Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  At loggerheads over Gaza, Turkey, the UN, Iran, and the peace process, the United States and Israel were likely headed for a showdown. The contest would, of course, be lopsided, pitting a minuscule state against a superpower. Beyond that, though, it also set an adored and immensely powerful leader against a widely disdained and domestically hobbled one. The media adored Obama—The New York Times published a coffee-table book about him—and most of the world revered him. Netanyahu, by contrast, was pilloried by the press and scorned by much of international opinion. While Netanyahu presided over an unwieldy coalition of ministers who often espoused irreconcilable policies, Obama’s Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress. Netanyahu governed by hard-wrought consensus and Obama, seemingly, by fiat.

  Yet not only in their popularity and clout were the president and prime minister unevenly matched. Netanyahu refused to be politically correct, while Obama was PC incarnate. One promised hope and change and the other defense and stability. Previous U.S. presidents bonded with Israeli prime ministers of similar ideological outlooks—Clinton and Rabin, Bush and Sharon—but America’s leadership was now left of center and Israel’s center-right. Portentously, one of Obama’s first acts on entering the White House was to replace a bust of Winston Churchill, America’s unflagging World War II ally, with that of Abraham Lincoln. Netanyahu reentered the Prime Minister’s Office and promptly hung Churchill’s photograph on the wall behind his desk.

  Such were the rifts—diplomatic, political, and personal—scoring the U.S.-Israel alliance in the first months of 2009. From the sidelines of Georgetown, I watched those fissures widen. I was watching them still on March 6, when I learned that Israel’s ambassador to Washington had resigned.

  Hat in the Ring

  “Should I put my hat in the ring?” I asked Sally as I paced our parqueted Georgetown floor. The expression came from the early days of boxing, when a man who wanted to fight tossed his stovepipe at the reigning champion’s feet. The image was apt. By declaring my interest in the ambassador’s job, I was liable to be laughed at or drubbed.

  The post of Israel’s ambassador to the United States is exceptionally senior, similar to that of many government ministers. America is vital to Israel’s security, arguably even its survival. It provides the tiny Jewish State with strategic and diplomatic depth and lifesaving military assistance. Understandably, then, the ambassador is almost always handpicked by the prime minister from among his most trusted friends. When Netanyahu won the elections, it was only natural that his predecessor’s chosen envoy to Washington, Sallai Meridor, step down.

  But how well did I know Netanyahu? We met in 1983, when he served as Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Washington and came to lecture at Princeton. When heading the opposition, he asked me to brief him on the mood in Congress and the White House. I sometimes encountered him at the annual memorial service for Levi Eshkol, the Labor prime minister whom Netanyahu and I both admired. While discomfited by the memory of Netanyahu’s criticism of Rabin before his assassination, I nevertheless respected the prime minister’s military and policy-making experience, his resilience in rebounding from political defeat. Our families were both bereaved—his by the death of his older brother, Yoni, during the 1976 Entebbe rescue, and ours by Joanie’s murder.

  Even so, I was never a close associate of Netanyahu or even a member of his party. Realistically, then, what were the chances that he would select me for Israel’s most sensitive overseas job? And should I get the job, what were my chances of surviving? Netanyahu opposed the Gaza withdrawal; he rejected limits on settlement building and opposed the two-state solution. “Could you really work with him?” Sally wondered. And then there was Netanyahu himself, a figure portrayed by Israeli journalists as alternately spineless and tyrannical, easily swayed and hard-nosed, irrationally loyal to some people but exploitative of others. Anybody identified with him would instantly be targeted by Israel’s vehemently anti-Netanyahu press. My wife worried and asked, “Do you want to expose yourself to all that?”

  Her questions definitely merited thought. Yes, I disagreed with some of Netanyahu’s positions on the peace process, but I knew from history that right-wing Likudniks—rather than left-leaning Laborites—possessed the legitimacy to make peace. I believed that Netanyahu, like Begin and Sharon before him, could adapt to changing political realities. After all, Netanyahu was the last Israeli leader to sign an agreement with the Palestinians—at the Wye River Plantation in 1998.

