Just then, Obama and Netanyahu emerged beaming. They had reached an agreement on the settlement moratorium. Though only partial—excluded from its terms were schools and synagogues, 2,500 units already under construction, and all of Jerusalem—the freeze was the first ever for Israel and a serious inducement for the Palestinians. The restrictions would last for ten months—“a long enough airstrip,” Rahm commented, “to get the talks in the air.”
Back at the hotel, Netanyahu sat with Molcho calculating the millions of shekels the moratorium would cost the government in lawsuits from builders and homeowners whose contracts were frozen. “You should have heard your ambassador,” Molcho informed the prime minister. “He really stood up for you with Rahm.” I should have savored this rare display of firgun and the sense that the U.S.-Israel alliance was once again on track. “I suppose I should take a victory lap,” I told my friend Yossi Klein Halevi in a call from the Andrews base after Netanyahu’s plane took off. “But the victory won’t last.”
It certainly did not. I had asked Rahm to say something positive about Netanyahu’s decision before the Jewish Federations, but he merely acknowledged the prime minister’s understanding of the importance of peace. In Israel, I noted in The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Netanyahu’s decision has been fiercely criticized. The Knesset has considered a vote of no-confidence in his leadership. And the most recent poll shows that more Israelis oppose the freeze than support it.” The Palestinians, for their part, rejected the moratorium. “Israel has to make peace with us, not the Americans,” remarked Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat.
The American public, too, took little notice of the freeze, which went into effect on Thanksgiving. Attention then focused on the massacre of U.S. soldiers by an army psychiatrist—an Islamic radical—at Fort Hood, Texas. Finally, the moratorium was overshadowed by a routine announcement from the Jerusalem municipality.
The city declared its intention to construct nine hundred housing units in Gilo, the large Jewish neighborhood built over the 1967 lines in the city’s southeast. In the administration’s eyes, the forty-year-old suburb and its more than forty thousand residents was no different than a remote hilltop settlement. Visibly furious, Obama paused in the middle of his China tour to condemn the announcement. Building in Gilo, he declared, “embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”
Netanyahu, already paying a hefty political price from his constituents opposed to the freeze, was nonplussed. The president had furnished the Palestinians with an excuse to keep rejecting talks and even to initiate a Third Intifada. “Your policy puts a pistol in the hand of anybody—Israeli or Palestinian—who wants to stop the peace process,” I complained to Dennis Ross, who seemed to agree. But the policy would not change.
The branches were now bare in Washington, and the city braced for some of the worst blizzards in its history. Americans turned on their news to hear of Obama’s decision to send an additional thirty thousand troops to Afghanistan but then to withdraw all U.S. forces from the country in nineteen months. Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden took credit for the so-called Christmas Day Bomber—the failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner with explosives sewn into a terrorist’s underwear. But another suicide bomber succeeded, killing seven CIA agents in Afghanistan.
Most Americans turned on their Christmas lights and Rahm lit the White House menorah. Obama told invitees to his Hanukkah party how honored he was by my presence, but I did not actually hear him. I was deep in conversation with David Axelrod, the president’s senior advisor, listening to his complaints about our policies while trying to remind him that Israelis respond more to embraces than to abrasiveness. “Try love,” I said.
The longest autumn I could recall had ended, and with it, any belief that the schisms I encountered—in the Jewish community, in Congress, and between Obama and Netanyahu—could easily be spanned. True, I had learned a great deal, but my educational curve as ambassador continued. With an innocence I would later abjure, I carped to administration officials about the “lack of effective intimacy” between Washington and Jerusalem. “Lack of effective intimacy?” David Rothkopf snickered. “That usually means someone’s not getting screwed enough.”
