Michael Oren: Obama passes the 'kishka test'/JPost

Israel’s outgoing US Ambassador Michael Oren has one piece of advice for  successor Ron Dermer: Get an exercise machine.

Stay in shape? That’s the  sage wisdom from a man who has served in Washington for four-and-a-half years,  during an extremely turbulent period both in the Middle East and in the  US-Israel relationship? What has Oren become, a personal trainer? Who does he  think he is, Jane Fonda? But still, there is a degree of acumen in his  words.

“This is a 24/7 job that is physically and emotionally very  demanding,” the ambassador says in an hour-plus cellphone interview Sunday  conducted from his car in Washington. The interview was broken up once by a  two-hour meeting Oren attended in the middle, and a second time by a far shorter  interruption due to the absence of phone reception under a Washington  bridge.

“One of the ways I’ve dealt with the stress is staying in the  gym,” he says.

Good thing – because the job, by definition, is extremely  stressful.

And what better way to deal with all that stress – Jerusalem  pulling one way, Washington the other; the media hounding, Israel bashers  bashing, American Jews fretting – than to pump some iron. Or, in Oren’s case,  hit the river.

“I’m still an oarsman,” he says. “I was an oarsman in the  [1977] Maccabiah [where he won two gold medals]. I’ll go out to the river for an  hour and row hard.”

But paddling in the Potomac River is nothing compared  to the heavy rowing he has had to do in his formal capacity as Israel’s  ambassador to Washington since the summer of 2009. Some envoys, such as Itamar  Rabinovich and Sallai Meridor, were blessed to serve in Washington when the US  president and the Israeli prime minister saw things pretty much eye-to-eye, as  was the case with Bill Clinton and Yitzhak Rabin, and George W. Bush and Ehud  Olmert.

Such was not Oren’s luck. Rather, his lot was to be a key  middleman in an often fraught relationship between the man who sent him to  Washington, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and US President Barack Obama. To  hear Oren tell it, it wasn’t really all that bad; the US-Israel relationship  during this time – despite what you might have heard – was never in crisis. But,  then again, Oren is a diplomat, and he rows hard, very hard.

What follows  are excerpts of his parting interview with The Jerusalem Post. What role  have you played during the Syrian crisis?

I’ve been very busy, day and often  night. First of all, our role has been informational – finding out the  administration’s position, the position of the leaders of both houses of  Congress in both parties, getting a sense of American public opinion, gauging  the directions taken by the American Jewish community… and then conveying  Israel’s perspectives back to those same actors.

When you were asked what  Israel wants in Syria, what did you say?

It depends at what point. This is an  issue than has gone on for several weeks now, and it has gone through some  rather dramatic transformations since it started.

Initially, we were  keeping a very low profile; I haven’t appeared in the press for a few weeks,  with the exception of very carefully crafted and calibrated messages. The  initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted [Syrian  President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t  backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.

Even if those bad  guys are al-Qaida or [Jabhat] al-Nusra?

We understand that they are pretty bad  guys. Not everyone in the opposition is a bad guy. Still, the greatest danger to  Israel was by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran to Damascus, to  Beirut.

And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. That is  a position we had well before the outbreak of hostilities in Syria.

With  the outbreak of hostilities we continued to want Assad to go.

On the  question of whether America should arm the rebels, we said you could arm the  rebels, but just be very careful in vetting them. This is because we have had  bad experience with arms proliferation in the Middle East, particularly after  the fall of [Muammar] Gaddafi in Libya – anti-aircraft ordnance proliferated  very quickly and showed up in our backyard.

Then there were the chemical  weapons. The chemical weapons were red line was that if Iran and Syria try to  convey chemical weapons or game-changing weaponry to Hezbollah or other  terrorist organizations, Israel would not remain passive.

We were  prepared to stand by the red line, and still are.

There are already  reports Assad is starting to move chemical weapons out?

I can’t speak to the  veracity of the reports, but he is not moving them out to Hezbollah.

