Author Archives: Rabbi

Last week, a Muslim Arab named Abdul Azeez shot and murdered five US soldiers at military recruiting centers in Tennessee on the last day of Ramadan, and the Obama administration, puzzled, will not leap to conclusions about the motive of the attacker. Of course, a ten year-child with a casual familiarity with the news could tell us what the motive was, and so the officials responsible for protecting the American people must be seeking some motive “other” than the obvious.

This ongoing flight from reality – and the dramatic changes that have been wrought to American foreign policy in the last six years – is the subtext of Michael Oren’s “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.” For those who wish to know the inside story of the deterioration of relations between the two countries since Obama became president – a willful and intentional distancing from and disrespecting of Israel and the traditional alliance and friendship between the two countries, it is a fascinating, and at times, riveting read. Oren, a New Jersey native who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States for four years of the Obama presidency, had a front row seat to the tumultuous twists and turns, and as an historian, a keen eye for both small details and the big picture.

Oren’s portrait of the life of an ambassador, at least Israel’s ambassador, is wearying in the best sense of the word. There were times when I felt tired just reading about his day. The early morning calls to and from Israel, the rowing on the Potomac for some private time, and then the lobbying, speeches, travel, embassy management, daily crises and endless cocktail parties late into the night followed by more calls to Israel, are enough to drive anyone to drink, which seems to be what people do at the nightly cocktail parties anyway. His personal story is compelling, notwithstanding the gaps in his narrative. A young oleh who becomes a lone soldier and within a relatively short time finds himself on official business in the Soviet Union and then sitting as an advisor to the Israeli mission at the UN was apparently more than an IDF paratrooper but likely involved in some clandestine work as well. His access to high government officials, long before his official posting to Washington, is unusual by the standards of the average American oleh, and his rise – which took decades – nevertheless seems meteoric. He can be excused those gaps.

By all accounts, he is immensely talented and articulate, and as a reader of both of his prior history books, I have learned that he is a perceptive historian and keen analyst. Reviews of “Ally” have extracted the sound bites, the inside baseball of who like and dislikes whom, and confirmation or refutation of certain events that were rumored to be true. Oren does rebuff some of the conventional wisdom of the last few years: in one celebrated incident, Obama allegedly dissed Netanyahu by leaving him to eat dinner with Michelle and children, disappearing for hours and leaving Netanyahu to stew in the White House alone. Oren debunks that, claiming that Michelle and the girls were not even in the White House that night and Obama merely said he was going to sleep (at 9:00 PM) and the rest of the team of Israelis and Americans worked for several hours. Of course, Oren is also reporting just what he was told and saw, and it is unclear why the sleep excuse was better than the dinner excuse – but nothing can hide the unprecedented animosity between the leaders of the two countries. Much of Oren’s work as ambassador seemed to be defusing explosives and smoothing over rough spots in the relationship. He failed, but only because the experiences, world views, value system and interests of Netanyahu and Obama are so incompatible.

Leaving aside the commonly reported anecdotes, a few points struck me about Oren’s experiences. The book focuses on the tug of war between the two identities Oren bears within him – as an American and as an Israeli, no more poignantly reported than in the book’s opening when Oren had to surrender his US passport and renounce his American citizenship at the US embassy in Tel Aviv before assuming his post in Washington. It is quite moving and the range of emotions – and tears – palpable. (His wife and children retained their US citizenship.) Yet, it is equally clear that Oren retains strong and mostly positive feelings about America, which is welcome, if only in that it sets him apart from other American olim who feel some compulsion to appear more Israeli by disparaging the land of their birth.

With that, Oren is not a typical American oleh in that he is a mostly secular Jew with a strong sense of Jewish identity. He tends to regard the religious component of Judaism (that is to say, its essence) as just one (oftentimes lamentable) aspect of the kaleidoscope of pluralism that he cherishes, and so the Orthodox, their lifestyle, the obligation of mitzvot, and even the settlement of the land of Israel are perceived more as inconveniences than they are desiderata. The cultural and national facets of Judaism animate him more than the religious, which dovetails with his upbringing, but leaves him grasping to find cogent reasons why the modern Jewish people has any claim to the land of Israel more substantive than that our forefathers once lived there.