Chrysalis
The Hanukkah lamp at the Residence, though more modest than the White House’s, burned as radiantly, and while not lit by the chief of staff, was kindled by no less a luminary than Ben Affleck. The acclaimed actor, director, and screenwriter had come at the invitation of Rich Klein, a producer who hailed from New Jersey—we attended rival high schools—and an unflagging friend of Israel. My staffers kept pressing Ben to pose with them and nearly prevented him from touching match to candles, but that seemed the least of my concerns. The main challenge was Ben’s guest, New York congressman Anthony Weiner, later to gain notoriety for sexting, but then renowned for his outspokenness on virtually every issue, including U.S.-Israel relations.
“Admit it, the president screwed up by focusing on the settlements,” the high-strung congressman verbally lunged into me as soon as we reached the table.
The remark would have been sufficiently awkward in a private setting, but seated with us were a number of Washington personages, including, directly to my right, Susan Sher, the first lady’s chief of staff.
“No one has a monopoly on making mistakes, Congressman,” I replied. “But the important thing is to move on and get the peace talks restarted without preconditions.”
Not becalmed, Weiner, though a Democrat, kept criticizing Obama and compelling me to defend him. Susan looked shocked. An alumna of yet another rival high school, Susan’s physician father had long known mine, and I felt a special warmth toward this smart, engaging woman. She leaned leftward to whisper, “Who is this asshole?” But I was too busy fending off assaults on the president’s policies to answer. Happily, Ben Affleck stepped in with questions of his own.
Bearded for his role in the Academy Award–winning Argo, he displayed a statesman’s knowledge of the Middle East, which he had studied in college. I could not imagine a more enjoyable conversation or a more welcomed one.
The Hanukkah dinner came in response to a series of difficult questions I had to ask myself. Given the tensions in the relationship, how could I shore up the existing bonds and build new ones? In view of the centralized nature of the Obama White House, how could I gain access to top decision makers? How could I avoid the pitfalls of polarization and gain trust on both sides of the aisle? Most pressing, how could an ambassador not known for his closeness to the prime minister—the usual key to diplomatic success—establish an authoritative presence in Washington?
One way was to reach out. Washington is famous for its opulent diplomatic residences—Britain’s looks like Buckingham Palace and Italy’s like a Tuscan villa. By comparison, the Israeli Residence may resemble a kibbutz but, because of the special relationship, VIPs still want to be seen in it. And those who “give good table” in Washington “get good table” in return. Achieving that status required forethought and work. On his whiteboard, chief of staff Lior Weintraub mapped out the “influentials” in the city and the social networks linking them. Every invitation, then, represented a strategic decision. Even the seating arrangements—to say nothing of the menu—were deliberated.
Fortunately, as Jews, we were never short of excuses for entertaining. Most Jewish holidays, an old joke goes, can be reduced to nine words: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Not only Hanukkah, but Passover, Purim, even the more obscure Tu B’Shvat—the Holiday of Trees, ideal for hosting environmentalists—provided occasions for scrumptious Israeli fare. Most suitable, though, was the seven-day harvest holiday celebrated in a temporary outdoor booth, the Succah.
Having always set up a Succah in our home in Israel, I decided to become the first ambassador to erect one at the Residence and invite prominent figures to our festival. A local rabbi lent us a booth that Jewish elementary school children, among them Rahm Emanuel
’s daughter, decorated. That night—October 4, 2009—our thirty guests included Dianne Feinstein, Dennis and Debbie Ross, and the ambassadors from Russia and Egypt. Before they arrived, though, it rained, ruining the decorations and collapsing half of the Succah. The staff managed to salvage the table and drag it out into the courtyard as the sky seemed to clear. Senator Feinstein was just reproaching my Egyptian colleague on his government’s policies when the rain, almost biblically, resumed.
