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Israel’s Number One Diplomat

May 04th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized


The appointment of Michael Oren as the new Israeli ambassador to the United States marks an interesting development in Israeli diplomatic history. Oren is one of the leading lights at the conservative Shalem Center, from where he has authored numerous best-selling histories, including Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: The United States in the Middle East. A popular historian with real clout, he has suddenly been thrust into life as Israel’s number one diplomat.

His views will now be analysed like never before. The announcement of his candidacy was greeted with a furor surrounding an article he had written during the US election. In this piece, he seemed to suggest that it would be better for Israeli interests if McCain won. Indeed, some suggested that a victorious McCain might even have appointed Oren as an advisor.

When it became clear that Oren was the front-runner for the position, his comments at a recent speech at Georgetown University, where he is currently a visiting professor, became widely reported. “The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements,” he said, an unfashionable but sensible assertion of Sharonist principle, albeit without the necessary details.

Needless speculation about the significance of these remarks inevitably followed. Some people cited his words as evidence that Netanyahu isn’t actually opposed to Palestinian statehood; others said it proves Israel has a dastardly plan to abandon the Palestinians to their Bantustans. This speculation is unnecessary because Oren’s job is to represent Israeli policy, not to create it. He will have to do this whether he supports it or not. Such is the lot of the diplomat.

Henry Kissenger famously remarked that Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic one. People often forget this truism when analyzing the Israeli political scene. The Israeli foreign ministry’s primary function is the dissemination of hasbara. Substantive foreign policy is formed in the PMO and the Defence Ministry. The role of the ambassador is to defend Israel’s policies to foreign audiences. This is true of all states, but in Israel the task is magnified by the country’s unfortunate diplomatic reality. Given this, Jeffrey’s Goldberg’s judgement on Oren’s appointment seems entirely apt, “No one is better qualified to explain America to Israelis an to explain Israel to Americans than Michael.”

Despite all this, some have criticized Oren’s appointment on grounds of his lack of practical diplomatic experience. There may be some truth to this, but I suspect he will be a quick learner. Salai Meridor, his predecessor, quit in acrimonious circumstances when it seemed he was being marginalized in his position, and it will be interesting to see the kind of working relationship Oren establishes with Netanyahu and Lieberman.

We won’t have to wait long to find out – Oren is expected to take a prominent part in Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to the US. In the meantime, it’s worth taking some pride in the fact that an Anglo-Israeli has risen to such high office. Oren will now – ironically or not depending on your perspective – have to relinquish his US citizenship, although I’m sure he won’t mind that. He is undoubtedly the best choice to explain Israel’s position to America, although without a change in Israel’s position, the task might be too difficult, even for Dr Oren.

11 comments

11 Comments so far

  1. LB May 4th, 2009 6:24 pm

    I think that Jeffrey Goldberg is more accurate regarding the orientation of Israel’s foreign policy: “Israel doesn’t have a foreign policy, just a defense policy.”

  2. Gabriel May 5th, 2009 6:36 am

    It’s a great choice. It took forever, but Israel has finally realised that it needs to get people who are eloquent and thoughtful speaking for them. Oren is definitely to the left of Bibi and is a well respected intellectual which should make it a popular choice in the Jewish community in the US as well.

  3. Gert May 7th, 2009 5:27 pm

    Alex, I don’t know if you’ve read this Michael Oren piece in Commentary but the guy comes across as a superhawk to me. Historian? Died-in-the-wool ideologue, more like…

  4. Avram May 8th, 2009 12:32 pm

    That’s right Gert – anyone who doesn’t see ‘history’ in your eyes, is a ‘ideologue’ … **yawns**

  5. Gabriel May 8th, 2009 3:03 pm

    I can hardly wait until the Shlomo Sand book comes out in English. There will be a tonne of people fawning over a third rate historian’s laughable work. It’s an unfortunate facet of historical research around Jewish studies and Israel. People are much more interested in the work reflecting their own prejudices than they are about actually learning. (See the love of secondary historian Norman Finkelstein over say Peter Novick or Benny Morris who actually do primary research and have much more balanced books on the same subjects) I don’t know about Oren’s political leanings. He seems to be centre-right, but as a historian he is excellent and balanced.

  6. Gert May 8th, 2009 6:59 pm

    Avram:

    That must be the weakest rebuttal I’ve come across this week. From the Oren piece:

    This fact was well understood by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, at the time of the state’s creation in 1948. Though Israel was attacked simultaneously on all fronts by six Arab armies, with large sections of the Galilee and the Negev already lost, Ben-Gurion devoted the bulk of Israel’s forces to breaking the siege of Jerusalem.

