Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  Staying out of the debate nevertheless proved tricky. National Security Advisor Susan Rice personally asked AIPAC to weigh in on the side of action, leaving the organization little leeway but to accede. Congress members meanwhile phoned the embassy inquiring about Israel’s position and obliging me to draw on all my hedging skills. “It’s the ghosts of [the wars] in Afghanistan and Iraq against the ghosts of [the massacres] in Kosovo and Rwanda,” I told them, “and Israel can’t get between your ghosts.” Others just called to express their dismay. “This is the most fucked-up thing I’ve seen in my entire political career,” fumed John McCain.

  Through these conversations, I learned that constituent calls were running one hundred to one against military intervention, and in some cases hundreds to one. Congress kept delaying the vote while senior administration officials struggled to make their case. Defense Secretary Hagel warned that the missile strike would “not be a pinprick,” but Kerry maintained that it would be “unbelievably small.” Henry Kissinger warned of a “humiliating outcome” for the United States and of irreparable damage to Obama’s international reputation.

  Disgrace if not also danger loomed as I spent some of my last days in office rushing around Washington in an attempt to ascertain the possible impact of the Syria situation on Iran and other regional challenges. In the course of this frenzy, though, I heard of a proposal to peacefully remove Syria’s chemical arsenal. The idea originated with an Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz, who first pitched it to the Russians, who were eager to avoid an American intercession that they could not stop. Netanyahu next brought it to Obama and received a green light. The “Framework for the Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” provided for the export and destruction of Syrian’s sarin, mustard gas, VX, and assorted nerve agents by the summer of 2014.

  In subsequent interviews, Obama rarely missed the chance to cite the neutralization of Syria’s chemical capabilities as an historic diplomatic achievement. Russian president Vladimir Putin also took credit for the initiative and praised this “vivid example of how the international community can solve the most complex disarmament and nonproliferation task.” Israel’s role remained unmentioned, but its citizens were relieved not to have to sign up for more gas masks. Happiest, perhaps, were the Syrians, and rightly so. Assad’s massively destructive weapons succeeded in realizing their primary goal of preserving his regime. Part of the problem while possessing chemical arms, by removing them Assad became key to the solution. Henceforth, he would enjoy utter immunity while butchering his own people with barrel bombs and other conventional ordnance. The phrase “Assad must go” vanished from Obama’s vocabulary.

  These turns of events stunned me in unprecedented ways. Starting in 2009, I had made it my goal never to be surprised by Obama. Like a sound historian, I returned to the sources—the books the president wrote about himself and the speeches he made to the world. These revealed a leader who remained ambivalent about America’s military might but unequivocal in his affinity for the Middle East, an advocate of engagement who, when crossed, could nevertheless resort to lethal force. They showed a president who preferred to pass many international initiatives on to others, such as the French and the UN, but who was also capable of making tough decisions—eliminating bin Laden, for example. This was a politician, I concluded, acutely sensitive to shifts in the press and an ideologue whose kishke issues included nonproliferation. All that should have translated into a one-time lightning strike against vital Syrian facilities.

  It did not. But there was no time to ponder my unpreparedness. The president was set to give a major White House address on Syria, and Israel needed a categorical statement of its right to defend itself, even by massive means, if attacked. Summoning all the relationships I had cultivated over the years, the precise wording was finally settled. But not until Obama actually declared, “Our ally Israel can defend itself with overwhelming force,” and had “the unshakable support of the United States of America,” did I finally feel relieved. And no longer surprised.

  The Things I Carried Home

  Inextricably caught in downtown Manhattan traffic, late for an address to the heads of American Jewish organizations, I turned to Lee Moser and said, “Let’s get out of the car and run.” So we ran as, suddenly, thunder rumbled down Madison Avenue and the sidewalks darkened with rain. We ran, totally drenched, with my chief of staff’s ankles bleeding from her high heel shoes and water squirting from my socks. Yet all I could do was laugh. “Just remember, Lee,” I shouted at her over the deafening peals, “these are the best days of our lives!”

