By Ted Belman
I fell in love with Michael Oren while reading the first paragraph of his much talked about book, Ally.
He tells the story of the influences in his life to which preceded being appointed Israel Ambassador to the USA. Born in 1955 on the east coast he experience antisemitic attacks which resulted in fist fights. Because his father fought in WWII in Europe, Michael was very early on indoctrinated by his father to fight for and defend the Jewish people. He was keenly aware of the Holocaust. He vividly recalls the fear just prior to the Six Day War and the elation just after the miraculous victory.
He had to fight for everything he attained. He was a poor athlete and poor scholar and struggled to transform himself into a varsity team rower and Ivy League student. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to expensive Jewish camps or schools so he had to learn his Zionism at home.
He went to Israel in two succeeding summers while in high school and worked on a kibbutz for no pay. Yet he had to finance his own trips to get there. A highlight of his young life occurred when he went with a Zionist youth group to Washington and met with the hero of the Six Day War, Yitzhak Rabin, the then Israel Ambassador to the USA. He recalls thinking that he wanted to be such an ambassador one day.
In 1977, Oren completed his undergraduate degree from Columbia College. He continued his studies at Columbia, receiving a Masters in International Affairs in 1978 from the School of International and Public Affairs, where he was an International Fellow and a DACOR Fellow.[13] After college, he spent a year as an adviser to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations.[9] In 1979, Oren emigrated to Israel.[14] A few years later, Oren returned to the United States to continue his education, studying at Princeton University. In 1986, he earned an MA and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton.[15]
After arriving in Israel he joined the IDF and became a paratrooper. He participated in the 1982 Lebanon War. He somehow failed to meet up with his battalion before it entered Lebanon so he crossed the border and made his way fighting with different units until he joined his own.
He was given a weekend pass which enable him to return to his sweetheart and marry her. The next day he was back at the front.
After the war he was sent to Russia to connect with the Russian refusniks which was a very dangerous assignment. He could easily have disappeared or ended up in the Gulag.
While studying in Princeton he was confronted with an anti-Israel narrative initiated by Edward Said. He did not shy away from making the case for Israel and eventually visited many campuses to spread the pro-Israel message.
Back in Israel he found it difficult to find work and make a living. Relief came after the peace treaty with Jordan was signed in 1984. Michael secured a job with the Rabin Government as Adviser on Inter religious affairs.
Subsequently, he endured the Second Lebanon War and the first and second intifada. His sister-in-law was killed by terrorists and his son was wounded in battle. His daughter also was involved in the Lebanese war as a nurse.
I know that many people disparage him for supporting Oslo and rejecting settlement construction. But there is no denying his commitment to Zionism and Israel.
I cannot begin to do justice to his story and urge you all to read the book.
I’d be eager to hear Oren’s answers to the questions you posed, wouldn’t you?
@ rsklaroff: Obama is in a fight with Bibi. Each wants to win. Obama is having a tougher time than he would like so he hits below the belt e.g. leaking important info. Does that make him an antisemite? Let us say he really believes that enabling Iran to get the Bomb is in America’s interest even if it means endangering Israel, does that make him an antisemite? Only if his motivation is to destroy Israel, does he become an antisemite.
When I framed the query, I cited stuxnet/Azerbaijan as exemplifying bho’s pernicious behavior; helping Iran to nuke-up seems to be a conclusive example of anti-Semitism.
Labels can mislead, but they help to “focus the mind.”
Oren’s avoidance of even addressing this issue is telling and should prompt concerned people to explore such a foundational force.
rsklaroff Said:
I don’t blame him for not labeling Obama an antisemite. I do not take the position that all people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites or that all people who support ’67 line plus swaps are. This includes many Jews. What difference does it make? What matters is not whether he is an antisemite but whether his policies or statements are hurtful to Israel. Was Nixon an antisemite? Does it matter?
Lets not waste time trying to affix a label. Let’s spend our time and efforts fighting his policies.