With  the question of whether America would stand by its red line about these chemical  weapons, our position was that we agreed with President Obama that the use of  chemical weapons by the Assad regime was a horrendous act, which the regime had  to be held accountable for by the international community.

We agreed with  Obama that the use of chemical weapons promote proliferation of weapons of mass  destruction, and encouraged regimes that want to build nuclear  weapons.

Now, since the US-Russian negotiations on removing the WMDs, we  see this as a development that could be an important precedent not just for  Syria, but for Iran – especially if all the WMDs are removed. And we continue to  believe that in order for diplomacy to be effective, it has to be backed up by a  credible threat – which is also our position on Iran.

That is something  Prime Minister Netanyahu always says, and I always asked myself what exactly  constitutes that credible military threat.

Well, it is either they  believe it or they don’t believe it. I think the Russians believed it  sufficiently to be open to the possibility of diplomacy.

Do you think  that same type of model could work with Iran?

Not exactly the same model, but it  is a precedent. The principle of international cooperation to remove WMDs from a  radical regime – and that principle being backed up by a credible military  threat – that is an important precedent.

You said in the beginning Israel  prefers Assad gone, so on the balance, how are we doing here?

We got rid of  chemical weapons, but he stays? Chemical weapons are an important part of his  arsenal, and I think that removing those weapons will weaken him.

You  mentioned Israel’s carefully calibrated message.

But even with that  carefully calibrated message, the storyline in the press was that Israel was – through the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee – getting sucked into the  Syrian situation against its will. Did it? No, I don’t think it did. Distinguish  between what appears in the press and the reality on the ground. The press  narrative was that Israel was behind the AIPAC move. AIPAC makes its own  decisions, they consult with us but certainly don’t take instructions from us,  and our position was to stay out of the internal debate in the US. It was an  internal American decision.

Another press narrative out there was that  Israel has an interest in the perpetuation of the Syrian conflict, because it  was Sunni jihadis weakening Shi’ite jihadis and vice-versa. That wasn’t our  perspective at all. We warned that the longer this would go on, the greater  would be the foreign jihadi presence in Syria – and that would pose a threat not  only to Israel, but to the West in general. So we did not have an interest in  prolonging the conflict. As a historian of the US-Israeli relationship,  do you remember another time when the administration actually turned to AIPAC  and asked it to go to bat for it on such a cardinal issue?

Not during my tenure.  There have certainly been times when the administration has turned to AIPAC on  other issues, but nothing that was so high-profile.

How concerned are you  about the rising isolationist mood in the US?

It is something I have been aware  of for a long time. I have been talking about it for at least a year – particularly the connection between the progressives and the  libertarians.

It is not only on our issues, it is on issues relating to  American use of drone strikes, the IRS, Egypt aid. It is on a whole spectrum of  issues.

We have to be cognizant that America – after two traumatizing  wars in the Middle East, after an economic crisis, political polarization, deep  budget cuts and frustration – all of that impacts us. We have to be aware of  it.

So when the president gets up the other night and says that if Israel  is attacked it will respond with overwhelming force, and the US will stand by  Israel’s side, that is a very important reassurance to the people of Israel at  this time.

I was struck by that comment and wondered about its  significance.

We were concerned that advocates of both [US] action and  inaction were citing Israel as a reason either for acting or not acting. It was  very important that the message go out from Washington and the president that  Israel can defend itself, and that Israel would not be a reason for acting or  not acting, and that if the Syrians were to commit any aggression against it,  Israel would respond overwhelmingly and the US would support it. That was a very  important.

We were very satisfied with that line.

Because it took  the argument away from those who said America was going to go fight for Israel?

Also because the isolationist camp was saying that if America would act, Israel  would be the recipient of a major retaliation. We did not want that message out  either. It is an internal American decision; America has to do what it has to  do. Regarding the Palestinian track, [Justice Minister and head of  Israeli negotiating team] Tzipi Livni wrote on her Facebook page recently that  the restart of the talks with the Palestinians have already led to an  improvement of ties in the international arena. Do you feel that in the States?

