Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  Replacing Donilon as deputy national security advisor, the tall, blond, and athletic McDonough was indefatigable—seemingly indifferent to food and rest—and categorically loyal to the president. His heart, unlike Donilon’s, did not have “that warm place for Israel,” but his head accurately conveyed Obama’s thoughts. I needed to hear them, however blistering, and knew that I could always count on McDonough to give them to me ultra-straight.

  And still, the whistle blew. Across the Potomac, it signaled the retirement of Defense Secretary Gates and his replacement by the former CIA director Leon Panetta. Though he worked unconditionally to reinforce Israel’s defense, Gates remained allergic to Netanyahu, who he reportedly claimed was unappreciative of U.S. aid to Israel and indifferent to its growing international isolation. A warm Italian-American who, as a congressman, enjoyed wide American Jewish support, Panetta would not be as standoffish as his predecessor but would nevertheless preserve his policies. Admiral Mike Mullen, meanwhile, turned the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over to General Martin Dempsey. I developed a genuine affection for Mullen, but had yet to meet his successor. At Langley, General Petraeus moved into Panetta’s CIA spot, and at Treasury, the veteran Iran sanctioner Stuart Levey switched off with David Cohen, who proved to be just as diligent in plugging sanction loopholes.

  Just keeping track of these transformations, much less assessing their impact on the U.S.-Israel relationship, required enormous effort. Many of the relationships that I had established had to be rebuilt from scratch and in real time, as crises crisscrossed the Middle East. Access to the highest level of decision making, so vital to maintaining an already-strained alliance, also had to be regained.

  And few contacts were more sorely missed than Rahm Emanuel. Now that he had left his White House chief of staff job for the mayoralty of Chicago, there was no one to call me in the middle of the night and reprimand my government, no one to pump a half finger into my chest—as he did at a swank reception shortly after Netanyahu’s last visit to Washington—and bark, “You do not fucking come to the White House and fucking lecture the president of the United States!”

  Rahm’s critics continued to debate the degree to which he bore responsibility for the tensions between Washington and Jerusalem, but I never once questioned Israel’s integral place in his soul. Just before leaving office, Rahm took his family to Israel for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. I was able to arrange security as well as visits to several frontline IDF units and lunches with the troops. Exiting the stage after receiving an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University, I was called aside for an urgent phone call from Rahm. “I’ve just been walking with my wife on the Tel Aviv beach and people just kept coming up to us and wishing us, ‘Mazal tov! Mazal tov!’ What a country!” Rahm was crying.

  Yet the whistle blew not only in Washington, but also in the Jewish State. Uzi Arad, the brainy and mercurial national security advisor, stepped down in favor of the no less cerebral but unflappable Yaakov Amidror. A classic curmudgeonly ex-general, Amidror also sported a trademark right-wing beard and large knitted kippa. Behind that salty veneer, though, he could be surprisingly sweet and politically moderate. Elsewhere in the Prime Minister’s Office, the shake-up brought in a new military secretary and a new chief of staff. Netanyahu refused to extend the term of Mossad chief Meir Dagan—he reportedly departed resentful—and appointed Tamir Pardo, whose quiet civil servant façade masked a daring record of Sayeret Matkal missions, including Entebbe. Major General Benny Gantz, the former defense attaché in Washington, became IDF chief of staff. I first met Benny a decade earlier during reserve duty, a tall, quiet, honest man—an American might imagine him living in a log cabin—and told Sally that someday he would command the army. For once, it felt good to be right.

  Far less gratifying was the closest shake-up of all, within the embassy. Deputy Chief of Mission Dan Arbell left, as did Lior Weintraub, my chief of staff. The Foreign Ministry granted Lior an extra year in Washington as the embassy spokesman, but in the Aquarium—that glassed-in ambassadorial suite—I found myself suddenly alone. Dan’s and Lior’s replacements were neither as competent nor remotely as trustworthy, and there was no one to confide in, no one to play the devil’s advocate role of iphah mi’stabra. Fortunately, two new office assistants arrived from Israel—Aviv Sarel, creative, charming, and proficient; and Lee Moser, a close friend of my eldest son. Lee, in particular, proved to be indispensable, possessed of a saber-sharp political mind and an effervescent personality that swiftly became renowned throughout Washington. Though only in their midtwenties and deceptively delicate-looking, Aviv and Lee effectively kept the Aquarium shark-free.