“Reaching out” not only meant establishing rapports with Washington notables but generating understanding with the broader public. Roughly 60 percent of Americans characterized themselves as pro-Israel—an extraordinary proportion compared to the Europeans who regularly rated Israel among the world’s most despicable countries. Yet I could not afford to be cavalier and ignore crucial American communities largely unfamiliar with the Jewish State. So I prepared a list of dream dinners with Hispanic leaders, well-known Irish- and African-Americans, and the heads of the Greek, Arab, and even Iranian communities. The nexus would be music. Israel has a dizzying diversity of bands—flamenco, Celtic, Laïkó, Middle Eastern, Persian—which I envisioned bringing to the Residence to perform for community leaders. Hearing this idea, Noam Katz, the embassy’s dedicated secretary of public diplomacy, together with my tireless social secretary, Jennifer Sutton, both looked at me blankly. But their gazes turned to gapes when I presented them with my next idea.
The concept occurred to me at the White House, where Obama, continuing a tradition begun by President Bush, held an Iftar—the dinner breaking the fast each day of Islam’s month-long Ramadan holiday. Though seated at the “Jewish table” together with Susan Sher, Dan Shapiro, David Axelrod, and Rahm, I was impressed by the evening’s healing message. I thought: since nearly 20 percent of Israel’s population is Muslim, why not host an Israeli Iftar for American Muslims? This time, not only Noam’s and Jennifer’s jaws dropped, but also those of my security people.
Bogged down in the Foreign Ministry’s bureaucracy, these events would take months to arrange. In the interim, there was Washington’s own social calendar featuring dozens of dinners, balls, galas, concerts, and fund-raisers. These, too, had to be selected strategically according to the criterion, “the U.S.-Israel relationship is special and the Israeli ambassador goes only to premier events.” Yet that could still leave as many as three affairs each night, three stages on which I had to be alert, in character, and “on.”
At any given function, I could find myself mixing with senior administration officials, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff—all essential for networking and much of it genuine fun. But despite my convivial veneer, I could never let down my guard, never forget that I was not merely me but the emissary of the Jewish State. This, too, was part of the job and a physically exacting one. When the staff went home at 7 P.M., the ambassador, adjusting his shirt studs and bow tie, began another day.
Though I was gregarious by nature, my transformation from private person to national personification did not come easily. Later, recalling some of the things I said during my first months in office could still make me wince. It took time to master the small talk that sounded spontaneous instead of calculated, to appear carefree even when trailed by security guards. I had to comport myself as though every word, every action, could be the subject of the next day’s headlines. “You have no choice,” Yossi Klein Halevi broke it to me; “you’re going to have to become Ambassador Oren.” I understood what he meant. No longer an individual with feelings and fears, but a symbol, a brand.
The challenge of changing myself socially, however arduous, nevertheless paled beside that of conceding my individuality as a writer and commentator on current affairs. Ambassadors are frequently dismissed as holdovers from the past, their jobs rendered obsolete by the media. But just the opposite is true. The modern press means that the ambassador is no longer confined to court and to whispering in royal ears, but can broadcast to entire realms—as it were—publicly. “I have three words of advice for you,” Netanyahu told me in one of our first meetings. “Media. Media. Media.”
But my first forays into that media proved lackluster. I did not quite know who I was, a commentator or an ambassador, and the sheer mass of issues—Goldstone, settlements, Iran—induced a kind of writer’s block. Netanyahu, his impatience oozing from the phone, upbraided me: “Suck it up and get writing.”
I wrote, but my opening article, a New Republic piece on the prime minister’s UN speech, contained such cerebral phrases as “Reasserting the factuality of the Holocaust is a prerequisite for peace,” and “Millions of Muslims subscribe to the syllogism: If Israel was created by Europeans and the Holocaust never occurred, then Israel’s existence is unjust.” Similarly, my first speech posited that the physics genius Albert Einstein became a Zionist because he realized that only God could have created universal laws such as the speed of light. Accordingly, the father of modern physics concluded that Jewish history—and the rebirth of Israel—had meaning. “Einstein understood that and so can we,” I concluded, “with all the alacrity, and the clarity, of light.”
Professors can revel in such flourishes, but not ambassadors. The Israeli press lambasted my highbrow attempt to link the Holocaust with Goldstone and the threat of Iranian nukes. After the Einstein speech, Haaretz headlined “Israeli ambassador believes God played a role in Israel’s creation”—a scandal.