  And so they were. For all the trials, the crises, those moments when I thought my capacity for composure and cogent thinking were long surpassed, nothing could replicate the profound privilege—and, yes, the joy—of representing Israel in America. There were times when I imagined that, through sheer force of will, I was holding the alliance together, and other times when I realized that those bonds were far stronger than any individual’s ability to fray or fortify them. Either way, serving as the emissary to the land of my father from the land of my forefathers, to the America of my birth from my birthright, Israel, remained an inestimably rewarding experience.

  Now it was concluding. The end of an ambassador’s term can be as event-jammed as its outset. There were numerous dinners held in honor of Sally and me. The Senate held a farewell reception for us, as did the State Department, hosted by Wendy Sherman. There were many toasts and even several tears. In between, we packed. Decades ago, I had made aliya with merely a backpack, but now I stared at a cardboard ziggurat composed of some two hundred boxes—books, mostly, but also a single crate especially reserved for memorabilia.

  Filling it, I was reminded of Tim O’Brien’s immortal short story, “The Things They Carried,” about American soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Into battle they bore with them not only necessities such as bandages and bug spray, but also the mementos that signified their lives. Now I had to choose those few items that encapsulated the past four years. According to Israeli law, an ambassador must hand over to the State all the gifts received while in office. Exceptions could be made for certain items, upon special request. The things I carried home were intensely special.

  The first articles packed were quirky, such as a laminated copy of a Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle in which question 12 Down was “Israel’s Envoy in Washington.” Next came the Tiffany apple, a present from New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a glossy heft that recalled my heady student days in the Big Apple. Into the box went the “In Google We Trust” magnet I received while visiting the Internet giant’s California headquarters. The tour of the amusement park–like campus included a chat with Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. I shared with him Israel’s concerns about Google Earth, the global mapping program, which terrorists had used as a targeting device. Google Earth, Schmidt explained, was designed to bring people closer together. “Yes,” I acknowledged, “but does it have to bring Hezbollah closer to my children?”

  Following the apple and the magnet into the box went my souvenirs from the reenactments of the battles of Manassas and Gettysburg. Watching thousands of blue- and gray-uniformed “living historians” firing muskets and cannons was pure fun for the Civil War fanatic in me, even though dozens of the participants fainted from the heat. And as the only Israeli ambassador—and perhaps the only foreign diplomat—ever to attend these extravaganzas, I was hosted with the deference due to a Union or Confederate general. But beyond enjoyment, the replica kepi and minié balls I saved reminded me that liberty was often wrought at an excruciating price. They, too, were crated.

  The oddest entry of all was a bottle of Poland’s finest vodka. This was presented to me by Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving woman senator. I had first met Barbara in the 1990s, at a special Senate ceremony honoring my father. On December 16, 1944—the first day of the Battle of the Bulge—when many GIs retreated in the face of the advancing German army, my father and his friend Jimmy Hill
dug in with a bazooka and knocked out the lead Panzer tank. Bureaucracy delayed the medals due to my dad and Jimmy, but when they finally arrived, Barbara bestowed them. I was always grateful to her for that honor as well as for her unswerving support for Israel, which began when she, the granddaughter of Polish immigrants, first visited Auschwitz. Barbara succeeded the great Dan Inouye as the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, proving to me, once again, the power of providence.

  “I thought about what I could get you, cuff links or something,” she told me on my last visit to the Hill. “But then I decided on this.”

  The vodka bottle, which I would cherish but never open, was inscribed “To Ambassador Oren—a leader for Justice and Freedom.”

  More conventional but no less touching was the formal letter inviting me, the Jewish State’s representative, to address one of Washington’s largest iftars. Another invitation welcomed me to New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine on 110th Street, where, before the altar with bishops and Harlem community leaders, I danced an ecstatic hora to the Middle Eastern rock music of Idan Raichel. Especially valued was the note naming me the keynote speaker at the annual Equality Forum, America’s oldest gay rights organization. I spoke about the achievements of Israel’s LGBT community, about the successful fight for equal status in the IDF and the foreign service, about the Palestinian homosexuals who found shelter in Israel, and about Tel Aviv, now listed as the world’s most gay-friendly city and host to Asia’s largest gay pride parade. But I also admitted that the struggle against prejudice in Israel continued. “We are a work in progress,” I said, “but we are also a work of progress.”

