the peace process “while making no substantive demands of the Palestinians.”
The multitude of communications I received from Jews at the grass-roots level is evidence of the fact that committed Jews are confused, distressed and angered at the failure of their leaders to respond to the outrageous statements expressed by US President Barack Obama within the framework of his “charm offensive.” (That in no way detracts from the counterproductive, boorish behavior of the Jews attending The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York who jeered US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.)
The failure of the Jewish leadership to cautiously condemn the flow of distorted and biased anti-Israeli statements by the president was heightened last week with the interviews and articles relating to former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s forthcoming book, Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide. They provide a chilling insight into the bullying and aggressive role Obama adopted against Israel, and his championing of the Palestinian cause. Even the most hardened Obama supporters who retain any pro-Israel sentiments will be stunned to read of his calculated abandonment of the Jewish state on the political level, “Which would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader,” as Oren writes.
Oren wrote that from his first inauguration, “Obama put daylight between Israel and America,” publicly disagreeing with and condemning the Jewish state, and “by endorsing the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines, the White House overnight altered more than 40 years of American policy.” Repeatedly, the administration accused Israel of lack of progress on the peace process “while making no substantive demands of the Palestinians.”
Oren,
certainly not a political right-winger, even makes analogies
(especially in relation to the Iranian nuclear threat) between American
Jewish leaders today and their counterparts in 1944 headed by Rabbi
Stephen Wise. He states: “Remember that American Jewry once had a
chance to save 6 million Jews. And there are 6 million today [in
Israel]. So think very hard and understand that this is about our
survival as a people. It’s about our children and grandchildren.”
Jewish leaders defend their position by arguing that silent diplomacy is more effective than pouring oil on the fire by publicly condemning the president. They also claim that the policy of bipartisanship will backfire if they criticize Obama. They conveniently ignore that if such a policy becomes an end in itself, the Jewish community, in order not to ruffle feathers, will become politically impotent and will simply cease to speak out on central issues.
All this challenges the continuous refrain we have heard from American Jewish leaders that Jewish life in the United States, in contrast to other Jewish communities, is not Galut but a genuine Diaspora. It is true that America is unique in its favorable attitude toward Jews and Israel.
Indeed even a J Street poll indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standing among US Jews was higher than that of Obama.
Yet despite protestations to the contrary, American Jewish leaders are far more sensitive to rocking the boat than other minorities or mainstream Americans who have absolutely no hesitation in publicly castigating their president when they disagree with his policies.
On the other hand, committed American Jews at the grass-roots level are passionate and willing to speak out and condemn politicians, including their president, and are becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for community leaders to speak up. However, the situation is further fragmented by the increasing number who define themselves as secular, or intermarried Jews, and have no commitment to Judaism or to Israel. Most of these individuals have abandoned any semblance of Jewish identity and became absorbed into the American melting pot.
WE WITNESSED two major examples highlighting this over the past week. In a speech to the Orthodox Union, New York Senator Charles Schumer – who represents a strong Jewish constituency and continuously describes himself as the “shomer of Israel” [guardian of Israel] – gave notice that he intended to back Obama on the latter’s policy of abandoning the military option against Iran.
What was remarkable was that, despite referring to the failure of the American Jewish community during the Hitler era which “ignored the [Nazi] threat or pushed it aside,”– he stated that “some things should be said in the mishpoche [family]. ...I have to do what’s right for the United States first of all, and Eretz Yisrael second.”
In his charm offensive, Obama subtly adopted a similar approach.
It is quite extraordinary for a Jewish senator from New York to publicly revive the issue of Israel- versus US-firsters and dual loyalties, which in the past was mainly employed by people hostile to Israel, and by anti-Semites. That his address was applauded by an Orthodox Jewish audience is also astonishing.
But the most shocking remarks about US-Israel relations were made by longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, in one of his last hurrahs at a forum on Israel’s future at the 92nd Street Y in New York. I must confess that I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as Foxman unleashed one of the most irresponsible outbursts against Israel, effectively blaming it for the deterioration in relations with the US.
