{"id":13422,"date":"2015-06-26T00:15:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T07:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13422"},"modified":"2015-06-25T17:51:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T00:51:59","slug":"u-s-israel-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/06\/26\/u-s-israel-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S.-Israel relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, with Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on April 9, 2013. (photo from U.S. State Department via jns.org<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say that in the coming weeks you\u2019ll be reading a great deal about the memoir Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide<\/em> (Random House, June 2015), authored by Israel\u2019s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.<\/p>\n

\"book<\/a>Oren spent the years 2009-13 as Israel\u2019s envoy in Washington. Once a dual national of both the United States and Israel, the New Jersey-raised Oren had to surrender his U.S. passport at the American embassy in Tel Aviv before taking up his ambassadorial post \u2013 an emotionally wrenching episode that he describes in detail. Oren\u2019s complicated identity as an American and an Israeli is a theme that runs throughout the book, and his treatment of this subject is a welcome tonic to the dreary and rather smelly charges of \u201cdual loyalty\u201d that too often accompany examinations of the relationship that Jews in the Diaspora have with the Jewish state.<\/p>\n

The main attraction of the book, of course, is its account of the Obama administration\u2019s Middle East policies, and Oren\u2019s candor has already gotten him into trouble. Dan Shapiro, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel, who makes several appearances in Oren\u2019s memoir, told Israel\u2019s Army Radio that Ally<\/em> is \u201can imaginary account of what happened,\u201d belittling Oren for having, as a mere ambassador, a \u201climited point of view into ongoing efforts. What he wrote does not reflect the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a serious charge, and it remains to be seen if Shapiro will attempt to substantiate it. In the meantime, it should be pointed out that what makes Ally<\/em> such a fascinating read is that it provides, from Oren\u2019s perspective, a detailed sense of the bitter atmosphere in both Washington and Jerusalem that underlay diplomatic efforts on the issues we are all intimately familiar with, from the negotiations over Iran\u2019s nuclear program to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Unlike other diplomats, Oren didn\u2019t wait 20 years to publish his story \u2013 most of the key individuals in his book, most obviously U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are still in power, and the bilateral tensions that Oren agonizingly explains haven\u2019t been lessened since his departure from Israel\u2019s Washington embassy. Diplomats aren\u2019t supposed to be this transparent, which is why Oren will be regarded in many circles as a man who broke \u201comert\u00e0,\u201d the code of silence which ensures that we ordinary mortals are kept in the dark about what our leaders are saying in private.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s true that Obama comes in for heavy criticism, Oren rubbishes the claim that the president is \u201canti-Israel.\u201d The reality is more complex; as Oren writes, \u201cthe Israel [Obama] cared about was also the Israel whose interests he believed he understood better than its own citizens.\u201d One might add that this paternalistic approach has informed Obama\u2019s stance on the entire region, resulting in a sly policy that presents itself to Americans as a much-desired withdrawal from the Middle East\u2019s endless bloodshed while, at the same time, fundamentally redistributing the region\u2019s balance of power in favor of Iran, whose rulers have spent almost 40 years chanting, \u201cDeath to America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more at jns.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, with Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on April 9, 2013. (photo from U.S. State Department via jns.org) It\u2019s safe to say that in the coming weeks you\u2019ll be reading a great deal about the memoir Ally: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[1346,4341,4018,4017,1798],"class_list":["post-13422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-barack-obama","tag-binyamin-netanyahu","tag-israel-u-s-relations","tag-michael-oren","tag-middle-east"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}