Oren complains that the American Jewish community has been “impassive” in the face of the Iranian nuclear threat. In fact, leading American Jewish organizations have worked tirelessly to convince both congressional and administration officials that Washington’s efforts to accommodate Tehran—which culminated in the recent nuclear deal between Iran and six nations led by the United States—constitute a danger not only to Israel, but also to the entire Middle East and beyond. In the lead-up to this agreement, Jewish groups argued forcefully that if the deal made too many concessions to Iran, several Arab states might well initiate their own programs to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has already indicated that his country is likely to do so.

Israel’s American Jewish advocates have also rightly stressed that in the short run, an Iran that benefits from the lifting of sanctions and the billions of dollars that will pour into its coffers will be empowered to wreak further havoc in the Middle East. They emphasize that the unfrozen funds and increased oil revenues resulting from the deal will enable Iran not only to intensify support for Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, the hard-line Shia militias in Iraq and the Assad government in Syria, but also to further instigate unrest in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s eastern province. But Oren overlooks these efforts as well.

It is not merely with regard to their supposed inactivity concerning Iran that Oren takes issue with America’s Jewish community. In addition, he decries what he perceives as its increasing indifference toward Israel. But he does not explore what underlies this phenomenon. To do so, he would have to admit that a growing number of Jewish Americans, particularly younger ones, perceive Israel to be backing away from seriously seeking a two-state solution with the Palestinians, which these young people—and, indeed, the majority of Jewish Americans—still support.

Oren does focus on the fate of one American Jew who for nearly three decades has loudly and forcefully proclaimed his loyalty to Israel. Jonathan Pollard, a former naval-intelligence analyst jailed for selling secrets to Israel, should be released, Oren argues, on humanitarian grounds; he is a loyal citizen of Israel. Oren clearly rejects claims that Pollard’s supposed loyalty to Israel was tainted by his prior offers to spy for other states, including South Africa. These assertions are not wild conspiracy theories, however; they have been put forward by the likes of Norman Polmar, perhaps America’s leading naval analyst, and himself a Jew with warm feelings toward Israel. In any event, Oren does not adequately explain why, if Pollard was so loyal to Israel, he simply did not move there instead of spying on his native county. No one would have stopped him from what is called “making Aliyah,” just as no one stopped the young Michael Bornstein/Oren from doing so.

Oren argues, with considerable justice, that Obama views Israel through the lens of the 1950s, when it was a small, embattled, socialist country. Likewise, he has reason to be deeply concerned about Obama’s determination to reach out to America’s enemies while paying far less attention to its long-standing friends, Israel, of course, among them. He leaves little doubt that the American president and the Israeli prime minister neither like nor trust each other, but he focuses far more on Obama’s faults than Netanyahu’s. Whereas Oren goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Obama and his subordinates went behind Israel’s back in opening negotiations with Iran, he seems to see nothing wrong with the fact that Netanyahu neglected to inform the White House that he had accepted Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to criticize the administration’s negotiations with Iran before a joint session of Congress. He is critical of the fact that the president has time and again reached out to the Muslim world while displaying a “tin heart” toward Israel, but claims that Netanyahu was “firm but not preachy” when the prime minister effectively dressed down the president of the United States at a public news conference in May 2011.

Indeed, Oren never faults Netanyahu directly. Rather, he quotes others who have less-than-flattering things to say about the prime minister and then states that “the antagonism . . . resembled that traditionally triggered by the Jews.” In other words, it was not Netanyahu who was the problem, but rather his anti-Semitic critics—a surprising assertion, since Oren singles out the “left-leaning Israeli press” and the likes of Tom Friedman for their treatment of the prime minister. Oren goes even further: he says that those who label Netanyahu “disingenuous, imperious, and paralyzed by paranoia” overlook the fact that these are “qualities not uncommon among politicians.” Certainly, many politicians (and nonpoliticians) might have some or even all of these characteristics. But they are hardly the mark of a statesman.

 

OREN’S BOOK will no doubt be widely read, if only because it is perhaps the most revealing volume ever written by a foreign ambassador to the United States. But it is also a reflection of the deep fissures that currently mark the U.S.-Israeli relationship. And the question that Oren does not answer is whether those fissures are the product of the terrible relations between the current leaders of the two nations, which therefore will heal with their departures from office, or whether they reflect something far deeper: a divergence of interests driven by societal changes, notably the exploding Israeli settler population and what appears to be a rightward tilt among Israeli voters.

While he is prone to exaggeration, Oren is correct that Israel and America continue to share many values, both political, as Western-style democracies, and cultural. They share a common religious heritage. Their numerous common interests extend beyond intelligence cooperation and other elements in the political-military sphere. In particular, as a center of research and as a leading “start-up nation,” Israel’s prowess in the realm of high technology will continue to attract American investment and commercial cooperation.

It would be a shame if the two countries do drift apart, as it would represent a loss to both. It is too bad that their leaders have not moved beyond the high-flown phrases about their nations’ relationship. We shall have to wait and see whether the next round of elections in each country can produce American and Israeli statesmen truly capable of working with each other for the mutual benefit of both nations.

Dov S. Zakheim was the under secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004. He is vice chairman of the Center for the National Interest and serves on the Advisory Council of The National Interest.

Image: Flickr/USCPublicDiplomacy