As such, he did and does find the settlement movement to be an irritant, and if he doesn’t fully subscribe to the execrable theory that but for the settlements there would be peace, he doesn’t firmly repudiate it even if he acknowledges that they too are Israelis whose views must be considered. Similarly, he clings to the two-state solution fantasy, even if (better than the political left) he realizes that the time is not yet ripe and might never be ripe for another partition of the land of Israel. Like others of his background and temperament, he yearns for the halcyon days of Ben-Gurion, which in reality were not so peaceful but during which Israel’s international reputation was much more favorable, cushioned as it was by the detritus of the Holocaust.

Yet, Oren is also acutely aware of the unique role he was given. Secular Israelis are always a little suspicious of Americans who make aliya (who leaves a land with everything for a land of milk and honey?) and continue to perceive them as Americans. To Israelis, he remained Michael (not Mee-kha-el) and I was curious – he doesn’t say – whether Netanyahu generally conversed with him in Hebrew or in English. (He often drafted Netanyahu’s English remarks but Netanyahu also wrote his own or deviated from the text with the soaring oratory to which we have become accustomed.) Indeed, Oren’s appointment followed a Netanyahu pattern in his second tenure as Prime Minister, in selecting for prominent positions a non-rightist (Oren, Livni, Barak) so as to buy protection from a hostile media and a potentially adversarial US administration. It didn’t always work, although in fairness, it might have been (and be) worse without that moderate cover.

Read from a broad perspective, the book can be used to answer one bewildering question: if Iran is the enemy of the United States and Israel, and Israel and the US are allies, then why is the United States strengthening its enemy Iran while weakening its ally Israel?

The answer will trouble Obama’s Jews who also claim to love and support Israel. Obama has endeavored to undermine the relationship between the two countries from the very beginning of his term. It is well known that Obama sought to create daylight between the diplomatic positions of the two countries from the moment he took office, in two ways. The first was by demanding a settlement freeze, followed by an Israeli surrender of territory and the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu was resistant, although he did weaken several times – conceding the establishment of an Arab state in his Bar Ilan speech or acceding to a ten month settlement freeze in order to induce Mahmoud Abbas to negotiations. Both were coerced by an Obama administration that has never tired in its demands for shows of good faith by Israel and only Israel, and neither worked, for reasons much discussed in recent years. More importantly, notwithstanding all these concessions, Netanyahu was still blamed for the absence of peace; Abbas? Never .Indeed, Oren – like others – concludes that Obama’s hostility to Israel made Abbas’ positions even more hard-line than they otherwise would have been.

The second way that Obama has impaired the US-Israeli relationship is by reorienting US foreign policy away from support for Israel (and even pro-American Sunni Muslim countries like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia) and towards Iran, as bizarre as that sounds. I can’t help thinking that the hand of Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett is behind this, but do not exclude Obama’s own radical ties as he ascended the political ladder in Chicago. Oren maintains that the key to Obama still lies in the two autobiographies he wrote, in which his radical views are delineated, but too little attention was paid to them.

Thus – in an exchange that is especially prescient these days – Oren in conversation with Henry Kissinger was incredulous that the US would allow Iran to become a nuclear power and thereby end American hegemony in the Middle East. Kissinger: “And what makes you think anybody in the White House still cares about American hegemony in the Middle East?” Indeed, and it is therefore not surprising that Obama could acquiesce in Iran’s nuclear program even as Iranian leaders and mobs shout “Death to America!”

There is something ominous in Oren’s behind-the-scenes political accounts, some of which have recently precipitated White House calls for apologies and corrections for the airing of unpleasant truths, and that is this: Obama has tried to shield himself from accusations of being anti-Israel not only by doing the obvious nice (helping extinguish the Carmel fire) and the political nice (supporting Israel at the UN) but also by surrounding himself with Jews (Emanuel, Axelrod et al) and using them as his attack dogs against Israel. In fact, the only Democratic politician who publicly stood up to Obama was the disgraced Congressman Anthony Wiener, an odd duck for several reasons including his marriage to an Arab Muslim who is a leading advisor to Hillary Clinton, a public friend of Israel but in private, as Secretary of State, as nasty to Israelis as any Obama-ite.