Employing primitive demagoguery, he accused Israel of being blind to the world and blamed the Jewish state for failing to produce a peace plan and treating American Jews and the US with contempt. He said that Israel displays no sensitivity in its dealings with the US, taking the support for granted, and that its support base is disintegrating because it’s not doing anything on the peace front.
In the past, Foxman was occasionally an outspoken critic of Obama, but his latest, shameful remarks, calling on Netanyahu to create a “peace plan” and be more attuned to the Obama administration’s demands, are inexplicable. The question is whether his successor, a former aide to Obama purportedly without a strong relationship with Israel, will be any better.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been a great success story and has had a remarkably positive impact in promoting the case for Israel to Congress and the American people. As a rule, it avoids publicly adopting controversial or divisive positions. But these are unprecedented times and AIPAC should speak up with dignity and restraint, knowing that even if it antagonizes some of the more left-wing Democrats in Congress, the majority will respect the fact that it is taking up issues of vital Jewish concern that transcend politics in the mainstream committed Jewish community.
The executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, has throughout his entire public career remained totally committed and devoted to serving the cause of Israel and the Jewish people. Regrettably, currently he has been constrained from making official public statements on behalf of the Presidents Conference because the organization only operates on the basis of consensus. In the light of recent events, however, it may well be time to review the entire structure of the organization, and when total consensus cannot be achieved, at least enable it to speak out on behalf of the vast majority of committed Jews.
David Harris of the American Jewish Committee is also genuinely committed to Israel and has written some outstanding pieces presenting the case for Israel, but regrettably, he, too, is reluctant to or constrained from publicly criticizing Obama.
All of this suggests that if, in the current environment, the various Jewish organizational bodies continue maintaining their policy of “shtadlanut” – silent, court-Jew diplomacy – it is time for American Jews at the grassroots level to become more assertive and make their presence felt.
The author’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.
Jewish leaders defend their position by arguing that silent diplomacy is more effective than pouring oil on the fire by publicly condemning the president. They also claim that the policy of bipartisanship will backfire if they criticize Obama. They conveniently ignore that if such a policy becomes an end in itself, the Jewish community, in order not to ruffle feathers, will become politically impotent and will simply cease to speak out on central issues.
All this challenges the continuous refrain we have heard from American Jewish leaders that Jewish life in the United States, in contrast to other Jewish communities, is not Galut but a genuine Diaspora. It is true that America is unique in its favorable attitude toward Jews and Israel.
Indeed even a J Street poll indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standing among US Jews was higher than that of Obama.
Yet despite protestations to the contrary, American Jewish leaders are far more sensitive to rocking the boat than other minorities or mainstream Americans who have absolutely no hesitation in publicly castigating their president when they disagree with his policies.
On the other hand, committed American Jews at the grass-roots level are passionate and willing to speak out and condemn politicians, including their president, and are becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for community leaders to speak up. However, the situation is further fragmented by the increasing number who define themselves as secular, or intermarried Jews, and have no commitment to Judaism or to Israel. Most of these individuals have abandoned any semblance of Jewish identity and became absorbed into the American melting pot.
WE WITNESSED two major examples highlighting this over the past week. In a speech to the Orthodox Union, New York Senator Charles Schumer – who represents a strong Jewish constituency and continuously describes himself as the “shomer of Israel” [guardian of Israel] – gave notice that he intended to back Obama on the latter’s policy of abandoning the military option against Iran.
What was remarkable was that, despite referring to the failure of the American Jewish community during the Hitler era which “ignored the [Nazi] threat or pushed it aside,”– he stated that “some things should be said in the mishpoche [family]. ...I have to do what’s right for the United States first of all, and Eretz Yisrael second.”
In his charm offensive, Obama subtly adopted a similar approach.