Yes. Americans are not particularly focused on the peace process, it is not a  headline issue here. It was when it first started, but it has gone off the  headlines. I gave seven speeches over Yom Kippur, and the fact that I could  report that multiple rounds of peace talks have occurred – some without American  participation –was greeted warmly by these Jewish audiences.

I was struck  when the push for the restart of talks began that while the whole region was  imploding, US Secretary of State John Kerry was dedicating so much time and  energy to this issue.

Why? It was precisely because the region was in  turmoil that it made sense to move on the Palestinian front.

Israel has a  limited degree to which it can impact the situation in Egypt, Syria or anywhere  else in the Middle East. One area where we could actually make a material  change, and a change for the better, would be on the Palestinian front – provided that the Palestinians would be willing to negotiate with us in good  faith and seriousness.

Why not try to bring stability on one front, and a  very crucial front for us… It puts us in a position that maybe we will have one  less front to worry about, it gives us a little more credibility with part of  the Middle Eastern street. Do you have any contact there with ambassadors  from the Persian Gulf?

Several.

Do you notice a change in how they are  seeing things?

I think that in the last 64 years, there has probably never been  a greater confluence of interest between us and several Gulf States.

With  these Gulf States we have agreements on Syria, on Egypt, on the Palestinian  issue. We certainly have agreements on Iran. This is one of those opportunities  presented by the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring has presented us with many  challenges, but it also has some opportunities.

This is one of  them.

Allow me to ask you some general questions about your term. You are  American-born and a historian. What surprised you the most about the US-Israel  relationship?

I spent about 30 years studying the relationship, and I thought I  knew it very well. I knew it was a very deep and multifaceted relationship, but  it turned out to be deeper and more multifaceted then anything I  imagined.

What does that mean?

I’m referring to the commercial  relationship, and how Israel has become a commercial interest for the United  States. Israel today is America’s 20th-largest customer in the world, and the  12th-largest export destination.

Tens of thousands of Americans are  employed in American businesses. At a time when American enterprises are  outsourcing jobs to Asia, Israeli corporations are outsourcing jobs to the US.  The technological aspects, the R& D, is big – much bigger than I  knew.

That has been a real eye-opener for me. What was the  highlight of your tenure there?

Certainly Obama’s visit to Israel was a  highlight.

I often use a public diplomacy line that there is one country  in the Middle East that is politically stable; that has never known a second of  non-democratic governance; that is exceedingly robust militarily,  technologically and academically; and which is unequivocally pro-American. That  was the line, and I think Obama’s visit was the ultimate demonstration of that  line.

It is true. Obama is up there giving a speech before 2,500 Israeli  students who are cheering him, and he is surrounded by American  flags.

Where else in the Middle East is that going to happen today? I  know that it had an impact on the White House staff. They were deeply moved by  what they encountered in Israel.

Moved by what?

Moved by the outpouring  of love. There is not a lot of love for America right now. And here was this  unqualified, unconditional love.

There was some hard messaging as well in  some of the things that Obama said at [his speech in] the Jerusalem  International Convention Center. But even with the hard messaging, there was  love.

One of my favorite lines of the visit was when Obama came out of  Yad Vashem and said Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, Israel  exists to ensure that there will never be another Holocaust. And that flies in  the face of the Arab narrative that Israel exists because of the  Holocaust.

You were in the middle of what was perceived as a  dysfunctional relationship between Netanyahu and Obama. Since the election,  stories of the dysfunctional relationship have pretty much disappeared. To what  is this attributable? First of all, I don’t think the relationship was ever  dysfunctional. I want to say something without reservation: I know what a crisis  looks like in Israel-US relations, and we never experienced a single crisis  here.

Really?

You were quoted during the 2010 brouhaha over the  announcement of construction plans in Ramat Shlomo during US Vice President Joe  Biden’s visit as saying this was the worst point in US-Israel ties in 35  years. That was a unique combination of a leak and a distortion. A “leakation,” let’s call it, or a “misleak.” I was misquoted. What I did say – referring to a statement made by the State Department spokesman who said this  would impact Israel-US relations – was that was the first time since the  reassessment under [president Gerald] Ford, where a spokesman had come out and  threatened the future of the relationship. This is historically true.

