Michael Oren: I obviously touched a nerve - Israel Hayom

by Israel Hayom

After sparking controversy by saying President Barack Obama deliberately damaged U.S.-Israel ties, the former ambassador says he is anxious about Iran, questions the U.S.'s military credibility and can't keep quiet while Israel's future is in jeopardy.

Dr. Michael Oren | Photo credit: Yehoshua Yosef

Dr. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. who is currently a member of the Knesset on the Kulanu list, published his new book this week and managed to achieve every writer's dream: It sparked an international uproar. 

Oren issued a string of articles and lectures to coincide with the launch of his book, "Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide," thus maximizing interest in this memoir from his time as ambassador (2009-2013). In his book he distills his views on U.S. President Barack Obama and his attitude toward Israel, and particularly his attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Oren's article in the Wall Street Journal last week accusing Obama of "purposely damaging Israel-U.S. relations" drew outrage from the White House and from its representative in Tel Aviv, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who accused Oren of lying and catalogued his book as fiction. 

This week, while visiting New York, Oren took the time to conduct a telephone interview with Israel Hayom, saying he wrote it out of a sense of duty. 

"The book is very balanced, very fair, with a lot of subtle nuances highlighted by a process that began in 2009 when I assumed the [ambassador's] post," he says. 

"Everything that I wrote in the book is firsthand knowledge; things that I heard in intimate conversations behind the scenes. It tells what really happened there. I analyze how we got to where we are on critical issues, mainly the administration's attitude toward Iran.

"The book was meant to inspire conversation, and indeed it does. My hope is that the conversation will be to the point, not shallow or personal. It wasn't my intention for it to be like this. So far a lot of things have been said about me, including personal attacks even by American officials.

"But I have yet to see a real debate about the book itself. It has 400 pages about issues that are critical to us, to our security. I have no problem being attacked, but let's talk about the content too." 

Q: What do you think sparked the personal attacks against you?

"I obviously touched a nerve. I presented the truth, and the truth is not always easy to digest. It can hurt sometimes. But we don't have a choice -- we have to address this truth. The decision to take this path was not easy for me, it wasn't convenient, but this was the decision that I made. 

"True, it would have been easier to stay quiet. I could have avoided all the personal and direct attacks. It took me a year and a half to write the book, but the decision to publish it now, almost six months earlier than planned, was timed to encourage a debate on the eve of the signing of the nuclear agreement with Iran.

"I was labeled as someone who doesn't tell the truth. But is it not true that they held secret talks with Iran for seven months without notifying us? Come on. There are things that would be very difficult to deny." 

Research on Obama

Q: You talk about Obama and you try to analyze his personality and figure out what affected his decisions. Perhaps that was a mistake?

"No. There is an entire chapter in the book where I describe how I, an ambassador with a background as a historian and a researcher, approached fulfilling my duty as an ambassador. I researched the people I worked with. In 2009, Obama wasn't as well known as he is now, and certainly not to us.

"How did I research him? I read everything he wrote. I watched every interview he gave. I gathered all the information on anything having to do with him. I read everything that he wrote about himself, about his personal link to Islam, about his relationships with his father and his stepfather, about his time in Indonesia. If I had ignored that aspect, I would not have been fulfilling my duty as an ambassador.

"In the book I wrote about some of the findings in my research. I came to some fundamental conclusions with the aim of figuring out how to get to a point where we could not be taken off guard. It wasn't easy to relay these conclusions to officials in Israel. As a researcher, I had to piece together a sense of his worldview, from which I could derive my conclusions. Everything I did was motivated by a sense of responsibility and duty." 

Q: What were your conclusions?

"One of the conclusions, back in 2009, was that the president would do anything he could to reach an agreement with Iran. In addition, he will always revert back to the Palestinian issue. This is a core issue for him. In my book I called it a 'kishka' issue," Oren jokes, using to the Yiddish word for guts.

Q: Why did you emphasize Obama's relationship with Islam?

"I mentioned that at the start of his first term he remarked on his Muslim connection at almost every appearance, including his inauguration speech. He is the one who emphasized it all the time. Even then he was already known as Barack Hussein Obama. The middle name was dropped when Republicans began using it against him. But until then, he mentioned those things everywhere.

"His first interview with the foreign press was at a television station in Dubai. The first meetings he held as president were with Muslim leaders. The first official visits he made were to Turkey and Egypt. He defined himself as a human bridge between the U.S. and what he characterized as the Muslim world.

"It was an entirely revolutionary approach, unprecedented in American diplomatic history. As an ambassador I had to point this thing out and try to understand where it came from. I invested a lot of effort into trying to understand it." 

Q: You say that your analysis is just a product of the research tools that you are familiar with, but others have assigned a psychological and philosophical nature to your analysis, not historical. 

"It is my duty to understand what moves him; what touches his heart. He wrote a book and talked about his father. The book is difficult and painful, he himself cries in it. Even if I was researching [former Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion I would write something about his emotional side, his heart and his character, in order to understand him.

"Part of my impression of him was derived from conversations and meetings I had with him. He is physically impressive, as is the way he talks. He is very sharp. I don't have an ounce of contempt. There may be disagreements, but disagreements are legitimate and they are critical for us." 

Q: How can this debate, now, prevent a bad deal with Iran? 

"It is possible to encourage a debate on the nature of the agreement, on what led to the agreement. The prevalent assumption here, for example, is that everything began with the prime minister's address to Congress. No, no. There are much deeper roots to this situation that we are in today.

"But in order to know how to move forward, we have to understand the past. I have a lot of respect for the past as a historian, even though in this case the past is not that distant. It is important to always go back to the root. 