It is quite extraordinary for a Jewish senator from New York to publicly revive the issue of Israel- versus US-firsters and dual loyalties, which in the past was mainly employed by people hostile to Israel, and by anti-Semites. That his address was applauded by an Orthodox Jewish audience is also astonishing.
But the most shocking remarks about US-Israel relations were made by longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, in one of his last hurrahs at a forum on Israel’s future at the 92nd Street Y in New York. I must confess that I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as Foxman unleashed one of the most irresponsible outbursts against Israel, effectively blaming it for the deterioration in relations with the US.
Employing primitive demagoguery, he accused Israel of being blind to the world and blamed the Jewish state for failing to produce a peace plan and treating American Jews and the US with contempt. He said that Israel displays no sensitivity in its dealings with the US, taking the support for granted, and that its support base is disintegrating because it’s not doing anything on the peace front.
In the past, Foxman was occasionally an outspoken critic of Obama, but his latest, shameful remarks, calling on Netanyahu to create a “peace plan” and be more attuned to the Obama administration’s demands, are inexplicable. The question is whether his successor, a former aide to Obama purportedly without a strong relationship with Israel, will be any better.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been a great success story and has had a remarkably positive impact in promoting the case for Israel to Congress and the American people. As a rule, it avoids publicly adopting controversial or divisive positions. But these are unprecedented times and AIPAC should speak up with dignity and restraint, knowing that even if it antagonizes some of the more left-wing Democrats in Congress, the majority will respect the fact that it is taking up issues of vital Jewish concern that transcend politics in the mainstream committed Jewish community.
The executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, has throughout his entire public career remained totally committed and devoted to serving the cause of Israel and the Jewish people. Regrettably, currently he has been constrained from making official public statements on behalf of the Presidents Conference because the organization only operates on the basis of consensus. In the light of recent events, however, it may well be time to review the entire structure of the organization, and when total consensus cannot be achieved, at least enable it to speak out on behalf of the vast majority of committed Jews.
David Harris of the American Jewish Committee is also genuinely committed to Israel and has written some outstanding pieces presenting the case for Israel, but regrettably, he, too, is reluctant to or constrained from publicly criticizing Obama.
All of this suggests that if, in the current environment, the various Jewish organizational bodies continue maintaining their policy of “shtadlanut” – silent, court-Jew diplomacy – it is time for American Jews at the grassroots level to become more assertive and make their presence felt.
The author’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.
Former Israeli Ambassador: Obama Has A problem - with America
The
most explosive passage in Michael Oren’s new book on the frayed
U.S.-Israel relationship is not about President Barack Obama’s repeated
fights with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Rather, it is
about Obama himself.
Struggling
to understand how Obama–who has genuine empathy for Israel, Oren
says–could adopt policies and postures so hostile to the Jewish state,
Oren turns to Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from My Father. What he reads shocks him:
More alarming for me still were Obama’s attitudes towards America. Vainly, I scoured Dreams from My Father for
some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author
would someday lead. Instead, the book criticizes Americans for their
capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and
maintaining antiquated power structures. Traveling abroad, they
exhibited “ignorance and arrogance”–the very shortcomings the
president’s critics assigned to him.
Speaking to Breitbart News last week, Oren recalled his impressions of Dreams.
Obama said “nothing good about America” in his memoir, Oren says. Here
was a man “without a word of praise or gratitude to America”–and yet “no
one was listening” to what Obama truly believed. “That said a lot to me
about where America was” when Obama was elected, Oren recalls.
Oren,
the American-born historian who served as Israel’s ambassador to the
U.S. during President Obama’s first term, exposes shocking new details
about the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel in his new book, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.
Some
of the episodes, such as Obama’s “snub” of Netanyahu during a 2010
visit to the White House, are well-known. Others are not, such as an
encounter between Oren and then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice in New York, in
which she threatened to drop support for Israel at the UN if the
Netanyahu government did not “freeze all settlement activity”:
“If
you don’t appreciate the fact that we defend you night and day, tell
us,” Susan fumed, practically rapping her forehead. “We have other
important things to do.”