This fear of defying Obama – and it is a fear – will weigh heavily on Democratic and especially Jewish Democratic Congressmen in the upcoming deliberations over the Bad Deal with Iran. (It’s very American; we have had the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Square Deal and now we have the Bad Deal.) Chuck Schumer is in an unenviable position only because he is a politician. He yearns to succeed Harry Reid as Senate Democratic leader –and if he opposes Obama on Iran, it is extremely unlikely even though Obama will be gone from office. Democrats will come under intense pressure, and for supporters of Israel and a strong America, it is not enough to vote no. They have to solicit other “no” votes as well. Democrats are forced into bitter struggle between the right choice and the expedient choice.

There was also an astonishing level of personal animosity towards Israel and its elected leaders that was apparent in many ways. One stood out: in autumn 2012, Netanyahu planned a military strike against several of Iran’s nuclear facilities. He was threatened by administration officials with dire consequences if he attacked. He didn’t. A year later, those same officials ridiculed him as a coward using a common barnyard epithet. And the White House routinely publicized proposed Israeli attack mechanisms to warn Iran and remove the element of surprise. This is the Obama for whom 7 of 10 Jews voted.

It is also distressing, albeit commonplace, to recognize the politician’s knack for the redundant repetition of code words that mean little and are often utter falsehoods. Oren almost laughs recalling the incessant references of the Obama team to the US-Israeli alliance as “unbreakable and unshakeable.” Even as the administration was trying to break it and shake it, liberal Jews still loved to hear the words, which matter to them more than actual deeds. Oren doesn’t say it, but that phrase could take its place with “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” “Iran will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon” and “in case of violations, sanctions will snap back.”

Additionally, while on the topic of words, Oren notes that there is no greater dichotomy than the politician’s suave, dignified posture in public and the rampant vulgarity and crudity that take place off-stage.

But with all the turbulence in recent years, there still is a pervasive sense that the US-Israeli relationship is unbreakable and unshakeable, transcends even the hostility of any particular president, and can really “snap back” given effective and sympathetic leadership in the future. That is because, as Oren underscores eloquently, the intrinsic values of both countries are similar, rooted as they are (at least fundamentally) in the Torah and shared notions of human rights, personal freedom and universal morality. In that sense even the term “ally” is limiting. I once heard President Bush (II) emphasize that the Saudis are allies but the Israelis are friends – and friends share a closer bond than allies.

Oren’s Ally is a well written, engaging book, filled with trenchant analysis that clearly articulates a widely held view in Israel. Mistakes do creep in to any book and here as well. Omri Casspi plays “in”
the NBA, not “for” the NBA, and more egregiously, Senator Joe Lieberman was a candidate for Vice-President in 2000, not 2004. But even as one can take issue with certain policy conclusions and even some of his world views, Michael Oren – a dedicated servant of the Jewish people, now a Member of Knesset from Kulanu – has written a book that gives us an enthralling inside view of all the complications, complexities and vicissitudes of the relationship between the United States and Israel, a relationship that is bound to get more prickly in the coming months. For sure, the nature of that alliance will be a critical issue during the coming presidential campaign assuming that Jews finally wake up and cease casting their political fortunes with just one party, indeed, the party that is actively engaged in enabling Israel’s most implacable foe to acquire the deadliest weapons known to man.

More importantly, on a personal level, Oren’s tale is captivating – the New Jersey kid who dreams of becoming Israel’s ambassador to the United States and fulfills that dream, after making aliya alone. It is the dream of every oleh – to settle in and make a positive contribution to society – and thus both an American and an Israeli success story.

On some level, it is not surprising that Barack Obama, son of an anti-American, anti-Western Muslim, and John Kerry, grandson of an apostate Jew, would empower the radical Islamic State of Iran with a nuclear weapons agreement that weakens the United States and the free world and endangers the very existence of the State of Israel. It was equally obvious that an agreement empowering Iran and guaranteeing its production of nuclear weapons and continued propagation of terror would be signed eventually. The only uncertainty was when, precisely, Iran would determine that it had extracted enough concessions from its interlocutors so as to declare victory.