  Moreover, I agreed with Netanyahu that sustainable peace could only be based on the mutual acceptance of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples’ rights to self-determination in their homeland. I supported his insistence that any peace agreement provide Israel with a mechanism for defending itself if the treaty broke down. Like Eshkol, Netanyahu appeared to understand the need for Israeli leaders to exhaust all reasonable diplomatic options.

  But, also like Eshkol, Netanyahu recognized a threat to Israel’s existence. Iran’s fanatical rulers swore to “wipe Israel off the map” and were likely building the nuclear bombs to accomplish that. “Humanity stands at a hinge of history,” Netanyahu told Jeffrey Goldberg, now of The Atlantic. “A messianic apocalyptic cult wants to get hold of the weapons of mass death.” Preventing that catastrophe was the purpose for which the prime minister believed the Israeli public—and Jewish history—had chosen him.

  Iranian nuclearization, for me as well, was our generation’s paramount challenge. The differences I had with Netanyahu on the peace process and other issues paled beside our common conviction on Iran. Absent some extreme ethical dilemma, I could proudly represent his government in Washington.

  And I would not only be Netanyahu’s envoy, but the State of Israel’s. In effect, becoming ambassador was like reenlisting in the IDF. Once I put on those fatigues, I forfeited the right of self-expression for the privilege of defending our democratically decided policies. Though pinstripe gray rather than army green, a diplomat’s garb was a uniform just the same. The terms of service were similar.

  My suits, I imagined, would also be of rusted armor, for I remained quixotic, in quest of improbable dreams. I never abandoned them, never stopped preparing myself with writing, interviewing, speaking publicly about Israel and its synergetic relationship with America. But the two countries had changed markedly and were in danger of drifting apart. I believed I could help prevent that by representing Jerusalem to Washington as well as Israel to the United States. And my sense of purpose, as much as real armor, would help steel me against any drubbing I might take. “We can weather it,” I said to Sally. “Both of us can.”

  —

  Dialing our family friends, Jerome and Ellen Stern, I asked if they would put in a word with an attorney I once met at their house, Yitzhak “Yitzik” Molcho, Netanyahu’s diplomatic advisor. But the Sterns advised me to phone him myself. “If you don’t,” they said, “you’ll always regret not calling.” So I did. In the gruff but jaunty tone I would come to expect and appreciate, Yitzik replied, “I’ve got nothing to do with those matters. You’re asking the wrong man.” And, yet, hanging up the receiver, I sensed my message would be delivered.

  A week later, while walking to a Washington lunch, my cellphone rang. The temperature had slipped below zero and my insensate fingers could barely tap the answer key. On the other end, in Jerusalem, was Ron Dermer. The son and brother of Miami Beach mayors, Ron was the prime minister’s closest advisor—so close that he was popularly known as “Bibi’s Brain.” “Would you be interested in being considered for the post of ambass—” Ron started inquiring, but never finished the question. My answer cut him off.

  —

  In spite of our world-revered intelligence services, Israelis can seem incapable of keeping secrets. Sometimes we act as if we are still living in a shtetl—a village in the old Russian Pale—crowded together and gossiping. Shortly after my conversation with Ron, rumors about my candidacy began floating. Suddenly, the press was scrutinizing my past and questioni
ng my suitability. Right-wing bloggers dug up my teen years in the Marxist kibbutz movement and my more recent call on Israel to take its own initiatives in the West Bank. But most of Israel’s media leans leftward, and several pundits recalled my inclusion in Bush’s first delegation to Israel. My 2008 article about Senator Obama’s Middle East policies was adduced as evidence of my pro-Republican bent. An Israeli television commentator even claimed that Sheldon Adelson, the conservative casino magnate, had personally backed my nomination.

