Dear Friends:
I just finished reading Micheal Oren’s book”Ally” because I wanted to make sure not to draw any conclusions from book reviews or media reports. Sadly, most of the reviewers comments and critique are correct. Michael Oren, the author of several superb bestsellers, including “Power Faith and Fantasy” and “Six Days of War”, a skilled diplomat and Israel’s former ambassador to the US, underwent after this return to Israel a rapid conversion into a biased politician exuding belligerent nationalism. Unfortunately, its getting even worse. In his book “Ally” he accuses the Obama administration of abandoning and even betraying Israel.He even claims that President Obama in his Cairo speech invoked the linkage of the Holocaust with the existence and validity of the State of Israel thereby feeding into the Arab propaganda that Israelis, i.e. Jews,” came from Europe and displaced the Palestinian people from their homeland. As an Israeli citizen I am shocked and perplexed because the Holocaust is being remembered in Israel not only as a cataclysmic event in Jewish history BUT also as a catalyst for the (re)establishment of the State of Israel as the homeland for all Jewish people, including Jews from the Middle East (Mizrahim and Sefardim). But Michael Oren does not stop there but doubles down on the argument that President Obama is indeed dangerous for Israel. In an essay published in Foreign Affairs he claims that being abandoned by his Muslim father and stepfather explains the proclivity on Obamas part to soft-pedal terrorism in an effort to be embraced by “their coreligionists.” I guess Michael Oren either spent to much time with Donald Trump and his birther group and the Obama-is-a-secret Muslim fan club, or maybe he is,according to the Anti Defamation League, an amateur psychoanalysts with poor credentials. Furthermore, he seems to ignore the fact that Obama’s aggressive and widely criticized use of drones to kill suspected terrorists can be hardly called “soft-pedaling on terrorism.”
I am personally deeply disappointed about Michael Oren’s revelations because I was under the impression that he is a rational and balanced thinker. Sadly, he is just another opportunists seeking to polish his credentials as a paranoid ultranationalist trying to obtain a job in the Netanyahu government to represent Israel abroad.
This book will neither bridge nor restore the political divide between our nations but will further erode it.
I wish Michael Oren the best in his political career because his academic aspirations are obviously gone with the political wind.
Bernd