  The constellation of American and Israeli officials revolved, but the stars at their centers stayed fixed. Benjamin Netanyahu, still managing an unwieldy coalition of Likudniks, Laborites, and religious party leaders, reached the height of his power. Most of the American and Israeli press still lambasted him daily for not exploiting that strength to make a breakthrough to peace and, alternatively, for brandishing his musculature before Iran. If not nationally loved, he remained politically unchallenged—as Time magazine begrudgingly crowned him, “King Bibi.”

  Barack Obama’s standing, by contrast, crested. Given his near deification two years earlier, such a decline was inevitable. Further accelerating the president’s descent was the intractable split between Democrats and Republicans, the incessant battles over health care, and the economy’s languor. But his personality, too, played a part. Ever cerebral, he seemed to prefer contemplation to leadership—“the Analyst in Chief,” critics called him—and ideas to hands-on action. The coldness I detected in his autobiography and the insularity he still displayed hampered him from establishing cross-the-aisle understandings or even enduring friendships within his own party. A similar chill distanced him from traditional American allies—not only Israel—whose ambassadors complained to me of the administration’s unprecedented aloofness. “Obama’s problem is not a tin ear,” one of my European colleagues lamented, “it’s a tin heart.”

  Throughout, I continued to observe Obama’s ambivalence about America’s place among nations and its use of power. Rhapsodic in his speeches about his countrymen’s can-do approach, he evinced less enthusiasm about flexing their might. “Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower,” he declared. Such words—unimaginable in the mouths of John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton—discomfited Israelis and others overseas who viewed as miraculous the fact that the world’s greatest democracy was also its strongest state. Yet nowhere was Obama’s reticence more pronounced, and the anxiety it aroused higher, than in the still-tumultuous Middle East.

  Gone from Obama’s public remarks were any further references to his Muslim family ties, his ability to bridge the Middle East and the West. Gone was his middle name, Hussein, which only his detractors remembered. Instead, while listening to him address four thousand guests at the National Prayer Breakfast, I heard the president speak for the first time of his profound Christian faith and refer to others on the dais as “my brothers in Christ.” Though still insistent on calling jihadists “violent extremists” rather than radical Islamists, Obama authorized drone strikes that killed more than 2,400 Muslims, including hundreds of civilians. The Guantánamo camp for Islamist prisoners he pledged to close down remained obdurately open. The vision of a United States at peace with the Middle East was supplanted by the patchwork of American military intervention in Libya, withdrawal from Iraq, indifference to Syria, and entanglement with Egypt. The president who once praised the “true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization” now weighed congressional demands for intensified sanctions against Iran. And the Palestinians, on whom Obama lavished so much political capital, turned their backs on him and prepared to seek statehood in the UN.

  Throughout, the president never ceased reaffirming his commitment to the Jewish State. “Israel’s security will always be at the top tier of considerations of how America man
ages its foreign policy,” he told a gathering of pro-Israel Democrats, “because it’s the right thing to do, because Israel is our closest ally and friend.” Omitting any mention of settlements or Jerusalem, Obama referenced the Arab Spring and the need for new approaches. “It’s not going to be sufficient for us just to keep on doing the same things we’ve been doing and expect somehow that things are going to work themselves out.” Obama’s Middle East policies appeared to be heading in many directions at once, with untold ramifications for Israel.

  In the summer of 2011, as a thicker-set but still game Netanyahu squared off against a grayer but no less subdued Barack Obama, I signed my second contract. The Israeli ambassador’s term runs for two years—a respectable period followed by a deservedly prolonged rest—but can be extended for an additional year at the prime minister’s request. When I asked him if he wanted me to stay on, Netanyahu grunted, “Yeah, yeah,” and so I signed.