Other
clashes are more subtle, but no less jarring, such as Obama’s decision
to ignore Israel’s role in earthquake relief in Haiti:
“Help
continues to flow in, not just from the United States but from Brazil,
Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic,” the
president declared. Omitted from the list was Israel, the first state to
arrive in Haiti and the first to reach the disaster fully prepared. I
heard the president’s words and felt like I had been kicked in the
chest.
On
another occasion, the White House blackballed several guests from
the ceremony at which Obama awarded Israeli President Shimon Peres the
Presidential Medal of Freedom–because they happened to have criticized
Obama on television.
Though polls indicate that mutual support between ordinary Americans and Israelis is
at, or near, an all-time high, and defense cooperation remains close,
tensions between the American and Israeli governments have seldom been
worse.
Oren,
who was an historian before becoming a diplomat and politician, is
uniquely placed to offer an authoritative explanation, in
exacting detail.
At
times, Oren writes, Obama adopted a friendlier posture. “Yet, for every
reaffirmation of the alliance, the administration took steps that
disconcerted or even imperiled Israel,” he writes.
The
root cause, Oren says, applying the historian’s analytical tools to his
personal observations, was Obama’s approach to America itself–not to
Israel.
Because
Obama sees nothing special about America, its dominance in the world
presents a moral problem for him. As president, Oren notes, Obama set
out to solve that problem by courting America’s enemies and shunning its
allies.
Obama
is not anti-Israel, Oren argues, much less antisemitic, but his beliefs
about America have meant a change in relations with Israel, a country
deeply invested in America’s military–and moral–superiority.
These are not the ravings of a right-wing Likudnik.
Oren supported
the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. He ran against Benjamin
Netanyahu’s party in the recent Israeli elections. He spoke out
against Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in March. And he once admired
Barack Obama.
Yet
Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador from 2009 to 2013, builds a
powerful argument that Obama is to blame for the stunning decline
in U.S.-Israel relations.
It
is a verdict heard increasingly from well-informed Democrats as the
Obama administration nears its end. Former Harvard Law professor Alan
Dershowitz, for example, a liberal Democrat and Hillary Clinton
supporter who is still proud that he backed Obama, nevertheless has concluded that
“the falling-out is almost exclusively the fault of Obama.” In fact,
Oren notes, fellow Democrats were mostly happy to back Obama’s policy.
At
Oren’s first meeting with Jewish members of Congress, all of whom were
Democrats (Republican Eric Cantor was absent), the party backed the
president’s demand for a freeze on “settlement” construction, even in
Jerusalem, which exceeded Palestinian demands and derailed peace talks.
And at one of Oren’s first meetings on Capitol Hill, he writes,
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) confronted him
about “economic apartheid.” (Dan Mclaughlin, a spokesperson for Nelson,
told Breitbart News that Nelson likely presented the letter as “just a
courtesy,” not necessarily as an endorsement of its views.) Even worse
was the behavior of left-wing Jews–not only the radical activists of J
Street, but opinion-makers like New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman, who resorted to antisemitic stereotypes in reaching for
metaphors to express their dislike of Netanyahu. (Congress had been
“bought and paid for by the Israel lobby,” Friedman infamously wrote.)
Such
examples of long-simmering left-wing hostility toward Israel emerged as
Obama launched what Israelis regarded as an ill-informed “experiment”
in U.S. foreign policy that failed to recognize the importance of steady
American leadership abroad.
The
president wanted to revolutionize relations with the Muslim world,
boost cooperation with the UN, reach a nuclear deal with Iran, and
create “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, Oren explains.
The result was nearly incessant pressure on Israel.
Oren
writes how Obama’s approach to Iran, for example, set the stage for
clashes with Israel, which has no room for error in gauging Iran’s
intentions.
