In time, I could appear on programs as diverse as The View and Meet the Press, The Colbert Report, and Morning Joe, and maintain my diplomatic character. “My father was Jewish, can I be, too?” the irreverent Bill Maher asked me during one of our interviews. “You want to be in,” I factually responded, “you’re in.”
After a few months in Washington, my transition period was at last concluding, but Sally’s had just begun. This former flower child, kibbutznik, and modern dancer was compelled overnight to become a Washington socialite, a hostess of attentiveness and grace. Accustomed to jeans and sandals, she was suddenly shoved into glimmering evening gowns—God forbid someone should be seen wearing the same one twice—and the high heels that felt, to her, like medieval torture devices. She had to be manicured, made up, presentably coiffed and accessorized—to be metamorphosed into what one of her friends called “ambassadorable.”
Such a radical makeover was daunting for Sally, who was also grappling with our family’s challenges back home. In Jerusalem, her mother was agonizingly dying from cancer. Our youngest son, Noam, had entered the army—a “lone soldier,” without parents in the country, just as I had been—while Lia and Yoav, both at college, wrestled with the learning disabilities they had inherited from their dad. Beyond deciding the floral arrangements for our next dinner or managing the Residence’s bickering staff—“Israel’s highest-ranking unpaid diplomat,” I called her—Sally had weightier concerns.
Yet she fulfilled her duties nobly, lovingly, and by all accounts, sensationally. She volunteered to teach Israeli songs and folk dances at an elementary school in one of the most impoverished parts of Washington. When bus drivers refused to enter the crime-ridden neighborhood at night to take the pupils to a Nationals’ baseball game, she sponsored a special afternoon at the stadium. Star players gave the kids batting and fielding tips while Sally served them kosher hot dogs—Hebrew Nationals Day, she called it.
When not working with inner-city children, Sally mixed with Washington’s elite. The Israeli ambassador’s wife is invited to join International Club Number One, founded in 1952, which brought together the spouses of prominent diplomats, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, journalists, and senior administration figures including Michelle Obama. Nothing could be further from San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, where Sally first danced to Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Doors. But she drew on her family’s century-deep roots in the United States, her commitment to Israel, and our shared devotion to the two countries’ alliance. By 2010, I could walk into a State Department reception and not know a soul while Sally ran up and hugged half the dignitaries. And the International Club, which never before had a single Israeli officer, eventually named Sally its president.
But Sally’s success arose not only from soirees and luncheons but from the pages of The Atlantic. Learning that the sixties’ band Jefferson Airplane composed two songs about her, Jeffrey Goldberg proposed writing a profile of Sally for the magazine. Seemingly unobjectionable, Jeff’s request nevertheless raised some strategic questions: should Israel be associated with the sixties drug culture, which Sally—a mere fifteen-year-old at the time—generally shunned? We thought about it and concluded that Israel, always in the news for some war or crisis, should for once be considered cool.
The article featured a garlanded caricature of her dancing with Jimi Hendrix and Bibi Netanyahu and opened with the question: “How many degrees of separation exist between [the] Israeli Prime Minister and…Jerry Garcia?” The answer, Jeff replied, was one:
The person who connects…Shimon Peres to Jim Morrison, and, for that matter, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Janis Joplin—is Sally Oren…who plays the role of diplomat’s spouse with distinction and grace. She hosts embassy functions…wears elegant gowns and attends White House parties. Forty-five years ago, however, she played Frisbee with the Grateful Dead and served as Jefferson Airplane’s muse.
The profile went viral. In addition to deferring to her presidency role, the International Club women now referred to her as the Queen of Cool. Once, while at Ben-Gurion Airport to greet the secretary of defense, I was flabbergasted—and flattered—when his young staffers ran off the air force plane and rushed to shake my hand. “You’re Sally Oren’s husband!” they shouted above the din. “We’re honored!”
Gradually, by dint of our outreach, our hospitality, and our willingness to engage unconventionally, Sally and I accessed those “good tables,” an important tool for diplomatic networking. I, too, became the subject of profiles, all thankfully favorable, two of them in The New York Times. But though occasionally introduced as Israel’s ambassador to Washington, I was, in fact, my country’s envoy to the United States. Beyond the Beltway, between the coasts, were fifty states that also fell under my purview, and more than three hundred million Americans with whom I was privileged to interact.
Escaping Washington, with its critical congressional debates and visiting Israeli delegations, was never easy. Each opportunity I snatched. With security team in tow, I set off for Atlanta, to lay a wreath at the grave site of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, or to San Antonio, to meet with Mayor Julian Castro and the city’s Hispanic leadership. Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art and the DuSable Museum of African American History hosted me, as did the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco. There were many visits to synagogues, of course, but at least as many to churches. Whether by the ten thousand evangelicals in the Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles or by the gospel-rocking African-Americans in Cincinnati’s New Jerusalem Church, I was exuberantly received by the congregants. Such uplifting moments reminded me that America is not just Pennsylvania Avenue or the press, and that the nation is fundamentally, instinctively, pro-Israel.