  “Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren looks older and thinner than he did when he took office,” began an interview with me in The Washington Post. My weight was indeed down—there was little time to eat—and my hair had skipped the gray stage and gone directly to white. It would grow hoarier still as the alliance entered a period of nerve-racking twists and dips. Visiting amusement parks as a child, I always shied away from the scarier rides, preferring the stable ignominy of merry-go-rounds. But now, as a third-year ambassador, I took my seat, strapped in, and braced myself for the diplomatic equivalent of a roller coaster.

  Job 1:16

  Dressed in brown uniforms indistinguishable from the Egyptian army’s, wielding RPGs, machine guns, and grenades, twelve terrorists infiltrated into southern Israel. At four points along the unfenced Sinai border, they set up ambushes and, at midday on August 18, opened fire. Six Israeli civilians riding in passing vehicles were murdered, along with two soldiers who rushed to the scene. IDF units eventually shot all twelve of the attackers, but in the melee, five Egyptian troops also died. Though Israel could not determine exactly who killed the Egyptians, it nevertheless apologized to Cairo. The gesture failed to appease Egypt’s interim military government, which promptly withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

  Also unassuaged were the thousands of frustrated protesters still clustered in Tahrir Square. From demanding reforms and vengeance against Mubarak, they turned their anger toward a nearby building, the top three floors of which housed the Israeli embassy. One demonstrator climbed up a drainpipe seventeen stories to the roof, triumphantly tore off the Israeli flag, and hurled it to the ecstatic mob below.

  Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, bombed terrorist sites in Gaza—the presumed source of the border attack—and Palestinian groups fired rockets at Israeli cities. Most of the missiles were intercepted in midair by Iron Dome. Contrary to Obama’s claim that “technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself,” Iron Dome, developed and deployed in a mere four years, became the first antiballistic system in history to work in combat. Still, in spite of generous U.S. aid, only two Iron Dome batteries had so far been produced, not enough to shield the entire south. And with a success rate of 85 percent, a few rockets got through. One killed a civilian in Beersheba, where our daughter Lia was still studying.

  But while dwelling on this peril, I suddenly had to grapple with Sally’s. Every August, she and I returned to Jerusalem to attend her sister Joanie’s memorial. This gave me an opportunity to hold direct discussions at the Prime Minister’s Office, where, while working late, I learned that Sally fell ill. That night, she underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix at the Hadassah Medical Center. Bloated, greenish, spiking a high fever, my wife was scarcely recognizable. I was frantic but the on-duty doctors told me not to worry, that they were there for her. As grateful as I was frazzled, I hugged them and asked them their names. Muhammad and Osama.

  Later that week, when I returned to Washington, I told the story of the two Arab-Israeli doctors who treated my wife to the guests at the first-ever Israeli Iftar. The notion of hosting a Ramadan break-fast meal at the Residence first occurred to me in 2009, but arranging it required a two-year battle with Israeli bureaucracy and skittish security officials. No sooner was that completed, though, than the search for Muslims willing to participate began. Most of the Arab invitees declined, and I feared the guest book would remain blank. But then Farah Pandith, an extraordinary human being and the first woman to serve as the State Department’s representative to the Muslim communities, accepted my invitation. So, astonishingly, did sixty-five others. They prayed on rugs spread on my dining room floor and ate halal-supervised kebabs prepared in the kitchen. We listened to Farah, together with White House anti-Semitism monitor Hannah Rosenthal, speak about the need for understanding in this time of strife. Imam Abdullah Antepli, Duke University’s inspiring Muslim chaplain, delivered a stirring sermon about peace. And I spoke about Muhammad and Osama, the physicians who showed me new horizons of hope, and wished all those present, “Ramadan karim.”

  The Iftar, the first of three the embassy would hold, remained one of my proudest moments. But there was little time to revel in that pride due to violent events in Egypt. Rioters on September 9 returned en masse to the Israeli embassy, took sledgehammers to a newly built protective wall, and stormed to the upper stories. Inside were six Israelis—the deputy chief of mission and a security team—who were barricaded behind steel doors. Their families had been sent home at the outset of the Arab Spring, and the rest of the embassy staff, including Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon and some ninety others, were cloistered in unmarked suburban houses. Still, all were in danger and none more so than the six who listened as the hammers began smashing through steel.