Despite Obama’s
repeated promises that the “military option” was “on the table,” Oren
began to suspect otherwise, as did many Israelis. (It is perhaps no
accident that Ally is to be released one week before the June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran.)
Oren
writes, bitterly: “Most disturbing for me personally was the
realization that our closest ally had entreated with our deadliest enemy
on an existential issue without so much as informing us. Instead, Obama
kept signaling his eagerness for a final treaty with Iran.”
Obama
also erred in (belatedly) embracing the Arab Spring, Oren writes–a
posture that Israeli officials described as “madness,” given the likely
radical Islamist takeover. In demanding that then-Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak leave office “now,” Oren says, Obama undermined the value
of the U.S. as an ally.
He
adds: “That single act of betrayal–as Middle Easterners, even those
opposed to Mubarak, saw it–contrasted jarringly with Obama’s earlier
refusal to support the Green Revolution against the hostile regime in
Iran.” Nevertheless, Oren observed the Obama staffers congratulating
themselves for being on the “right side of history.” Admiring photos of
Mubarak in the White House were soon taken down, he notes wryly.
The
wild fluctuations in Obama’s foreign policy continued in Syria, where
Hillary Clinton called dictator Bashar Assad a “reformer,” in spite of
gruesome evidence to the contrary. Eager to appease Iran, the Obama
administration quietly tried to keep Assad in power before
flip-flopping. And even when Assad’s use of chemical weapons was
obvious, Obama did not act on his own “red line.” A deal brokered with
Russia to remove Syria’s chemical weapons–and first suggested by Israeli
minister Yuval Steinitz, Oren reveals–barely helped Obama save face.
As
for Obama’s team, Oren criticizes John Kerry’s well-meaning but oafish
push for peace in 2013-4, which largely involved browbeating Israelis.
In
addressing Hillary Clinton’s role, Oren is generous to a
fault. Recalling the 45-minute lecture she delivered to Netanyahu during
a 2010 spat over construction in Jerusalem (which the Obama
administration calls “settlements”), Oren says that she did her duty
reluctantly, reading from a script.
He
told Breitbart News that Netanyahu actually maintained a personal
friendship with her, calling Oren “every 15 minutes” to find out her
condition after she suffered a fall in 2012.
In
one instance, Oren demonstrably whitewashes Clinton’s record. He notes
that at a forum on U.S-Israel relations in 2011, “a senior
administration official warned that Israel was en route to becoming
another Iran” in the area of woman’s rights. The “senior administration
official” who made that outrageous statement was widely reported to be Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s
primary appeal in Oren’s eyes (and Netanyahu’s) seems to be that she is
friendlier and more knowledgeable about Israel than Obama, even if not
always an advocate for Israel in her own right.
Whether
she wins or not in 2016, U.S. policy toward Israel may continue to be
fraught with tension. Oren notes that Obama drew upon an emerging cohort
of new policymakers steeped in resentment of American power and
suspicion of the “Israel lobby.” They will linger in Washington long
after Obama has left office.
Netanyahu,
who correctly foresaw the challenge ahead, also saw the American-born
Oren as the best hope for reaching out to a president who would
treat Israel very differently from any before him.
Oren tried his best, he told Breitbart News, but could not stop all of the damage, despite his strenuous efforts.
The point he wishes to stress–a point he has made elsewhere recently–is that no Israeli government could have done better: Obama is the problem.
“Nobody
has a monopoly over mistake-making,” Oren says, and acknowledges that
Netanyahu made a few missteps. Still, he points out, when Netanyahu
tried to give Obama what he wanted, his efforts were barely
acknowledged.
For
example, when Netanyahu gave a speech endorsing a Palestinian state in
2009–becoming the first Likud prime minister to do so–the White
House ignored him. Instead, the pressure on Israel continued, causing
the Palestinians to dig in and refuse to compromise.