  There were plaques—almost as many as boxes. A plaque from Columbia University’s John Jay Fellows, presented by some of my college classmates, and a plaque signed by hundreds of student body presidents who, in the wake of the Irvine protest incident, urged me to speak on their campuses. The plaque from my security guards featured a spy camera that I could hang behind my desk, just over my shoulder, and never feel alone.

  Into the box went the elongated, amber shofar I received from American Jewish leaders. As a chubby child presumably with a surfeit of wind, I was given a baritone—essentially a small tuba—to play in the school band. Oompahing on that horn invariably led to blowing the shofar in my family’s synagogue on the High Holidays. One Rosh Hashanah, as a guest of Gary Ginsberg’s Town and Village Synagogue in Manhattan, I was asked to sound that ram’s horn. Unpracticed for many years, my initial notes fizzled. But suddenly the purest tone emerged. It reverberated over the pews and seemed to lift my soul with it. That shofar was coming home with me.

  An ambassador accrues no end of ashtrays, paperweights, and medals, but there were several items that meant more to me than all those keepsakes combined. Two Stars and Stripes, gifts of Senators Ed Markey and Roy Blunt—a Democrat and a Republican—both flown over the Capital and folded into neat triangles, took pride of place in the box. So, too, did a T-shirt emblazoned, in Hebrew letters, with the name “Gallaudet,” a gift of the deaf students who attended my signed lecture on the U.S.-Israel alliance. And then there was the simple glass monolith inscribed with my name and the words “Outstanding Learning Disabled Achiever Award.” I never knew how it happened, but someone in Washington heard about my childhood struggles with dyslexia and other disabilities. The result was a call from the Washington Lab School, an inspiring institution dedicated to teaching young people with similar challenges, offering to honor me. Previous recipients included Vice President Biden, the school said. But I needed no prodding. Here was the opportunity, at last, to confront a painful past.

  Before a black-tie, august audience, for the first time publicly, I confessed what it was like to be deemed the dumbest kid in the class, to be lumped together with other “underachievers,” given the worst teachers, and automatically the lowest grades. “There were no tutors, no allowances for disabilities—there weren’t even terms for the handicaps I had.” I admitted the humiliation I felt coming from the Jewish community, where students were expected to excel. Then I retraced the agonizing ascent from that darkness—the poetry I began to write and publish, the high school English teacher who let me into his honors class on the condition that I teach myself how to spell, and my battle with standardized testing, which ended in the Ivy League. Finally, I talked about Yoav, Lia, and Noam—my kids—who grappled with tougher learning obstacles than I ever faced and overcame them even more courageously. “These children, not the degrees, not the books, not the ambassadorial titles,” I concluded, “are my greatest success in life.”

  The box was nearly full. There remained a little space for some tokens from where I grew up. I often told audiences that “I spend more time defending the state of New Jersey than I do the State of Israel,” and invariably got a laugh. Yet, even if it did not allow me to be a cowboy guiding herds around Golan minefields, New Jersey was a perfectly good place for an American upbringing. And to honor it, I packed the pin of crossed Garden State and Jewish State flags given to me by Governor Chris Christie, who attended a rival high school, and the poster labeled, “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land,” inscribed with the words, “With warm wishes to another Jersey guy,” and signed by Bruce Springsteen. I kept the leaf of official White House stationery on which President Obama wrote, “Michael, your life of service embodies the bonds between our nations—not bad for a kid from New Jersey.”