It  wasn’t the worst crisis. Even if it was a crisis, which it wasn’t, it certainly  wasn’t the worse. How do you compare that to the siege of Beirut in 1982, or the  sale of AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control Systems] in the 1980s? Those were  crisis. And the most recent crisis was actually in the Bush years, the sale of  weaponry to China – I am still grappling with the ramifications of that  crisis.

This does not mean there were not public tensions. I am  distinguishing between tensions and a crisis… We had a lot of public tension,  most over the tactical aspects of the peace process, and the tactical aspect of  the Iranian issue. How do you reach the goal? We both share common goals: the  goal of two states for two people, and the goal of stopping Iran from getting  nuclear weapons.

But we have had disagreements on how to get there. They  are now pretty much gone because we have managed to iron out a good number of  issues.

But we are still going to have disagreements.

There are  still going to be differences over Iran because the US is a big country with  lots of capabilities, which is far away from Iran and not faced with immediate  annihilation. We [Israel] are also a small country with smaller capabilities,  that is threatened by Iran. But what happened? How did we reach that  point that you don’t see those public tensions anymore?

One thing that happened  is that last year at the UN General Assembly, the prime minister, by drawing a  red line [on Iran’s nuclear program], gave the president time and space for more  diplomacy… That was appreciated by the president. After that speech, there was a very warm conversation on the phone.

The settlements, which were such a  huge issue the first two years of Obama’s presidency, have fallen off as an  issue.

I think they realized that focusing on the settlement issue was  not going to advance the peace process; it was going to do just the  opposite.

People often ask whether Obama passes the “kishka test,” whether he likes Israel special, not in the same way he likes Taiwan or South  Korea? Does he? I think the kishka test was decided when he visited Israel. I  think the reaction there was emotional and genuine.

I asked about the  highlight of your tenure. How about the lowest point? I think that when 5  million Israelis were under rocket fire, that was a low point. The flotilla  incident in May 2010 was a tough period.

Why was that difficult in  Washington?

It wasn’t difficult in Washington; it was just difficult in terms of  public diplomacy. You had people writing full-page op-eds against us.

How  about when you were heckled badly at the UC-Irvine campus?

A lot of people made  a lot of that. It was very dramatic, but I encounter a lot of demonstrations on  campuses. I actually I had a more potentially dangerous encounter a few months  ago at the University of Texas, where protestors came up near the stage and came  perilously close to my security detail, which you don’t want to do. What  goes through your mind when you are standing up there going through that?

I feel  a sense of mission, and even pride standing up for Israel… You encounter the  same questions on different campuses. Rarely do you encounter a question you  haven’t encountered many times before.

It happened to me recently at a  think tank, someone asked me, ‘What has been harder for you, to explain Israel  to America, or America to Israel?’ I said without reservation that it has been  to explain America to Israel.

Why? Apart from some issues like  settlements, Israel is pretty easy to get for Americans. People come to a  homeland and have to defend that homeland against tens of thousands of terrorist  rockets or an Iranian nuclear threat; they get it.

Explaining America to  Israel, where American values play a very big role in the formulation of  American foreign policy, particularly during the Arab Spring period, was  sometimes very difficult to explain.

The events in [Cairo’s] Tahrir  Square, for example: Israelis viewed them with a certain degree of trepidation,  while in America it was a cause for bipartisan, across-the-board  exhilaration.

Explain to Israelis that for Americans it doesn’t matter if  you are Republican, Democrat, Progressive, or Tea Party – to see a million  people out demonstrating for democracy is something that is going to  resonate.

Do Israelis understand what makes America tick?

Some do, but I  think it is not easy. America is a unique place. The value part of American  foreign policy is something I think is very laudable, but it is uniquely  American. And it is part of what makes America special. When you look  down the road, what do you identify as the greatest threat to a continued strong  US-Israel relationship?