Oren
realized that he had to understand what motivated Obama–and
why Americans had elected someone so at odds with its traditional
worldview. In addition to reading Obama’s memoirs, Oren told Breitbart
News, he consulted a New York Times coffee
table book about Obama’s election–not because of the information it
contained, but because of what it said about the media.
“If
the paper of record is putting that out,” Oren told me, “that’s going
to tell you a lot about the way the press is going to relate to this
president.”
In Ally, he writes extensively about his battles with the Times,
with CBS, and other outlets that give free rein to the most
inflammatory criticisms of Israel and rarely allow for a fair, factual
response.
Many of Obama’s most extraordinary policies, Oren contends, have been under-reported–such as Obama’s remark in 2010 that the U.S. is a military superpower, “whether we like it or not.”
Obama wants “to
withdraw from the Middle East irrespective of the human price,” he
observes. That abdication of American leadership, Oren believes, will
have severe consequences for both Israel and the United States.
Ally is
well-written, and entertaining in spite of its exhaustive detail–though
Oren’s personal recollections of ambassadorial life are, at times,
overly sentimental.
The
autobiographical portions of the book, recalling Oren’s life as an
Israeli paratrooper and an underground agent in the Soviet Union, are
fascinating and inspiring. His account of the growing cultural divide
between liberal American Jews and their brethren in Israel is both
illuminating and alarming.
He has a unique perspective, as an Israeli who can explain the Jewish State from a near-native sabra perspective,
yet in the idiom of his American audience. And he understands American
politics with a depth few outsiders can match.
Throughout Ally,
Oren draws on his skills as an historian to prove his case against
Obama. He gives the president credit for great generosity towards Israel
at times of need–whether helping to fund Iron Dome, urging Egypt to
rescue Israeli diplomats from a rabid Cairo mob, or sending
fire-fighting planes during a national emergency.
Yet
he notes that “the Israel [Obama] cared about was also the Israel whose
interests he understood better than its own citizens and better than
the leaders they chose at the ballot box.”
Oren also points out the irony that Obama’s poor mistreatment of Israel often backfired by reinforcing Palestinian extremism.
Obama’s
speech in Cairo in June 2009, he recalls, was “tactically, a
killer” for the peace process, because it implied that Israel had no
legitimacy other than as compensation for the Holocaust–reinforcing the
Arab world’s rejection of Israel.
In
the most recent war with Gaza, Oren notes, Obama hurt Israelis by
describing their response to Hamas rocket attacks as “appalling,” even
though Hamas deliberately put Palestinians in the line of fire. Later,
Obama delayed arms shipments to Israel and even barred U.S. flights from
landing at Ben-Gurion Airport as a punitive measure. “Hamas won its
greatest-ever strategic victory,” Oren concludes. And Obama, via Jeffrey
Goldberg, continued to deliver personal insults to Netanyahu.
Yet Oren did not write Ally to
settle scores. Rather, he hopes that laying down the facts about the
decline in U.S.-Israel relations will encourage both sides to pull back
from the brink.
“I want everyone to stop! Stop this lunacy!” he exclaims.
He
believes, passionately, that the U.S.-Israel alliance is not just
essential for Israel’s success, but also for America’s security, and for
the world in general.
He
knows that the details of Obama’s missteps will gratify American
conservatives, whose version of recent history is confirmed by his
account–but he hopes liberals will listen, too.
Oren hopes to reach American Jews in particular. The community has a “core” that remains pro-Israel, he says, but has adopted social justice and tikkun olam (“fixing the world”) as the new basis of its civic identity.
He told Breitbart News that the 1960s socialist utopia for which Jewish
liberals are nostalgic was “far less open, less democratic, less
accepting than the Israel of today.”
In Ally,
he describes his own “Israeli journey” with great care and skill. Oren
told Breitbart News that he hopes his experiences will help a new
generation of American Jews understand why he fell in love with Israel,
and made it his own. Perhaps they will embrace it, too. But above all,
hard truths must be told.
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