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May 4, 2009 | 12:39 pm

Michael Oren: Bibi’s surprise pick for U.S. ambassador

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Over at Bloggish, Rob Eshman has a good post about Bibi Netanyahu’s surprise pick for Israeli ambassador to the United States. Israel’s most important diplomatic post will be filled not by a politician but author Michael Oren.

Rob writes:

Why did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu select Michael Oren as Israel’s next Ambassador to the United States?

That’s a question many among Israel’s political and religious right are asking in the wake of the Princeton-educated historian’s appointment to the country’s most important and high-profile diplomatic post. “He supported the withdrawal from Gaza,“ one leading activist told me. “I think it’s dreadful.“

Oren indeed supported Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and in a speech last month argued that Israel do the same from the West Bank.

“The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements.“ he told an audience at Georgetown University in March, when he was a visiting professor there.

As Haaretz reported:

Oren said he supported the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. After they started firing Qassam rockets from Gaza, he said Natan Sharansky asked him if the disengagement wasn’t a mistake.

Oren said he replied that it had not been. The mistake was Israel’s failure to react to the Qassam fire, which sent a message of weakness to the entire Middle East.

But while the appointment’s critic blast Netanyahu for the choice, they may also come to realize that he can be just what Israel needs about now: an articulate, appealing and highly intelligent public spokesman for the cause, as the country attempts to marshal American and international support to confront the existential threat that is Iran.

It was this subject that Oren focused on in his speech yesterday at the Aipac convention in Washington: ““Israel will not remain passive while a government that’s sworn to wipe it off the map acquires the means for doing that,“ said Oren of the notion of a nuclear-armed Iran.

You can read the rest here. On a related note, a new ADL poll found that 66 percent of Israelis would support a military attack on Iran if diplomacy fails.

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I used to have some respect for Oren when I knew less about him. Oren belongs in Kadima. Who needs stinkin’ elections anyway?

There are two possibilities regarding disengagement, that of principle and that of practicality.

If Oren thinks in principle that Arabs should rule the Jewish heartland (‘West Bank’), and further that Jews should be banned from living in the Jewish heartland, even Jews who already live there and were born there, than that contradicts the constitution and platform of the Likud and betrays the mandate of the Likud. Sharon originally founded the Likud and had to tear apart and leave his own party because of the disengagement.

If Oren supported the disengagement because it would prove something or accomplish something, and it backfired the way it did (and the way predicted by its opponents), then he is a fool. And if he supports destroying Jewish settlement on the ‘West Bank’ after the last disengagement, then he is a knave.

This is important: The issues of uprooting and preventing growing and progressive Jewish settlement is far more of an existential one than Iran. Israel will do what it can and what it must with regard to Iran, win or lose. But Iran is less important than Jewish settlement of it’s contiguous portions now under Arab and enemy occupation. And if one is worried about Iran, then
realize that Hizbollah and Hamas are Iran for practical purposes; they are Iranian clients and cat’s paws.

And the PLO/PA are clients of the UN/EU/USA, frightening thought. ‘President’ Abbas, the moderate one on PA television http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPsOe9yRqTU
“The ‘Jewish state.’ What is a ‘Jewish state?’ We call it, the ‘State of Israel’. You can call yourselves whatever you want. But I will not accept it. And I say this on a live broadcast… It’s not my job to define it, to provide a definition for the state and what it contains. You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic] call it whatever you like. I don’t care.”
[PA TV, Apr. 27, 2009]

That’s a week ago, folks. Why are we supporting him? why are we supporting his agenda? Why is Israel supporting anyone else supporting him?

The worst think is that Netanyahu may be corrupt but is not stupid, and knows all of this about Oren as much as I do, and Oren is really speaking for Netanyahu’s unstated and unadmitted policies. If Israel continues to exist, it will not be because of natural selection but Intelligent Design.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 5/05/09 at 8:46 am

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