Obama is no fool, although he does take his audience and his supporters for fools. It is hard to determine whether he believes his own rhetoric. Few – especially Iran – believe that the agreement will “prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” as Obama opined. Even fewer should believe that “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off.” Only the willfully delusional will argue that Obama’s folly has “stopped the spread of nuclear weapons” in the Middle East. (On the contrary, it will jumpstart Saudi Arabia’s drive for a nuclear capability and perhaps even Kuwait’s and the Emirates – as none of those countries will wish to rely, and sensibly so, on America’s promises.)

Perhaps, most egregiously, is this whopper: “the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.” These deceptive words mask the sad reality that the agreement actually requires 24 day notice before any inspection takes place, and even then Iran has the right to refuse the inspection and refer disputes to a committee for endless discussion of the matter. Imagine, for a moment, if the police had to obtain a search warrant from a judge and then had to give 24 days’ notice to the suspects! That is ludicrous when applied to the search for contraband like illegal guns or narcotics; it is positively obscene when proposed for the search for nuclear weapons.

Add to that the sanctions relief – sanctions that will never be snapped back – and that will furnish Iran with billions of dollars and bolster the Iranian terror regime that will foment worldwide terror and murder an untold number of Jews, Americans, Westerners, Christians, non-Muslims – and many Muslims as well; the arms embargo that will be lifted sooner rather than later; and the absurd reality that Iran has violated each agreement it has signed in the past and effectively employs the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya that permits it to lie and dissemble in order to spread the jihad against all infidels – and this agreement is an epic catastrophe in the making.
So how did it happen? If Obama is not a fool, what is he? Venal? Not necessarily. Only dupes will believe that the United States negotiated from a “position of strength.” Hah – only Iran ever walked away from the negotiations, and several times, and Iran easily played an American negotiating team desperate for a deal at any price. Following the pattern of Obama’s dealings with Syria, all of his red lines vanished during the negotiations with Iran (and Syria is widely believed to still possess chemical weapons, despite its assurances). So what is it?

Oddly, Obama has never been coy about his real goals. His supporters, though, especially Jewish liberals but others as well, have intentionally blinded themselves to those goals and satisfied themselves with empty rhetoric, toothy smiles, and invitations to lame Chanuka parties and Pesach seders (some even held not on Chanuka or Pesach).

It is this: in 2008, Obama was criticized when he commented that President Reagan was a “transformational President,” violating the liberal code to which he otherwise adheres that one should never praise a Republican for anything. His critics were mistaken; Obama wasn’t praising Reagan, he was just making an observation. Reagan was a transformational President in ways that Obama disapproved but Obama saw himself in that same mode – as a president who would fundamentally transform the United States.

At the risk of subjecting myself to the same criticism, I will state the obvious: Obama has succeeded in that objective and has become a transformational President, but in so doing has grievously harmed the United States internally and externally. He has transformed the domestic scene by creating entire new classes of dependents, expanding enormously the welfare state, forcing millions (and in coming years, millions more) on to government funded health care, and subsidizing a considerable underclass of unemployed and underemployed Americans. Globally, Obama has transformed America into an unreliable ally, an adversary to longstanding friends and a follower in a world without a powerful leader. The international field has been left open for bad actors to exploit – and they have, gleefully. His projection of American power is minimalistic and antiseptic, designed to inflict enough damage to quiet those Americans who believe in the goodness and morality of the USA and are therefore supporters of a robust use of force but never enough power to actually win a war, accomplish any strategic goal or intimidate America’s traditional enemies.

Worse, while America’s friends – Israel, Britain, France and others have been disrespected and trampled upon, and America’s allies – like Saudi Arabia – disregarded and slighted, America’s enemies for generations – Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and others – have been revived, resuscitated and emboldened. Obama must believe that those countries were antagonistic to the US because of some personal pique on the part of all his predecessors, the much despised Yankee imperialism, or some other American failing. Apparently, it has not dawned on Obama that those countries were enemies of the United States because of their corrupt ideologies, depraved and repressive regimes, and the absence of any shared values or interests. All his predecessors were therefore wrong, misguided and short-sighted; hence, the unctuous absurdity that he uttered: that the Iran pact “has achieved something that decades of animosity has not,” as if the “animosity” was just imprudent and the quest to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons repugnant and jingoistic.

