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Oren: Obama's abandonment by Muslim father figures may explain policies Former Israeli envoy to US pens op-ed for 'Foreign Policy' in which he dissects the origins of Obama's policy in Middle East.
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Michael Oren and Barack Obama. (photo credit:REUTERS,JPOST STAFF)
Former ambassador to the US Michael Oren, whose book on his experience in Washington is due out on Tuesday, continues to ruffle feathers by criticizing US President Barack Obama’s Mideast policies in op-ed pieces in the US press.
In a piece Friday in Foreign Policy, Oren – who left Washington on October 1, 2013, and is now a Kulanu MK -- charged
that Obama was naïve as a peacemaker, had blinders to terrorism, and that his abandonment by both his Muslim father and step-father had something to do with his desire to be accepted by their “co-religionists.”
And in a Friday piece in the Los Angeles Times, he argued that one major difference between Israel and the US on Iran was that while Israel viewed Iran as an irrational actor, Obama views them as a rational one.
Oren's op-ed last week in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Obama abandoned two long-held principles of the US-Israel relationship – that there be no public daylight between the two allies and that there be no surprises – triggered an angry response from the State Department and US Ambassador Dan Shapiro, who said Oren, who wrote two acclaimed books of history, was now a politician trying to sell books.
Following a request from Shapiro, Kulanu head and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon distanced himself from the Oren’s Wall Street Journal article, and his book. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no comment, though he too was reportedly asked to do so, but his office put out a statement saying he always expressed appreciation for what Obama has done for Israel.
And all that was before Oren’s two most recent opinion pieces.
In Foreign Policy, Oren took Obama to task for not joining the solidarity march in France after the attack on Charlie Hebdo or the kosher supermarket earlier this year, nor for sending two senior officials who were in Paris at the time to the march. He also took the president to task for not admitting that the attack on the kosher market was directed a Jews, but rather an act perpetrated by “vicious zealots who... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”
“Obama’s boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location of the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam and the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate in a protest against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” he wrote. “And if there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli and randomly present folks."
During his first year in office, Obama, Oren argued, offered in essence “a new deal in which the United States would respect popularly chosen Muslim leaders who were authentically rooted in their traditions and willing to engage with the West.”
The former ambassador said this explained why Obama restored diplomatic ties with Syria, severed by his predecessor George W. Bush after the assassination of former Lebanese president Rafik Hariri; why he engaged in outreach to Libya and Iran; and why he stood by Turkish president Recep Tayyip erdogan and ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.
“Erdogan and Morsi were both devout Muslims, democratically elected, and accepting of Obama’s outstretched hand. So, too, was Hassan Rouhani, who became Obama’s partner in seeking a negotiated settlement of the Iranian nuclear dispute,” he wrote.
Oren attributed this orientation to the intellectual milieu in which Obama grew up, as well as his personal history. “I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.”
The tragedy, he said, was that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was rejected.
“Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness,” he wrote. “While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality.”
In the LA Times piece, headlined “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes,” Oren quoted Obama’s comment in a recent interview that being anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude one from from being interested in survival, and that just because Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is anti-Semitic “doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
Oren wrote that the dispute whether Iran was a rational or irrational actor was “ever-present” in the discussions between the US and Israel when he was ambassador. While the American view the Iranians as logical actors, Israel could not rule out the idea that “the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’”
“Obama would never say that anti-black racists are rational,” Oren argued. “And he would certainly not trust them with the means – however monitored – to reach their racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to our mind, reasonable."
Oren, while he served in Washington, was considered very cautious and diplomatic, and rarely caught flack for comments deemed “undiplomatic.” One time he did raise eyebrows was when he was quoted in 2010 – after Vice President Joe Biden's visit, and Israel's announcement at the time of new construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo beyond the Green Line – as saying that ties between Israel and the US were at their worst point in some 35 years.”
His Friday opinion pieces were denounced across the political spectrum on Sunday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) told Walla News that Oren “does not represent the State of Israel in matters relating to our relationship with the United States, only himself. The United States is a true friend of Israel and every attempt to harm the relationship between the two countries by resorting to personal attacks will not succeed.”
Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu), known in the past for having made some comments deemed “undiplomatic,” also took Oren to task saying, “I would expect that a senior diplomat who was the ambassador to Washington continue to be a diplomat also after he enters politics.” And Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said in an Army Radio interview that it was expected that diplomats not write books “the minute they leave their position.”
Lapid said Oren was causing damage to Israel-US ties at a time when they were already damaged, and added that his comments about Obama’s upbringing influencing his outlook on the Muslim world was “utter nonsense,” because “it is a pseudo-psychological analysis not based on anything.”
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