I think the great challenge we face is the continued  trend to look inward, and further, across-the-board budget cuts, which affect us  in different ways. This affects us not only in terms of aid, but also in terms  of the American ability to project power.

Is there anything we can do  beyond identifying the threats, to soften the blow or influence policy?

We make  the case, and I do so unreservedly, that American aid to Israel is vital for  American security, not just for Israeli security, and that it is money that is  well and economically spent.

You are spending $3.1 billion a year, and  this is what you are getting: an exceedingly robust military loyal to a  democratically elected government, an unabashedly pro-American country at the  center of the most strategically crucial crossroads in the world, intelligence  sharing, ports, airports and storage of close to $1b. of US military  equipment.

Is that pitch getting more difficult now?

No, actually, in  some ways it is getting easier.

Americans, first of all, have seen the  great turmoil in the Middle East, they understand that Israel as a stable,  democratic, pro-American ally is an immense asset... Right now, we are receiving  what we need.

How about the demographic changes, is that making things  more difficult?

On the one hand, support for Israel in this country is very  high; on the other hand, there are demographic shifts that present us with  challenges. The growth, for example, of the Hispanic community is both a  challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that there are large parts of  this community that don’t know us, or maybe what they do know is not accurate,  we have to reach out. Whenever I travel in an area of the country that has a  large Hispanic community I will always meet with the leadership. I do a lot of  interviews on Spanish television.

We are always reaching out.

And  then you have to reach out to different parts of the American Jewish community.  One of the surprises I had was I did not anticipate the amount of time I would  spend on some of the very complex and controversial issues [with the American  Jewish community]. Not the least of which was the Western Wall issue [with Women  of the Wall demanding to be allowed to pray in non-Orthodox fashion there]. I  would say that just in the last month I have spent dozens of hours on this  issue.

There are fascinating trends going on in the American Jewish  community. Everyone is always pointing out the supposed alienation from Israel  among young people. I think that is overblown, and statistics have proven that  it is overblown. One trend that does exist is the increasing involvement of the  Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox in American Jewish organizational life. Ten to 15  years ago you would go the conventions of one of these American Jewish  organizations and you would see relatively few kippot. Now you see a great  number, and some of them are black. Is that changing anything?

It changes  if you look at the broad picture about what is happening demographically in the  American Jewish community.

Certain physicists say that the universe is  expanding and contracting at the same time – and the same thing is true of the  American Jewish community. It is contracting through assimilation, but there is  a core of the American Jewish community coming out of day schools, Orthodox  environments, which is Jewishly educated and deeply connected to Israel and the  Jewish people. And that core is expanding.

I am actually optimistic about  the future of American Jewry. I don’t know whether American Jewry will be the  same size as it is now in some 30 years, but it will be more Jewishly educated  and committed and attached to Israel.

Is the Western Wall issue as big an  issue now as it was a few months back?

It is still quite an issue. There is the  broader issue of the relationship between Israel and the majority of American  Jews who are Conservative and Reform… What we had to convey to people in Israel  was that the Western Wall was an issue that could have strategic implications;  that it was not just about our relationship with American Jews, but with  America. Keep in mind that a big apart of our relationship with the US is shared  values. These are very hallowed values for America: freedom of worship,  expression, women’s rights.

We had one period where the Western Wall  issue was making a half a line of news in the back of the Israeli press, but was  making front page news in the US. Here was a case where we had to raise awareness  on the Israeli side on how serious this issue could be.

Has the J Street “fissure” blown over?

J Street got a lot of press coverage. I never boycotted  them… If they consider themselves pro-Israel, I am not going to say they are not  pro-Israel. We have had some strong policy issues, they are much less so  today.

They are less of a curiosity, or a news item, today. It is an  organization still trying to find its footing. When AIPAC came out very  supportive of the president’s position on Syria, J Street had no position. That  was ironic because they had fashioned themselves as the wing of the Obama  administration in the American Jewish community.

There are some good  people there. It is very important to keep the pro-Israel tent as wide as  possible.