    Contrast this with the more realistic version of Shlomo Ben-Ami:

    SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, for all practical purposes, a state existed before it was officially created in 1948. The uniqueness of the Zionist experience, as it were, was in that the Zionists were able, under the protection of the mandate, of the British mandate, to set up the essentials of a state — the institutions of a state, political parties, a health system, running democracy for Jews, obviously — before the state was created, so the transition to statehood was a declaration, basically, and it came about in the middle of two stages of war, a civil war between the Israelis and the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine and then an invasion by the Arab armies. The point that I made with regard to the war is that the country, to the mythology that existed and exists, continues to exist mainly among Israelis and Jews, is that Israel was not in a military disadvantage when the war took place. The Arab armies were disoriented and confused, and they did not put in the battlefield the necessary forces.

    So, in 1948, what was born was a state, but also original superpower in many ways. We have prevailed over the invading Arab armies and the local population, which was practically evicted from Palestine, from the state of Israel, from what became the state of Israel, and this is how the refugee problem was born. Interestingly, the Arabs in 1948 lost a war that was, as far as they were concerned, lost already in 1936-1939, because they have fought against the British mandate and the Israeli or the Jewish Yishuv, the Jewish pre-state, and they were defeated then, so they came to the hour of trial in 1948 already as a defeated nation. That is, the War of 1948 was won already in 1936, and they had no chance to win the war in 1948. They were already a defeated nation when they faced the Israeli superpower that was emerging in that year.

    So we have Michael “the Historian” Oren rehashing some early Zionist mythology but he’s not an ideologue??? Michael reminds me of the many Meircan sages that get paraded on Faux Noise, always with their backs to a wall of books they’ve never read (but that come in handy to hide their ill-gotten gains behind?)

  7. Gert May 8th, 2009 9:21 pm

    Incidentally, the great Phillip Weiss called Oren’s rethoric “a faintly-goosesteppish piece”!

    Hehehe…

  8. Gabriel May 9th, 2009 4:10 am

    So Gert, “more realistic” means “what I agree with”? What you quote from Oren is generally regarded as true by mainstream history. It’s what I mentioned earlier-reading of historians who confirm your preconceived notions rather than reading historians to learn history. And then topping it off by giving more credence to a blog writer than to a respected historian-again simply because of their political views.

  9. Gert May 9th, 2009 5:47 pm

    Gabriel:

    “What you quote from Oren is generally regarded as true by mainstream history.”

    This is simply untrue. Oren plays to the ‘David and Goliath’ myth, thoroughly rebuked by most modern Israeli historians and historiographers. You want to believe in nationalistic bedtime stories to tell your kids and grandkids, go right ahead. The reality-based community knows better.

    Like the embryonic nationalist narratives of most (if not all) emerging states, the Zionist narrative contains a number of self-serving and self-glorifying elements, some of which even blatantly contradict each other. It’s hardly an Israeli prerogative.

    Palestine was far from empty, the Arab armies didn’t call for the indigenous population to flee so they could ‘drive the Jews into the sea’ and the 1967 war, going by the outcome (persistent to this day), can hardly be called ‘pre-emptive’. Get over it.

  10. Gert May 9th, 2009 5:53 pm

    Gabriel:

    Weiss’ references to Oren’s piece in Commentary aren’t to the passage I chose. He critiques parts of the piece unrelated to what I quoted. He doesn’t mention that bit AT ALL. It’ not a case of “giving more credence to a blog writer than to a respected historian-again simply because of their political views”.

    As regards ‘respected historians’, respect is no guarantee of veracity.

  11. Avram May 10th, 2009 9:03 am

    Wow, you’re now quoting ‘the great Phillip Weiss’, an fervent anti-Zionist, who doesn’t want Israel to exist. Nice one!

    Have you read ‘Six Days of War’? It’s widely accepted as the best ‘factual’ account of the war …

    Secondly, Israel was already fighting the ‘independence war’ in 1947.

    Lastly, from Ben-Ami:

    “Israel was not in a military disadvantage when the war took place. The Arab armies were disoriented and confused, and they did not put in the battlefield the necessary forces.”

    They were at a numerical disadvantage. And while I know Ben-Ami likes to blame those vicious Zionists for the Arabs’ disorientation and confusion, no one was probably really aware of that during the war itself …

    Btw, you don’t have to defend your comment about Oren – I know what kind of poster you are and where you lean politically as I do read Weiss (who’s blog does contain quite a few flat out lies, with one recent one being “all Israeli soldiers go up to Masada” (paraphrased) and then he proceeded to completely mislead the reader as to why that WAS a finishing point for the ‘beret journeys’ by – mostly at least – heavy artillery and tank units.) and other blogs where you’re an active contributor (and who can’t remember you taking shots at Alex too, an Israeli British dove!)

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