It is clear that the status quo was working, that sanctions were taking a toll, and that Iran was suffering. It was also clear that Obama always opposed the sanctions (he resigned himself to claiming credit for them only when Congress passed the legislation overwhelmingly) and that military action by the US against Iran was never  seriously contemplated by Obama. Indeed, a variety of Israelis have noted that Obama has been more worried about an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program than about Iran’s nuclear program. Thus did Obama forfeit all American leverage, if he ever intended to use it.

It is crunch time for American Jews, especially liberal Democrats in Congress and their Jewish supporters. The Iran deal must be stopped, and all means of pressure from Jewish organizations, donors, individuals must be brought to bear. I don’t want to hear how Charles Schumer is Israel’s “guardian” if he votes to give a nuclear bomb to Iran, nor am I interested in Torah musings from Cory Booker. Kirsten Gillibrand must be told that this will make or break her relationship with her Jewish constituents. G-d bless NJ’s Bob Menendez who has endured great hardship and been persecuted by the Obama administration in an effort to silence him – and has remained steadfast in his opposition to this sellout. AIPAC must use all its influence and not worry about future access; future access will not matter once Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, and perhaps not even if they are given billions of dollars to foment more terror.

We should also crack down on politicians who claim to have “Israel’s back.” People are stabbed in the back by those who betray them, and everyone walks in back of a coffin. Forget the back, the clichés and the empty promises. I pray that liberal Jews will not seek face-saving measures to avoid confronting the harsh reality that is before us – the betrayal of Israel through the reversal of three decades of US policy.

But none of this is only about Israel. It has been US policy for decades to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by rogue states; for the first time, under Obama’s failed leadership, the United States is birthing and subsidizing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a rogue regime, and the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. It is time to ask the question: are Jews committed more to the Democratic Party or to their identity as Jews? It should be an easy question to answer – but I recognize that for so many, it is not.

Much has been made of the failure of the US negotiators to secure the release of four American citizens currently being held prisoner in Iran on trumped-up charges. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if they are not released within a few months – and not surprised at all if they will be used as a bargaining chip by Iran, with or without administration connivance. As in: Iran declaring next month that the four will be freed if Congress approves the agreement, thereby cynically placing the onus of their continued captivity on Congress rather than on Iran. It is an unsubtle form of blackmail.

It sounds trite to argue, as many have, that Obama is doing this for his “legacy.” Jimmy Carter also had a legacy, as did Neville Chamberlain. Indeed, we should recall now Churchill’s stirring rebuke to Chamberlain when he returned with “Herr Hitler’s” signature on that infamous piece of paper: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Recall as well Chamberlain’s pathetic excuse uttered on his deathbed: “Everything would have been all right if Hitler hadn’t lied to me.”

More than seventy-five years later, the naïve Chamberlain again walks among us. The Churchill’s of our age are being marginalized and lambasted, just like the original was. We are left with the inevitable results of a failed presidency that has remade America in a way that threatens the American dream and the stability of the world. Obama’s peculiar blend of arrogance, messianism, naiveté, and disdain for traditional American leadership has brought Iran to its feet and America to its knees.

It was all, so sadly, predictable. Can it be reversed and stopped in time? Once again, the Jewish people are alone, with the world community acquiescing in arming our most bitter enemies with genocidal weapons. If that does not serve to concentrate our minds during these Three Weeks as we commemorate the destruction of the Bet HaMikdash and other calamities in Jewish history, and doesn’t induce us to examine our behavior and repent, then what will? If we do not realize now that we are living in historic times and on the verge of great transformations, then when will we?

P.S. For a sobering view of the hubris and foibles of politicians and their grand pronouncements, see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TcbU5jAavw

The common denominator? Wendy Sherman, lead US negotiator with Iran, also led the negotiations with North Korea.