The last thing I want is for the discussion to center on whether he is an antisemite. The discussion should be on whether his policies whether on Iran the MB or Israel are good or bad for America.
“Rabbi Joffie complains about Oren’s ‘contempt for U.S. Jews’ ” contains more information about this issue.
https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63607767/comment-page-1#comment-63356000158073
These interim postings illustrate why Oren should be pressed during his book-tour to make explicit what may be implicit regarding BHO’s mindset, for nothing else explains his (in)action.
I had been reading Michael Oren’s book Ally, when I came to this paragraph, (page 276), and I said to myself – this is it, this is why he wrote the book:
Finally, after many months of attentiveness, I reached my conclusion. In the absence of a high-profile provocation – an attack on a U.S. aircraft carrier, for example – the United States would not use force against Iran. Rather, the administration would remain committed to diplomatically resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, even at the risk of reaching a deal unacceptable to Israel. And If Israel took matters into its own hands, the White House would keep its distance and offer to defend Israel only if it were counterstruck by a hundred thousand Hezbollah missiles.
The reason Michael Oren wrote Ally
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2015/06/the-reason-michael-oren-wrote-ally.html
Paul Eidelberg writes to say:
BB satisfies your criteria.
It is degrading to beg anti-Semites for recognition of the “right to exist” or for acknowledgment of Israel as a Jewish State.
Israel exists. Anyone who denies that fact does not diminish Israel – he simply diminishes himself by being delusional. Israel is Jewish. Deny it all you want, but your denial changes nothing.
I yearn for the day when an Israeli prime minister possesses the dignity to tell the world we do not require or desire for you to confirm our existence and faith. We are here. We are Jewish. And if you don’t like it, content yourself with childish fantasies that we are not.
Giving the Muslims any consideration for “recognizing our Jewish existence” is so fucking pathetic that it defies sanity. Let them remain ignorant primitives who pretend that we don’t exist and that our nonexistence is non-Jewish. Who gives a shit whether we receive the Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval from seventh century savages?
Come on, my fellow Jews. It is time for a little self-respect.
By the way: Oren gave up his US citizenship. How can he thus be a “patriotic American”?
Oren continues to tip-toe through the two-lips.
During his speech, he also defined what he felt was the defect of Oslo, namely, that Arafat “won” acceptance simply by acknowledging “Israel” as an entity; “lost” was the fact that he failed to recognize “Israel” as a “Jewish State.”
Subsequent Israeli capitulations stem from this error, but it’s unclear whether Oren appreciates that fact; the above hyperlinks are unfortunately and unjustifiably predicated on the narrative [that also is promulgated in the most recent edition of “Hadassah” Mag] which unilaterally pressures Israel [as usual] to concede [in myriad ways].
Those who think Oren would sacrifice credibility were he to opine [and, thus, jettison returning to any “ambassadorial” role] fail to recognize that his book has already survived the “fact-check” gauntlet and, thus, he errs when NOT helping people synthesize his “quotations from Obama” into a distilled conclusion regarding the evil-motives animating his lack of trustworthiness as it specifically relates to Iran/Israel.
This is my “take” on Michael Oren’s politics and presentation thereof:
Michael Oren’s book documents how profoundly BHO attacked Israel; the Internet [both in Israel and in America] has been abuzz regarding this event, which threatens to shuffle the party-distribution in the Knesset. Specifically, whereas Kahlon [his party-leader, after he left the Likud and joined Kulanu] disavowed his comments, BB remained silent [even after US Ambassador Dan Shapiro nudged him, on behalf of BHO, to contradict these claims]; this renewed schism occurs just as BHO is trying to complete an Iranian “deal” [read “capitulation”]. {I commented on Oren’s appearance @ the Free Library on other pages [Oren Memoir Garners Strong Reactions & The blowback from the Oren revelations], illustrating that he has underlying postures that are to the “left” of Likud; this may explain his reticence to exclaim that a leader who is empowering Israel’s sworn-enemy with nukes to be “anti-Semitic.”}
*
Wednesday night, before a false fire alarm cleared a full auditorium @ the Free Library, I asked him what would prompt him to characterize BHO as anti-Semitic; he sidestepped specifics, even when asked privately (later, during the book-signing). He is not a true conservative (adhering to many leftie “hopes,” while recognizing the fundamental asymmetry of Oslo) who attempted to humanize BHO’s band of anti-Semites.
