Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  “My friends, you don’t need to do nation building in Israel. We’re already built. You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it. And you don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.” At his oratorical best, calm but firm, Netanyahu spoke. The speech had moments of humor—“Think you’re tough on one another in Congress? Come spend a day in the Knesset”—as well as pathos: “Too many Israelis have lost loved ones. I lost my brother.” He wished a speedy recovery to Palestinian prime minister Fayyad, who had recently suffered a heart attack, and repeatedly thanked Obama for his security support. There was indeed music, but also the hard reiteration of Israel’s right to stand up against Iran and its demands for the demilitarization of any future Palestinian state. “It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say, ‘I will accept a Jewish state,’ ” Netanyahu insisted. “Those six words will change history.”

  Slated to run a half hour, the speech lasted nearly twice that long as the members of Congress rose and applauded, rose and cheered—twenty-nine times. The ovations were seamlessly bipartisan and only once, when Netanyahu declared that “Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel,” did I note that several Democrats refrained from clapping. With the echo of those bravos still resounding in our ears, the prime minister’s entourage mounted the motorcade back to Blair House.

  There, jubilance still characterized everybody’s mood, it seemed, but mine. While Ron Dermer packed his suitcase, I reminded him how Israel was able to defeat the Second Intifada, starting in 2002, because of the “down payment” made by Ehud Barak by offering Arafat a Palestinian state in 2000. Appreciative of our effort to achieve peace, the world gave us the latitude to wage war. Another diplomatic deposit—the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005—a year later enabled Israel to fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And by proposing yet another Palestinian state to Mahmoud Abbas in 2008, Ehud Olmert put the money in Israel’s diplomatic bank account necessary to battle Hamas. “What if we have to go to war again?” I asked Ron. “We’ll be writing blank checks on an empty account.”

  My metaphor made sense to Ron, a Wharton and Oxford graduate in economics. But he was also a former football player, accustomed to taking hits, and he merely shrugged. The rest of the entourage, meanwhile, smiled, as they posed for formal photographs with the prime minister and witnessed his traditional signing of the Blair House guestbook. Throughout, I remained on the cellphone, soliciting reactions to the speech from congressional leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike. Both sounded surprised by Netanyahu’s combative tone. “But what about the ‘settlements beyond Israel’s borders’?” I asked them. “What about the solution to Jerusalem?” Nobody recalled even hearing it. So much for music.

  “I sure hope that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress,” Tom Friedman wrote, omitting the other twenty-eight ovations, “was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” I called Tom the moment the article came online and urged him to retract it. “You’ve confirmed the worst anti-Semitic stereotype, that Jews purchase seats in Congress.” But Tom remained impenitent. “For every call I’ve received protesting, I’ve gotten ten congratulating me for finally telling the truth,” he said. “Many of those calls were from senior administration officials.”

  I had no reason to doubt Tom’s claim. On the contrary, it merely confirmed what I already feared. Netanyahu, in the administration’s view, had lectured the president and mobilized Congress against him. By embracing the 1967 lines, Israeli leaders felt, Obama validated the Palestinian position and violated their trust. The previous two years revealed severe strains in the U.S.-Israel alliance, but the events of the past six days had torqued those tensions to the snapping point. Departing from Dulles Airport, Netanyahu again mentioned how I foresaw the crisis and “called it right.” For once, I wished I had called it wrong.

  In Sunshine or in Shadow

  To the saw of a fiddle and the trill of a flute, I exuberantly thumped my bodhrán. A lover of Irish music since my first trip to the Emerald Isle in the seventies, I returned in 2004 with my daughter Lia on her pre-army trip and traveled from pub to pub relishing jigs and reels. In the sea-slapped village of Dingle, we watched a young drummer produce rapturous rhythms on his round, goat-skinned bodhrán (pronounced “booran” or “bowran”). “Someday I’m going to learn to play that,” I swore to Lia. And I did.

