Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren gave a rare glimpse into his day at a breakfast for Chicago community leaders and Jewish professionals in late October.
Oren detailed his routine, from early-morning calls from the Prime Minister’s office in Israel to meetings with Pentagon and national security officials to dealing with media leaks, solving diplomatic crises and speaking to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences throughout the United States.
“As the ambassador, you are the nexus between 30 ministers in Israel, 120 Knesset members, the defense establishment, the intelligence establishment, the commercial trade people, the Israeli press, and, on this side, over 500 members of the legislature, Congress, the Senate, the White House, Pentagon, the intelligence community, the defense community, the American press, the American Jewish community – all coming across one desk,” Oren told about 50 people gathered at the Standard Club, where they were hosted by Howard and Marlene Kaplan.
Born in the United States, Oren made aliyah in the 1970s and most recently served as the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson during the 2006 Lebanon War and the Operation Cast Lead last January. A noted scholar of Middle Eastern history, Oren has published several books, including “Six Days of War: June 1967,” “The Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present,” which was on the New York Times bestseller list for eight weeks.
The relationship between the Middle East and the West has been on Oren’s mind a lot lately. The Goldstone Report has occupied “a great chunk of time,” he said. Asked whether it would have made sense to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission, Oren unequivocally rejected the notion, saying that the report “found Israel guilty in advance. And if we had cooperated with it, it would have added to the report’s credibility. As difficult as the situation is, it would have been monumentally more difficult if Israel had cooperated. We would have signed our own death sentence.”
Meanwhile, he also credited the Obama administration for its support of Israel in the aftermath of the Goldstone Report.
“The administration’s response was every bit as condemning as [Israel’s] response to the Goldstone Report on every point,” Oren said. “The report creates a terrible precedent for any country that has to fight terrorism.”
Cooperation with the Obama administration on the Goldstone Report and other issues important to Israel is a step toward regaining “effective intimacy” with the U.S. government, Oren said. He noted that Israel recognizes that the United States is an important partner in achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.
Another pressing concern among Oren’s daily activities is the restoration of Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” which has diminished in the last 15 years. Known as QME, the term signifies the ability of Israeli armed forces to “face any single adversary in the Middle East or a combination of adversaries.”
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel’s adversaries in the region no longer rely on Soviet weaponry and have acquired U.S. weapons – the same kinds of weapons Israel uses. Just as “successive American administrations have undertaken to guarantee Israel’s QME,” Oren said, the Obama administration is working with Israel to not only stop the erosion of QME but also to evaluate how to assess QME.