  Adelson and I indeed worked together on Jewish and Israeli issues, but when it came to naming the ambassador, he endorsed a different contender. I never revealed that, though. Neither did I follow some of the other aspirants’ example by leaking my candidacy to the press. Ron had asked me to keep our contacts secret and I did. Others, though, emerged in my favor, among them Rahm Emanuel and those heroes of my youth, Elie Wiesel and Natan Sharansky. Some even complimented Netanyahu for his unconventional choice, a person capable of connecting with both left and right. Dan Gordon, the Hollywood screenwriter who served with me in the Second Lebanon War, blogged about an episode I had tried to forget. One night, the army asked for several officers to go into the battle area and help escort the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in action across the border. “Michael was the first to volunteer….[I]t was too dangerous for helicopters to land,” Dan recalled. “Flares were going off above us….We served as the covering force while the fallen were evacuated.”

  Less dramatic, perhaps, but equally exacting, were the three trips I made from Washington to Israel in under twelve days that April. In lengthy sessions, the prime minister probed my personality and political backbone. “I know you can say ‘Yes,’ ” he plied me, “but can you say ‘No’?” In response, I cited several Israeli ambassadors whom I had studied and who, believing themselves smarter than their governments, ignored express orders. “An ambassador can never see the whole picture the way a prime minister does,” I said. “Ambassadors must convey the truth as they see it. They can’t be afraid to raise questions. But in the end, they must carry out instructions.”

  Netanyahu, it turned out, had read my book Power, Faith, and Fantasy and was impressed by my knowledge of America’s history in the Middle East. He regarded understanding the past as the key to interpreting the present. That was perhaps the main reason I even merited an interview. And yet I also felt that Netanyahu intuited the need for someone with a wide perspective on the United States—not only its conservative wing, but also its liberals and progressives, its minorities as well as its establishment—and someone with significant media experience. We indeed discussed history but, above all, the prime minister wanted to hear my analysis of contemporary America and its future relations with Israel.

  “We have to gauge which direction the tides are flowing and navigate them as best as we can,” I responded. America was changing, I said, economically, socially, and demographically, and Obama was both the cause and symptom of those changes. More than just the first African-American president, he aimed to be transformational, altering the country’s priorities both domestically and overseas. “It’s not the America you remember,” I told the prime minister, a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Class of 1975. That was the year that the U.S. forces evacuated Vietnam, dumping military helicopters into the sea. Now, still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans were once again war-weary. “They’re tired of our region,” I concluded. “They want to go home.”

  Between interviews, I trekked the nature trails outside Jerusalem and pondered my unmarked future. In the worst case, I consoled myself, I would go back to a fulfilling life of lecturing and history writing. No more attacks on me in the Israeli press, no need to bridge a potentially yawning American-Israeli divide. Suddenly, several of my close friends came hiking directly toward me. My presence in Israel was still a secret and, thieflike, I ducked behind a tree. Only then, cowering as they passed, did I admit that not becoming ambassador would mean failing to fulfill the vow I made to myself at age fifteen.

  I returned to America at the end of the month and resumed my academic routine. Days passed and I began to realize that the criticism of me in the press had probably voided my appointment. Visiting Miami for a speaking engagement, Sally and I gazed wistfully at the ocean and sighed, “Well, it was a good try….”

  Resigned, we flew back to Washington on the first day of May to attend the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—AIPAC. The Policy Conference, as it was called, represented the country’s largest and most influential pro-Israel gathering. Many members of Congress, governors, and federal officials past and present attend. Vice President Joe Biden had just told the organization, “You’re not going to like my saying this, but do not build more settlements,” chafing some of his listeners. Caught in the corridor outside the main hall, jostled by seven thousand AIPAC supporters, I could not hear the speech or stay close beside Sally. But I did catch sight of her frantically waving our cellphone.