  I closed and sealed the box, aware that some of the most precious tokens could not be shipped. Among these were the moments spent with my parents. Now in their late eighties, they still lived in the same house where they raised me. After so many years of being separated by thousands of miles, suddenly a mere five-hour drive united us. Joined by my sisters, Karen and Aura and their families, a visit from my mother and father transformed our run-down Residence into a palace of familial joy. But it also served as a shelter. In October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy smashed into the East Coast and devastated large swaths of New Jersey, my parents’ phone went dead. I did manage to reach their rabbi, though, who found them shivering in bed. I told my folks to get into their car and drive south as far as possible—Delaware’s gas stations were open—and come to us. Through the storm, these members of the Greatest Generation drove and arrived, frightfully chilled, at our doorstep. More frozen still were the many pounds of meat my mother had loaded into the trunk. Her brisket, too, had escaped from New Jersey.

  Yet part of me, I knew, needed to go back, just once. “No way,” Lee Moser scolded me. “There’s simply no time.” Nevertheless, I insisted on making that time and so, one afternoon, escorted by the West Orange police and Board of Education, I visited my high school. I took a photo in front of my old locker and embraced my former principal, Jerry Tarnoff, who had come out of retirement to greet me. In the main auditorium, several hundred students gathered to hear me speak. The faces had changed since my day. In place of the Jews and Italians who once made up 90 percent of the school, now were mostly African-Americans and Asians. But their aspirations, I assumed, remained the same.

  “Forty years ago,” I began, “I stood on this very stage and played the role of Don Quixote in the musical Man of La Mancha. It’s the story about a man who refuses to give up on his principles. People called him outdated. People called him insane. Yet he kept wearing his rusty armor. He continued to fight.”

  The assembly was silent, uncertain, perhaps, of what to make of me. But I went on, recalling how I sang the song, “To Dream the Impossible Dream,” and even attempted a few bars. The students finally laughed and applauded and I laughed with them. But then I grew serious. “I, too, had a dream. It was to move to Israel and then come back as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Each of you has your dreams as well. And just know…” I paused, once again growing sentimental. “That no dream is impossible.”

  —

  My last day as ambassador, September 30, began before dawn, typically, on a tarmac. Prior to addressing the UN General Assembly
in New York, Netanyahu planned a one-day visit to Washington. The musky smell of autumn mixed with the tang of jet fuel as the El Al airliner touched down. Three U.S. Air Force colonels saluted, Chief of Protocol Capricia Marshall smiled, and I, for the last time, shouted above the engines, “Baruch Habah”—welcome—“Mr. Prime Minister.”

  The day, too, was characteristic enough, starting at the State Department and a conversation on the peace process with Secretary of State Kerry. From there we motorcaded to the White House to meet with Vice President Biden and Susan Rice. Locked in a seemingly irresolvable budget debate with Congress that threatened to shut down the federal government, President Obama was not expected to devote much time to Netanyahu. But the one-on-one meeting between them lasted more than twice as long as expected. When the American and Israeli teams finally entered the Oval Office, we found the two leaders—once again routinely—smiling as if in total conformity.

  The president indeed affirmed that the United States would not be deceived by Rouhani’s “charm offensive,” would enter “clear-eyed” into any future talks with Iran, and would judge it by actions, not words. Obama even thanked Netanyahu for his cooperation with Kerry’s initiative. Though unnerved by the recent conversations between the U.S. and Iranian presidents, the prime minister similarly expressed gratitude for America’s commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And while not opposed to negotiations with Tehran, these, Netanyahu stressed, should only be conducted under heightened sanctions and a credible military threat.

  In spite of this seeming harmony, I knew, disagreements over the Palestinian issue and Iran would likely persist and sharpen. These two leaders, despite their four-year familiarity, would continue to clash. Obama was no longer the inexperienced president of 2009, and yet time and events had not altered his outlook. He still referred to a “Muslim world”—a world that contained the Iranian regime but excluded Sunni jihadists and al-Qaeda—and refused to utter the words “Islamic terror.” Committed to Israel’s defense, he also remained invested in the Palestinian cause and in efforts to achieve a nuclear deal with Tehran. Netanyahu, meanwhile, was no less determined to safeguard Israel’s security and to fulfill the role that history reserved for him.