Yet, even as I crisscrossed the country, Washington was never far from my mind. Throughout my travels, I sought individuals who could help me understand the mood in Congress and the White House and gain a sense of the directions in which America was heading. And in no city were such individuals more densely concentrated than in Chicago, the hometown of Obama and so much of his senior staff, including Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and the president’s closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett. Washington, I used to jest, had become a settlement of Chicago.
I visited the Windy City repeatedly to glean insights from those who knew Obama earlier in his public career and had supported his ascent to power. Among these were his early Jewish backers—Lester Crown, Alan Solow, Lee Rosenberg—exceptional individuals all, and Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, a man even more extraordinary than his name. The first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, Capers was also a cousin to Michelle Obama. But that White House connection became incidental for me as I grew to admire this inspirited community leader and passionate advocate for Israel.
Most meaningful, though, were my pilgrimages to the New York office of Elie Wiesel. Sitting together among his myriad books and multiple literary awards, we discussed the challenges confronting the Jewish people, from assimilation to radicalism and Holocaust denial. I consulted with him about Obama, appreciative of his personal rapport with the president and his advice on how to enhance his relations with Israel. We spoke about contemporary issues, but I could never forget the impact Elie had had on my youth. I listened, all the while looking at this debonairly disheveled eighty-year-old, the survivor, the laureate, and marveling that I now called him friend.
In addition to these rewarding relationships, there were—admittedly—some perks. In Sacramento, the California State Assembly presented me with a bobblehead of the Kings’ star scorer, Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play for the NBA. And the U.S. Naval Academy gave me a hat stitched with the logo “Go Navy Beat Army”—in Hebrew. My love of football, which I also never renounced, led me to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. The builder of Israel’s only football stadium, where Jewish and Arab linebackers bashed each other fraternally, Robert hosted me at several Patriots games and afterward took me to
the locker room, where he held hands with his players and prayed. I attended the 2011 Super Bowl, sat between the dazzling Teresa Scanlan—also known as Miss America—and football immortal Roger Staubach, whom I surprised by recalling his Heisman-winning record at Navy but who delighted me more by revealing his lifelong admiration for Israel. At halftime, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Great to see you, Michael,” President George W. Bush said with a smile. “Or should I say Mr. Ambassador?”
And the ambassador gets to meet celebrities, an astonishing number of them connected to Israel. Among these were Michael Douglas, whose father, Kirk, donated the Jerusalem park where our kids used to play, and Jason Isaacs, star of Awake and Harry Potter, most of whose family lives north of Tel Aviv, and Scarlett Johansson, as brave as she is beautiful, a defender of Israel against boycotts. The still-stunning Richard Gere, a veteran peace activist, lectured Jeffrey Goldberg and me about Israel’s need to reconcile with Hamas. “Just invite Hamas parents over for coffee and talk about your kids,” he repeatedly explained while Jeffrey and I nodded numbly and our wives both gawked. At Quentin Tarantino’s reception for his alternative history film, Inglourious Basterds, producer Lawrence Bender introduced me to the Jewish actors, one of whom boasted, “We shot Hitler! We made our parents so proud!” At another Hollywood party, a tall, gangly young man chatted with me in fluent Hebrew until, embarrassed, I asked his name. It was Sacha Baron Cohen, the ingenious comedian, whom I had never seen out of costume. In time, though, even the flashiest glitter wears off. Once, at the Louis XVI–style French Residence, Sally declined to join me in a conversation with Oscar-winning actor George Clooney because her feet, all night in heels, were killing her.
Along with the privileges and the perks, traversing the country involved barely survivable schedules, controversy, and even danger. Most tempestuous were the university lectures that I insisted on delivering at least once per month. America is home to nearly seven thousand college campuses, some of which are effusively pro-Israel, but others accommodate—and in some cases encourage—against us. These were the campuses that I intentionally targeted, hoping to interact with those students most opposed to Israel and open their minds to a different understanding of us. This made for some tough encounters.
At Harvard, several students rose to read from pre-prepared questions, one of which accused me of defaming the Palestinians in The National Review, a conservative publication. I denied writing such libels or ever publishing in The National Review. Still, a student insisted, “But it says here that the article appeared in TNR.com.” Calmly I explained that TNR.com stood for The New Republic, the liberal magazine where I had been a contributing editor.
Whether reading from leaflets or speaking from the heart, all students deserved to be treated respectfully, I determined, and answered. Despite the heroic efforts of pro-Israel advocacy groups such as StandWithUs and AIPAC, many of these young people had been exposed to anti-Zionist hype within and outside the classroom. Consequently, I reserved the right to call on those raising their hands and made a point of choosing those who—telling by their dress or demeanor—were likely to be the most contentious. And the questions could be tough.