  Back in Jerusalem, I found Abe Doron, formerly of Mexico City and a veteran of six years’ touring with Riverdance, Leprechaun-like and Israel’s only certified bodhrán teacher. Those hours in Abe’s magical studio, adorned with djembes and darbukas, eventually enabled me to come home from a trying day, put on a Chieftains disk, and pound my stress away. By 2011, I could bring Abe and Evergreen—one of several Celtic bands that make Israel an Irish music mecca—to Washington, D.C., and beat my bodhrán with them before seventy Irish-Americans.

  The event was another outreach to influential American communities. Treated to Kosher ropa vieja at the Residence, Hispanic leaders clapped to the malagueñas of David Broza, Israel’s world-class Spanish guitarist and singer. Over a feast of luleh kebabs and salad shirazi, Iranian-Americans—Muslims and Jews—cried at the Farsi ballads of the Tehran-born Israeli superstar, Rita. There was an Israeli-Greek night, complete with souvlaki and Laïkó dancing, and several evenings with Arab and Israeli performers who proved that music can bridge the widest divides. Chinese ambassador Chin Wa and his wife laughed in delight as our son Yoav surveyed the rich history of Chinese-Jewish relations—in fluent Mandarin. Washington columnist David Ignatius, who was also present at the dinner, told me that it was the most extraordinary diplomatic moment he had witnessed in twenty years.

  But this was my favorite reach-out by far: Irish night, with its gourmet fish and chips, its ample bottles of Jameson and Guinness on tap, and the Israeli musicians of Evergreen accompanied by the Israeli ambassador. Around candlelit tables sat union heads, Congress members, representatives of the administration, and, of course, my Irish counterpart, Ambassador Michael Collins. The special guest, though, was Martin O’Malley, who, when not governing Maryland, performed Irish music professionally. He praised me as “the best bodhrán player in the entire Washington diplomatic corps,” and then led the audience in singing his enchantingly fitting composition, “Where Is My Tribe?”

  Sally adored hosting these evenings, and Irish Night was no exception. She meandered from table to table, engaging in the effortless Washington conversation she had mastered, refilling mugs and shot glasses. She never ceased beaming. Long after the last invitee departed, we stayed up jamming with Evergreen. Then, around dawn, we changed into casual clothes and left for Sibley Hospital, where she would undergo surgery for breast cancer.

  The two weeks since she received the diagnosis had been harrowing, though the intensity of our schedules prevented us from dwelling on it. Only now did reality smack. Even then, not until the surgeon approached me in the waiting room hours later did I admit how terrified I was. And relieved. The operation was thoroughly successful, the surgeon reported. Though further treatments would be needed, Sally’s cancer was contained.

  Sally’s tumor had been detected in a routine examination by Dr. David Jacobs, an impish internist, quirky and cantankerous. David not only saved Sally but also kept me functioning, in spite of many sleepless nights and almost no weekends, with his arsenal of anti-cold and -fever medications. He did this entirely for free, 24/7, out of his unswerving love for Israel. But while staving off illness, David could not immunize me from the tragedies that inescapably plague ambassadors.

  There was the family friend from Los Angeles whose son had vanished on a photography trip to Jordan. With the help of Israeli officials who interfaced with authorities in Amman, the young man’s body was eventually located at the bottom of a Petra ravine. I had to make that phone call. Another call went to the parents of Kristine Luken, an American Christian who
wore a silver Star of David over her heart. Palestinian terrorists kidnapped Kristine outside of Jerusalem, tore off her star, and plunged a knife where it had hung. There were Israeli families who lost loved ones in the United States and needed visas to attend the funerals, and Americans without passports who begged to bury a deceased parent in Israel. And, most painfully, there were the parents of missing Israeli soldiers who came beseeching Washington’s help. Behind the white-tie dinners and glittering receptions—though I could never allow myself to show it—an ambassador frequently copes with gloom. Three years after discovering Sally’s cancer in time, and an hour after winning big at blackjack, the sixty-three-year-old Dr. David Jacobs dove into a Las Vegas pool and died of heart failure.

