Michael Oren Will Be Proven Right about Barack Obama

The Jerusalem Post reported last week on the book - "Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide" - written by former Israel ambassador to the US Michael Oren. The book published today has created much controversy even before hitting the bookstands. Oren, for example, writes that President Barack Obama endorsed the Palestinian position on the 1967 lines as the starting point for Palestinian state boundaries in 2011, thereby altering 40 years of US policy without prior consultation with Israel. A review of the book in Friday's New York Jewish Week notes that Oren described Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Office as outraged at Obama's 2011 move, instructing Oren to call congressional leaders. Oren says in the book : “Israel felt abandoned, I was to say. And that is no way to treat an ally.” In the book, Oren also describes Israel being continuously blamed for lack of progress on the diplomatic front, while the Palestinians were given a free pass. Oren said former US national security advisor General James Jones “often seemed ill-disposed toward Israel.” Regarding the Obama-Netanyahu relationship, Oren – now a Kulanu party Member of the Knesset – wrote that they have much in common : “Both men were left-handed, both believed in the power of oratory and that they were the smartest men in the room. Both were loners, adverse to decisionmaking and susceptible to a strong woman’s advice. And both saw themselves in transformative historical roles.” Oren, according to the report, wrote that “their similarities, perhaps as much as their differences," heightened the chance for animosity in their relationship. ~~~~~ But by far, the biggest controversy surrounding Oren's new book is related to his comments about President Obama that are not even in the book. The Times of Israel reviews a Michael Oren op-ed published Friday in Foreign Policy Magazine, in which Oren speculates that President Obama’s relentless outreach to the Moslem world may stem from his abandonment by the two Moslem father figures in his life and that he therefore seeks acceptance by their co-religionists. Friday's op-ed is Oren’s third critical commentary on Obama published in major US media in less than a week. In the first of the series, the former ambassador published “ How Obama abandoned Israel” in the Wall Street Journal, followed by “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being ‘rational’ on nuclear weapons,” in the Los Angeles Times. Oren also gave a long interview to the Times of Israel, in which he echoed charges in his new book -- that aspects of US-Israel ties are “in tatters” because of President Obama. The Times of Israel noted that the Obama administration responded bitterly to Oren’s earlier criticism of the President, calling it “absolutely false,” but has been silent in face of Oren's latest criticism. Current US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, said Oren was motivated by a desire to sell books. But while the leader of the party Oren belongs to has apologized and distanced the party from Oren's commentary, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly refused a US request to do likewise. ~~~~~ In the Foreign Policy op-ed, Oren writes that “Obama’s attitudes toward Islam clearly stem from his personal interactions with Moslems. These were described in depth in his candid memoir, ‘Dreams from My Father,’ published 13 years before his election as President. Obama wrote passionately of the Kenyan villages where, after many years of dislocation, he felt most at home and of his childhood experiences in Indonesia." Oren added that he could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Moslem husbands, speculating about how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by Moslems. This is similar to Oren's assessment in his book that he says he gives “at the risk of armchair psychoanalyzing.” In his book, Oren also says he scoured “Dreams from My Father” in vain “for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead” but finds none. Instead, in Oren’s reading, “the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures.” Oren also writes that Obama accused Americans traveling abroad of exhibiting “ignorance and arrogance” -- the very same shortcomings, notes Oren dryly, that the President’s critics assigned to him. In the Foreign Policy op-ed, Oren goes on to say : “Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness. While some may credit the President for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality." ~~~~~ Further, Oren writes in Foreign Policy that having that understanding of Obama was crucial to his role as ambassador from 2009 to 2013, Oren writes that he taught himself “Obama 101″ and “devoted months to studying the new President, pouring over his speeches, interviews, press releases, and memoirs, and meeting with many of his friends and supporters.” He says that during his four years as ambassador, he was rarely surprised by the President’s approach, especially on Moslem and Middle Eastern affairs. Oren charges that it is this very approach that led Obama to “boycott” a major gathering in Paris attended by dozens of world leaders following the devastating jihadist terror attacks in January. “The President could not participate in a protest against Moslem radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” Oren writes in Foreign Policy. Obama was severely criticized for later statements in which he seemed to dismiss the anti-Semitic nature of the attack at the deli instead choosing to condemn the “vicious zealots who...randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.” Oren sees these comments as an extension of Obama’s thinking on Islam and the Middle East : “If there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli and randomly present folks,” Oren writes. ~~~~~ Michael Oren is a bestselling US-born and educated historian, with a Ph.D in History from Princeton, who gave up his US citizenship before moving to Israel and becoming Israel's US ambassador. He says he wrote the op-ed pieces to coincide with the publication of his book and to warn against the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama hopes to conclude soon. In a comprehensive interview to The Times of Israel this week, Oren said the book was also “a cri de coeur… for an alliance that should be in a much better place than it is.” He also said he wanted to raise alarm bells about President Obama’s nuclear talks with Iran. “This book comes out now for a reason,” Oren said on MSNBC, a week before the June 30 deadline for a nuclear agreement. Oren told MSNBC that any deal with Iran should be “conditioned on Iranian behavior,” adding that the alternative to any deal with the Iranians is “a better deal” in which Iran’s breakout time for enrichment is longer than a month or a year. “Maybe if I were an Iranian negotiator, I wouldn’t sign it either,” he said, noting that longer they wait, the better deal they could get for their interests. Oren also attacked what he termed the “signing bonus” for Iran, which he said could be as much as $50 billion. That money is “coming to a neighborhood near you,” he said, noting Iran’s history of funding terror proxies that have killed Americans. He also criticized the White House, repeating his charge that Obama put daylight between the US and Israel as a matter of policy when he spoke in Cairo in 2009. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Michael Oren is a widely-respected historian and diplomat. His analyses are neither frivolous nor without careful thought. Yet, there has been a veritable feeding frenzy of media and politicians trying to shred and cast Oren into a political outer darkness for his opinions. That more than 70% of Americans believe Obama is leading the US in the wrong direction is not mentioned in any of these ad hominem attacks -- not surprising since this longstanding poll result almost never finds its way into mainstream media. Nor was there mention of the US Congress being so worried about Obama's intentions vis-à-vis Iran that the Senate forced him to agree to unheard-of legislation specifically giving Congress a right of review already set out in the Constitution. One thinks of Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone knows that Michael Oren has hit on a seminal aspect of Barack Obama's personality that explains much of his action. And, Oren was the child who cried out, "The Emperor has no clothes." It is too soon for the world to admit that Oren is right. But it will, eventually.