“Why can Jews from New York move to Israel and immediately receive citizenship,” I was frequently asked, “while a Palestinian-American cannot?” The answer was to explain that Israel is a nation-state like the vast majority of countries in the world, and that, like Israel, many of those countries have laws enabling members of that nationality to come home. “Israel’s Law of Return is affirmative action for two thousand years of Jewish statelessness that resulted in unspeakable suffering for my people,” I replied. “And someday I hope the Palestinians will have a nation-state to which their nationals can return as well.” Whenever possible, I would talk about the painful sacrifices that not only Israelis would have to make for peace but also the Palestinians—eschewing their claims to Jaffa and Haifa, acknowledging the Jewish State’s legitimacy—and the need for each side to coexist with the other’s narratives.
All questions remained kosher but two. The first was, “Isn’t Israel an apartheid state just like South Africa was?” And the second, “How can Israel treat the Palestinians the way the Nazis once treated Jews?” Both of these received curt questions in return. “How does Israel, where Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, and in the army, remotely resemble an apartheid state?” and “Has Israel put six million Palestinians in gas chambers?” In each case, I concluded, “Shame on you.”
My campus challenges were not, unfortunately, always verbal. Demonstrators outside the halls in which I spoke occasionally tried to intimidate interested students from entering. Protesters at the University of Texas held up posters accusing me of war crimes and climbed onto the stage. My greatest fear, though, was not for my safety but for theirs. The security detail—Americans and Israelis—were trained to disable any protester who got too close me. Fortunately, none of them did.
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But no campus experience proved more shocking and, as it turned out, more pivotal, than my February 8, 2010, appearance at the University of California, Irvine. Having lectured at the campus before becoming ambassador, I knew of its pronounced anti-Israel atmosphere, but even then was struck by the sight of dozens of Muslim students praying at the entrance to the hall. Inside were hundreds of anti- and pro-Israel activists, prepared for an on-camera showdown. As usual before a difficult public appearance, I prayed that I would be given the strength and the wisdom to handle this one honorably, to do my country proud. That prayer proved timely, as I learned seconds after beginning my talk.
One of the protesters, strategically placed mid-row to prevent his rapid removal, stood and shouted, “Michael Oren, murderer of children!” The attendees roared, for and against the heckler. I resumed my speech only to be interrupted by another screaming student. “This is not London or Jerusalem, but it’s also not Tehran,” I said. But the disruptions continued. To their credit, the university heads condemned what they immediately deplored as a violation of my freedom of expression as well as the audience’s right to listen. I reminded the demonstrators of the Middle Eastern custom of showing hospitality to any guest, even an ostensible enemy. “I’ve come into your home and I’m asking you for hospitality.”
For years afterward, people would approach me asking how, in the face of that chaos, I managed to keep my cool. Usually, I would just shrug and cite my thirty years’ experience of coping with hostile crowds. In reality, vivid memories were coursing through my mind. I recalled being back in high school, still suffering from learning disabilities but writing the poetry that caught my teachers’ attention and convinced them to transfer me out of the “dumb” class. I remembered pausing, terrified, in the hall before entering Honors English. “I’ve been through worse than this,” I thought.
The howling in the Irvine auditorium became too loud to continue and I left the stage, but only for a few minutes. I used this time to confer with the local police chief, who agreed to arrest the hecklers for public disturbance. Then, turning to Lior Weintraub, I said, “We’re going back out.”
Stepping up to the lectern, I restarted my speech and, predictably, another student rose up and yelled. And was promptly taken into custody. All told, the police detained eleven students who were brought to court and found guilty of two misdemeanors. The Irvine Eleven, as they tried to fashion themselves, appealed this sentence and failed. Israelis won a landmark victory for their right to speak and be heard on campuses.
The YouTube clip of my Irvine lecture attracted close to a million viewers. Some of them might have seen a Quixote-like figure standing up to a churning mob, but, in truth, I no longer relished that role. “I wish they had stayed,” I told the audience after the last of the protesters was ejected. “They were precisely the students I came to engage.” I even wrote those students an open letter offering to return to campus and dialogue with them. They never responded.
In firgun-free Israel, the Irvi
ne incident earned me a headline—I considered framing it—in which an unnamed foreign ministry official accused me of deliberately stirring up anti-Israel sentiment on American campuses. But news of the episode reverberated positively through Washington and further strengthened my ability to convey Israel’s message. It helped address those burning questions that I initially posed—how to gain access, maintain bipartisan respect, and establish a compelling presence? Those answers proved critical early in 2010, as the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office pitched toward collision.
Tremors
The clash, ironically, was preceded by a real disaster—and a moving display of U.S.-Israel harmony. It began on January 14, forty-eight hours after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti. Vast swaths of the impoverished Caribbean country lay in ruins, with at least 150,000 dead. With its war-born experience in dealing with casualties, its expert medical teams, and its biblical traditions of caring for the weak, Israel responded. More than two hundred Israelis, many of them volunteers from the IsraAID relief organization, immediately took off for Haiti and set up the first completely equipped hospital unit. Yet the operation could not have been mounted without the logistical assistance of the United States. Some of the Israelis even slept in chairs at the U.S. embassy. Throughout, I was on the phone around the clock with the State Department, coordinating our joint efforts. Aftershocks further ravaged that tragic island, but the cooperation between the United States and Israel remained firm.
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