  One of my most dismal moments came at the end of my second year in office, on the day I emerged from a car into North Carolina air so steamy I could scarcely breathe. Fortunately, only a short walk separated the parking lot from the air-conditioned building where I filled out several forms and submitted to a series of physical pat-downs. Then, after passing through sophisticated detectors, I was escorted by an armed guard down cinder-block halls to a barren holding room. There, with his hands folded on a tabletop, smiling wistfully at me, sat Jonathan Pollard.

  He rose to greet me, a man I recognized from the posters plastered on Jerusalem walls but looking older and sallower in person. We were not alone. Together with an Israeli consular representative and activists working for Pollard’s release was his wife, Esther. A religious woman with her hair traditionally covered and her expression grim, she spoke of her husband’s worsening health and kidney failure. After a few moments’ chatting, the others stepped back and allowed Jonathan and me—our words recorded by a federal note taker—to talk.

  Insisting on action from Israel, not visits, Pollard had not met with an Israeli official in three years, yet we spoke like old Jerusalem neighbors. He talked about my books on the Six-Day War and America in the Middle East, and solicited my opinion of other historians in my field. His mind, unlike his appearance, was undiminished. His background, intellectual interests, and passion for Israel made him starkly familiar to me. But our realities could not have been more disparate.

  Inevitably, we turned to those realities. “I have no good news,” I told him candidly. Leaning forward, I updated him on the unending efforts on his behalf, none of which had proved fruitful. The previous month, I had asked the Justice Department for permission to allow Pollard to visit his dying father. Later, I requested that he be able to attend his father’s funeral. Both of my appeals were denied. “All I can tell you, is that the Government and State of Israel will never cease asking for clemency,” I rasped. “Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres have raised the issue, and will continue to raise it, at every White House meeting.”

  Now it was Pollard’s turn to arch toward me and whisper. He spoke not about his own torment but Esther’s. Tears welled in his eyes. I listened and wished nothing more than to offer him some filament of hope. But I had none. All I could promise was to keep working, keep pleading, and to visit him again whenever he wanted.

  An hour later, I exited the Butner Corrections Complex and again collided with the impenetrable Carolina heat. I inhaled nevertheless, savoring the air of freedom. While Jonathan Pollard remained behind bars, I was at liberty to cross the parking lot and drive away, and return to my life in Washington.

  Staggering into the Residence that evening, I fell into an armchair and remained there, listless. I remembered how, in the impossibly tense weeks leading up to the Six-Day War, then IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin had also collapsed into a chair at his home and found himself powerless to rise. Though not faced with a possibly cataclysmic war, I could still sympathize with Rabin. The past twelve months had been rife with crises: the flotilla incident and the Iranian nuclear controversy, the Carmel forest fire and the conflagrations sweeping the Middle East, the erosion of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge and the constant controversies ignited by the peace process. All that and Sally’s ordeal—truly a year of affliction.

  Then I recalled my initial doubts about how long I could last in my position. Now, two years later, I was still in office, battered perhaps but crisis-tested. I had grown into my role, gained the respect of the lion’s share of my embassy, and was no longer ignored when U.S. and Israeli officials mingled in the Roosevelt Room. Those achievements would prove crucial, I knew, as the alliance faced fateful challenges. The two countries I loved needed to unite on issues vital to both and yet they remained separated ideologically and even strategically. Whether I could succeed in bridging those divides remained uncertain. Nevertheless, whatever the afflictions, an ambassador’s job is to persist. And this ambassador, gripping the armrests and emitting a groan, rose and went back to work.

  ROLLER COASTER

  As if someone blew a whistle, by the middle of 2011, most of the major players had changed. Whether in Israel or in the United States, the rigors of government—the sleepless weeks, the perpetual tensions, the inescapable scrutiny of the press—inexorably wear one down. Frequently, I would leave some White House meeting after midnight and see most of the lights burning. And many still burned after dawn. In Israel, too, the pace of public service could be grueling. “It seemed the Israelis never slept,” Condoleezza Rice once observed. “They worked late into the night, making it convenient to reach them.” But while Americans expect their presidents to take much-needed vacations, Israelis begrudge their prime ministers little more than a weekend. Nevertheless, the attrition rate is similarly high in both countries. Among senior officials, especially, the longevity rate is roughly two years.