  For a frozen moment, the four yards separating us felt as long as the nearly forty years I had waited for this moment. Perhaps from the flushed expression on Sally’s face or my own sense of premonition, I knew that our pessimism had been misplaced. The hat I had thrown in the ring was about to land on my head. I clasped the phone and cupped it around my ear to make out the muffled but unmistakable voice on the receiver. In his unaccented American English, Prime Minister Netanyahu congratulated me: “Good luck, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Boot Camp

  Instantly, the whirlwind began. Flying back to Israel, I spent entire days answering questions posed by an intelligence interviewer, documenting every stage of my life, every job held and country visited, and many of my acquaintances. I endured extensive medical and security examinations that torment any nominee—Israeli or American—for office. I described my Zionist path from New Jersey to Jerusalem, the wars, the losses, the hopes. I spoke at length about my time in the Soviet Union, about the head of the Kiev underground who, with the KGB lurking outside, raised a glass of homemade, industrial-strength vodka and toasted us “Yiddin”—Jews—with “l’chaim.” Even the interviewer looked teary-eyed.

  Between vettings, I sought out the Israelis who best understood our relationship with America. I sat and listened to the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, seasoned Knesset members and IDF generals. Especially instructive—and sobering—were my meetings with the former Israeli ambassadors to the United States.

  Maintaining relations between Obama and Netanyahu might be the least of my challenges, I heard. Responsible for the entire embassy and nine consulates nationwide, the ambassador had virtually no authority to hire or fire any of their hundreds of employees. The professional diplomats on the staff, moreover, tended to resent the appointment of an outsider to their most coveted post and often took their frustrations to the press. Answerable to both a prime minister and a foreign minister who were often from different parties, the ambassador could receive contradictory instructions. And while an ambassador who was not especially close to his prime minister might enjoy greater latitude in expressing his own opinions and easing bilateral tensions, he might also be dismissed as irrelevant by Washington’s elite.

  Most dauntingly, the ambassador’s desk served as the intersection between the White House and the State Department, 535 members of Congress, the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence and business communities, American Jews, church and ethnic groups, the international press—all that and some 25 Israeli government ministers, 120 members of the Knesset, the IDF and the intelligence services, the commercial sector, and the Israeli press. “Is it winnable?” I asked each of my predecessors. Not all of them said yes.

  One concern, at least, was allayed by my meeting with Foreign Minister Avigdor—“Evet”—Liberman. The Tel Aviv address I was given led to a locked restaurant. I stood in the 10 P.M. rain and pounded on the door until, as if in some vintage movie, an aperture slid open
and a raspy voice asked what I wanted. “I came for the minister.” Inside, brawny activists in Liberman’s mostly Russian-backed Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Is Our Home) Party hunkered around a long table clouded in cigarette smoke. They glared at me as I passed and entered a private booth where Liberman waited, puffing a stout cigar.

  Having quit previous governments in protest over the Gaza Disengagement and the peace process—“Negotiations on the basis of land for peace will destroy us,” he warned—the foreign minister now headed the third-largest party in the Knesset. Some of his politics, including demands for displays of loyalty by Israeli Arabs, were surely not mine. But I respected him as an immigrant who had landed in Israel with nothing and worked his way up, and agreed with him on the hazards of Iran’s nuclear program. Round-faced with a clipped beard, Liberman asked about my background and my views about Obama, but then abruptly cut me off. “You’re Bibi’s appointment, I get that,” he interjected. “You’ll have no problem with me.”

  A more immediate obstacle arose on my return trips to Washington, where, as ambassador-designate, I resided in the same city as the serving ambassador, Sallai Meridor. This troubled the American protocol officials and might have created confusion. Fortunately, Sallai Meridor was Israel’s equivalent of a Kennedy, a man of quiet refinement and service. Over the course of several hours, he graciously shared with me his views on Washington, on whom I could rely, and on whom less so. And he furnished me with the one piece of advice that would always guide me. “You are the ambassador of Israel. Not of Belgium, not even of Britain and France. No other country has Israel’s special relationship with America,” he said, suddenly animated. “And no other ambassador has your stature.”