I admitted, then, that I had to find my diplomatic voice and fashion it into prose. It took weeks, but my next opinion piece straightforwardly stated that the Goldstone Report “bestows virtual immunity on terrorists and ties the hands of any nation to protect itself” and “must be rebuffed by all who care about peace.” My speeches homed in on the issues—the peace process, Iran, relations between American and Israeli Jews. I felt at first like a slam poet forced to pen rhymed haiku, but the rule-bound genre grew on me. Together with a trusted press assistant, Aaron Kaplowitz, who typed while I paced and dictated, I published more than forty op-eds and full-length articles, an Israeli diplomatic record. And not all of it was straightlaced. My audiences also heard how Israel exported wine to France, caviar to Russia, and gluten-free pasta to Italy. They heard that Israelis had won more Nobel Prizes than Olympic medals, “and only a Jewish state would be proud of that.”
A similar switch was needed for my television appearances. In America, a strong TV presence means power. This especially held true for the Obama administration, staffed in no small measure by former journalists. I took note of how the evening news reported that an African-American federal employee, Shirley Sherrod, had made racist comments. The administration instantly fired Sherrod but then, after the news revealed that the charges were groundless, begged to reinstate her.
The administration’s sensitivity to the news cycle lent me a certain advantage. An ambassador not known in Washington to be a longtime associate of his prime minister, and a virtual stranger to his foreign minister, can easily be dismissed. But an ambassador who establishes a strong media presence simply cannot be ignored. So I set out to create that presence, interviewing on radio and television and briefing journalists whenever possible.
By being proactive in the press, I gradually gained the administration’s ear, but often at the risk of losing its heart. Rarely did I appear on any news program without being asked whether Obama was good or bad for Israel. “Tell the truth, Mr. Ambassador,” the interviewer typically opened. “For Israeli-American relations, isn’t this the worst crisis ever?”
As an historian, I knew what a real crisis between the countries looked like—Suez, 1956, for example, when President Eisenhower threatened to levy sanctions on Israel—and nothing so earth-shattering had yet occurred. Compressing historical comparisons into seven-second sound bites was difficult, though, and I had to remind myself of the need to deny daylight between the two governments. Even the semblance of disagreements could encourage Israel’s enemies and be seized by critics of Obama, turning Isra
el into a wedge issue. So I smiled back at the broadcaster and begged to disagree. “Even the best of friends can sometimes differ,” I said. “Relations between the United States and Israel are, to quote the president, ‘unbreakable and unshakable.’ ”
In spite of these best efforts, Netanyahu judged my initial television appearances as “bloodless.” He was right. Once again I found myself in identity no-man’s-land, aware of where I needed to be persona-wise yet unsure of how to get there. Fortunately, the persona came to me, unexpectedly, in a Q&A with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
Incisive and genteel, Fareed had sharp policy differences with Israel and no reticence about expressing them. In my previous academic life, I always enjoyed sparring with him. But now, confined to a list of “messages” formulated by the Prime Minister’s Office, I felt hobbled entering his studio. That is, until, out of the blue, Fareed asked me, “Why should the Iranian nuclear program threaten you when Israel has two hundred nuclear bombs?” Without thinking, I fell back on Israel’s traditional opacity: “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.” Undeterred, Fareed asked me the same question again and again and each time I gave the identical response. Finally, I smiled at him and said, “It’s your interview, Fareed. If you want to spend it all like this, be my guest.”
Almost accidentally, I had slipped into my ambassadorial TV character. And I slipped into it again a few weeks later when journalists asked me to comment on the assassination in a Dubai hotel of Hamas agent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, allegedly by the Mossad. “I know nothing about this incident,” I said with a shrug, then added: “Though it’s curious how the press seems more interested in speculating about what Israel might have done than asking why an internationally wanted terrorist was openly operating in Dubai.”
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