  Called to the embassy in the middle of that Friday night, I began liaising between the NSC and General Amos Gilad at the Defense Ministry. The United States offered its unconditional help and Anne Patterson, America’s ambassador in Cairo, intrepidly fulfilled this commitment. Years later, Israeli diplomats still credited her with saving their lives.

  Six Israelis needed to be extricated from the embassy. One way was via the roof, equipped with an escape ladder, but a mob had collected there, too. The only hope was to break through to the top floor with Egyptian Special Forces. The army, though present at the scene, watched impassively, while its generals simply refused to answer their phones.

  I experienced this nightmare through the phone receiver, as the NSC updated me on the repeated efforts of Secretaries Clinton and Panetta to reach their Egyptian counterparts. President Obama also intervened. But still no Egyptian commandos. Netanyahu, meanwhile, passed anguished hours in the Foreign Ministry situation room speaking with the entrapped Israelis in Cairo. “We’re coming to get you,” the prime minister quietly assured the chief of security, a young man named Jonathan. “I’m with you and I won’t leave you, ever.” I relayed these developments back and forth between Washington and Jerusalem. I, too, sought to stay focused, monitoring the secret evacuation of Ambassador Levanon and his staff to Israel.

  “The Special Forces will be there soon,” the NSC’s Steve Simon informed me. “Tell your guys inside not to open fire on them.” I passed on this news to Gilad, who, in turn, informed me that only a single door now separated the rioters from the six. Jonathan and his men, highly trained, would surely shoot the first intruders to break into the embassy and would keep on firing until their ammunition ran out. “We’re almost there,” Netanyahu told them. “Stay calm.” But I was fraught, picturing the dozens of people who would be killed, the Egyptians shot and the Israelis dismembered. I thought about the peace agreement that might never be salvaged.

  The Egyptian commandos arrived, literally at the last moment, burst into the embassy, hastily disguised the six Israelis as demonstrators, and smuggled them out. They were saved—and the peace preserved—yet I had to wonder whether any rescue mission would have been mounted without American intercession with the Egyptian leaders. From Anne Patterson to the president, they had all been there, allies wh
en we most needed them.

  And in Egypt, we would need them still. Terrorists repeatedly blew up the Sinai pipeline that supplied Israel with natural gas, and Egyptian military forces, exceeding limits established by the peace treaty, concentrated near the Israeli border. The extremist Muslim Brotherhood was poised to dominate the Egyptian elections, scheduled for early 2012. If the organization won, it would extend massive aid to Hamas, the Brotherhood’s branch in Gaza. At the same time, Syria remained riven by civil bloodshed that drove a half million refugees into Jordan. Iran exploited this chaos to transfer advanced missiles to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and to accelerate work on its nuclear program.

  This overwhelmingly bleak situation reminded me of the book of Job, specifically chapter 1, verse 16, in which successive messengers arrive to inform the biblical hero that his loved ones have died and his worldly possessions vanished. “While he was speaking, there came another,” Job responds sparsely in ancient Hebrew. But the modern Israeli reader understands Job’s reply as “I’ve barely learned of this latest catastrophe and already there’s news of the next.” Israel had not yet internalized one crisis when others erupted. These, too, tested Israel’s ties with the United States, and few more intensely than UDI.

  —

  If the initials of the Qualitative Military Edge were the three most cardinal in the U.S.-Israel alliance and those of highly enriched uranium (HEU) the most dangerous, UDI—standing for Unilaterally Declared Independence—ranked among the most controversial. They stood for Abbas’s effort to obtain UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, sidestepping the peace process and the United States. The Palestinian leader never forgave Obama for backing down on the settlements issue. “[He] suggested a full settlement freeze and I accepted,” Abbas complained to Newsweek’s Dan Ephron. “We both went up the tree. But Obama came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.” He further resented America’s abrupt abandonment of Mubarak. “You will get chaos or the Muslim Brotherhood or both,” he warned the administration. Having lost faith in the White House, Abbas once again planned to use Obama’s own words against him. He spoke of the president’s “promise,” presented in his speech before the last UN General Assembly, to create a sovereign Palestine within one year. Now that year had passed and Abbas quoted Obama in seeking to receive, concession-free, the state he refused to achieve through negotiations.