  Two years into the Obama administration, Tom Donilon replaced Jim Jones as the national security advisor. Right up to the end of his service, the general remained convinced that the peace process and Iran were “two sides to the same coin,” and that the Palestinian issue had “broader implications that reached all the way to Afghanistan, Morocco, and Nigeria.” Donilon seemed far less wedded to the “linkage” doctrine, and less inclined to criticize Israel. Indeed, he had that “warm spot in his heart for the Jewish State” that Israelis always search for in American leaders. My age almost exactly, soft-spoken, and deeply grounded in the administration—his wife and brother advised the Bidens—Donilon became the ideal interlocutor on sensitive issues ranging from the Arab Spring to Iran’s nuclear program.

  Donilon auspiciously came in, but, on the downside, Dennis Ross exited. Respecting the wishes of his long-patient wife, Debbie, he resigned after two years, leaving an unfillable void. Virtually alone among Middle East experts, Dennis was never “stovepiped” into specializing in a certain country or topic, but possessed a broad regional and historical view. And while he was never “Netanyahu’s man in the White House,” as his detractors claimed, Dennis did present the prime minister’s perspective in internal administration debates and countered those advocating a tougher line toward Israel. Now that check was gone.

  So, too, was Dan Shapiro. Rather than return him to civilian life, though, Obama appointed Dan as America’s ambassador to Israel. Religiously observant and a Hebrew speaker, Dan regarded the assignment as the realization of a lifelong dream—much as I had mine. But just as congressmen occasionally introduced me as “our ambassador in Tel Aviv,” many Israelis would be curious as to where Dan’s first allegiance lay, with the United States or the Jewish people. Yet Dan, I was sure, would set them straight and represent Obama unreservedly. Indeed, irrespective of the alliance’s strains, he soon became the most popular U.S. envoy in decades, embraced by the Israeli public. But his promotion was a letdown for me. Dan’s replacement, Steve Simon, a former Orthodox Jew turned dapper apostate in pinstripes and suspenders, though highly intelligent, lacked his predecessor’s access to the president. Israel lost another voice capable of speaking up for us in the Oval Office.

  The whistle also sounded for George Mitchell, who returned to his native Maine. The Middle East, he learned, was not
Northern Ireland, and Britain and the IRA not Israel and the PLO. The role of special envoy became less unique as others—Dennis Ross and Hillary Clinton—shuttled between Jerusalem and Ramallah. But the secretary of state also announced that she would not seek a second term in that office, and gradually distanced herself from the peace process.

  This was another loss. In spite of the often-sharp differences between them, the secretary and the prime minister enjoyed an easy rapport based on long acquaintance and mutual respect. In addition to having that “warm place in her heart for Israel,” I believed she also understood us even when we disagreed. Once, when she intimated that Israelis might be too prosperous and secure to feel the need to make peace—echoing a Thomas Friedman claim—I complained to Dennis Ross. “As a Jew and a father, I’m offended by the suggestion I care more about my salary than my children’s safety.” I further recalled that when the Second Intifada denied Israelis any security, their support for a two-state solution was close to zero. “Now, with security restored, seventy percent of Israelis back a two-state deal.” Dennis conveyed my reaction to the secretary. She never used that argument again.

  While Clinton prepared to transition out at the end of Obama’s first term, new deputy secretaries of state moved in. In place of Jim Steinberg came Bill Burns, a consummate diplomat and mensch. Into the outsize shoes of Jack Lew—future director of the Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff, and Treasury secretary—stepped Tom Nides, a former Morgan Stanley chief operating officer. Irreverent, hard-working, highly intelligent, and warm, Nides quickly earned my affection and trust.

  These were substantive appointments, yet I could not help sensing that the State Department had been sidelined on many Middle Eastern issues. These were now in the White House’s hands and in those of an even tighter circle of presidential advisors. Obama’s initial “team of rivals” was being replaced by an intimate band of those who reinforced his opinions. And deep within that inner loop stood Denis McDonough.