"In the book I checked back and looked at the Cairo speech [Obama's 2009 address at Cairo University]. Even then there were signals that he was headed toward an agreement with Iran. In that speech he said that Iran had a right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. A remark like that, made by an American president in 2009, was revolutionary." 

Q: So you were the first to see it. But the bottom line is this: Is Obama a bad, problematic president for Israel?

"Everyone in Israel only reads the criticism coming from the Left, but not the Right. In the U.S. there are people who think that my book is too flattering to Obama. I wrote unequivocally that he is not anti-Israel. He helped us at critical times, like during the Carmel fire. There is a very touching passage in the book where I described how he helped Israel in those hours, but ..."

Q: Yes, but on critical issues, is he aligned with Israel's enemies? 

"Wait, I want to finish my sentence. He is a president whose worldview is very different from anything we have encountered in years. Perhaps we have never encountered anyone with his kind of worldview. This worldview challenges the entire Israeli government, even the Center-Left parties, both on the Iranian issue and on the Palestinian issue. 

"The current administration does not distinguish between someone building an extra room in Gilo and construction in a neighborhood of Itamar. It is true that the personal chemistry [between Obama and Netanyahu] hasn't helped improve relations, but people may not remember that it hasn't always been a honeymoon between the leaders of Israel and the U.S. Not between [David] Ben-Gurion and [Dwight] Eisenhower and not between [Yitzhak] Shamir and [George H.W.] Bush.

"But the bond between the two countries is deep, serious and real. It is a bond between nations, not between individuals. So what can I say? It is a challenge."

Q: You are avoiding coming out and saying that this administration is bad for Israel.

"It is challenging. What do you mean by 'bad'? On the Iranian issue, it is very, very problematic. It is not a question of legacy or respect. It is a question of our future and our children's future. It is no laughing matter." 

Q: In the book you reflect on things that you saw and analyses that you made.

"I'll tell you one thing: I would not be able to live with myself had I not said what I did, at this time. I am very anxious. I believe that Israel is facing an existential danger in the Iranian threat. As the years have gone by, that feeling has only grown stronger for me. There are those who insist that I should have kept my mouth shut. I can't even begin to understand that. How can anyone keep quiet when this is the situation we are facing?" 

Q: That is why I am asking again: Did Obama abandon Israel's security for the sake of getting closer to the Iranians? Otherwise how would you explain his conduct?

"You have to ask him. Let's put it this way: He insisted throughout the years that he has our backs. He has been saying for years that all the options are on the table. One of the statements that he kept repeating was, 'I'm not bluffing.' And suddenly, in a [recent] interview with [Israeli journalist] Ilana Dayan, he said that there is no military option." 

Q: So he was bluffing after all?

"You can draw your own conclusions. I was surprised by that remark. For me, it raised some very serious questions about the credibility of the American military threat. Now he is saying outright that there is no real military option? We as Israelis have to take these things seriously, regardless of whether we are on the left or right side of the political spectrum.

"Think back to heated debate in 2012 over whether Israel could rely on anyone else or had to rely on itself [to confront the Iranian threat].

"The same is true for one of the points of contention between Israel and the U.S.: the question whether the Iranian regime is rational. Obama gave an interview and said that they were anti-Semites but not irrational; that they operate on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis; that they would not jeopardize their survival just for the nuclear program; that they have the potential to become a stabilizing power in the Middle East.

"Meanwhile, on our side, we see a regime that is capable of taking rational steps but, in its essence, is not at all rational. It is jihadi. And when they say that they want to wipe us off the map, they are serious. It is not just rhetoric. These issues that we disagree on are fateful for us.

"It may be difficult to accept, but it is the truth. In my book I point out how honestly this president tends to speak. He exposes his true feelings on many occasions. As an ambassador, that is an enormous asset. My book has a lot less analysis than people think -- it is simply me quoting him." 

'I respect Kahlon's reaction'

Oren, 60, was born in New York but now lives in Jerusalem. He has three children. He immigrated to Israel when he was 24, enlisted in the paratroopers and fought in the First Lebanon War. He served as Yitzhak Rabin's adviser and as Israel's liaison with the U.S.'s Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War. 

During the course of the Second Lebanon War, and again during Operation Cast Lead, he was called up to engage in public diplomacy on Israel's behalf. In 2009, Netanyahu asked Oren to serve as Israel's ambassador to the U.S. 

Oren relinquished his American citizenship and accepted Netanyahu's offer. He is a well-known figure in the U.S. thanks to his books and the articles he often pens in the U.S. media. Oren has written two best-sellers: "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East," and "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present." 

Before the most recent Israeli election, Oren was a commentator on international networks like Fox News and CNN, but then he decided to join the Kulanu party and was elected to the Knesset. 

The controversy stirred by his book led the chairman of his party, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, to write a letter to the U.S. ambassador in which Kahlon dissociated himself from Oren and said that the former ambassador's views were his own and did not reflect the party. The Americans demanded an apology from the prime minister. None ever came.

Q: How did you feel about Kahlon's letter?

"Absolutely fine. He coordinated it with me. There was a lot of media spin suggesting that Kahlon apologized. Look for the word 'apology' in the letter, and you will see that it is not there. What it says is just the truth. The book was written before I entered politics. It represents my views as ambassador." 

Q: Do you think that Netanyahu, who appointed you ambassador, should have addressed the issue? 

"I spoke only for myself. I respect Kahlon's reaction and that of the prime minister. Every person reacts in the way that they see fit. But ultimately, it is my name on that book, not anyone else's or that of any party."

Israel Hayom

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=26463

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