When I confronted him with specific omissions in his book of bho’s revelations (stuxnet, Azerbaijan), he retreated into noting his book had been heavily vetted by the Israeli government; even when his denial of evil motives of bho’s minions regarding overt designs of Iran to kill Jews, he merely reiterated his having rush-published his book to reveal bho’s perfidy prior to completion of any agreement.
Thus, it is hoped that awareness of how he reacted to those queries will help others on his book-tour to unearth more of what animated his diplomatic evasions.
Another commenter [on Israpundit] wrote: “Truth is a virtue independent of tactics. Here on Israpundit, we can multitask by simultaneously identifying Obama as a Jew hater and by opposing his Jew-hating policies. The ‘Jews’ who support him should not be factored into strategic decisions as they are unworthy of consideration. They might not consider themselves to be anti-Semitic, but being anti-Semitic as opposed to enabling anti-Semites is a distinction without a difference.”
Feedback acquired after posting the prior information has reinforced the need to smoke-out BHO’s motives, striving to reach a diagnosis rather than stopping @ the level of symptom-management; for example, it is possible that BB chose Oren as ambassador because he isn’t aligned with likud so that he could maximize his acceptance by BHO.
This makes it all the more urgent to dog this historian until he answers the question as to how he can avoid stating the obvious; just like we cannot truly fight Islamists until they are aptly defined, so too can strategizing against such threats to world Jewry as the pending Iranian-nuke deal remain flawed until the adversary has been appropriately defined.
His embrace of such elitists as Dennis Ross illustrates the danger of appeasement to his narrative; he must be encouraged to molt out from his diplomatic past.
Oren said he rushed publication due to Iran but he refused to transcend his “historian” role; because this is an EMERGENCY, one demands far more.
He lamented that bho failed to say Israel was right when he acknowledged strong support for Israel by Americans.
By praising his Zionism, I in no way wanted to validate his politics. I was impressed with what motivated him to make aliya and his willingness to put himself out there in war and in Russia. He is a good man.
In another way I am saying that many people who fight for policies different from what the right want, such people may still re respected for their commitment and contribution to Israel.
Oren refuses to cross the Rubicon and admit the obvious, which is that Obama is a Jew-hating enemy of Israel. The former ambassador should be credited only with telling the partial truth about Obama’s malevolence, and then only because few others are willing to be candid about BO at all.
The above is consistent with what I had surmised; sadly, it seems it will be desirable to probe his stances during this book tour, a posture that animated my decision to challenge him and to allow everyone to gauge the credibility of his reaction.
Oren deserves much credit for his book and his subsequent opinion pieces laying out — with greater pubic impact — what many have being saying years.
However, other positions he has articulated are to say the least extremely troubling
A PUBLIC CHALLENGE TO MICHAEL OREN
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Into-the-Fray-A-public-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-339234
What is it about the Palestinian problem that makes otherwise seemingly smart people expound such utterly stupid ideas?
MY (RENEWED) CHALLENGE TO MICHAEL OREN
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-My-renewed-challenge-to-Michael-Oren-346758
When someone who was one of Israel’s best known diplomats touts such silliness, it is difficult to know what is more disconcerting: Whether he actually believes what he is preaching, or whether he doesn’t.
I received a crash-course regarding his “politics,” before, during and after his speech in Philly on Wednesday; will elaborate later, but know that his views are more problematic than the two-point summary at the end of this encomium.