Mr. Oren's planet.

• Author: Zakheim, Dov S.
• Position: Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide - Book review

Michael B. Oren, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide (New York: Random House, 2015), 432 pp., $30.00.

Michael Oren's Ally, which offers his account of his four years as Israeli ambassador to the United States, has certainly caused a stir. The Times of Israel has published twenty "revelations" emerging from his book, ranging from trivial tidbits about his family, to biting critiques of President Barack Obama and his administration's policy toward Israel, to claims that the idea for a U.S.-Russian arrangement for the disposition of Syria's chemical weapons originated with then international-relations minister Yuval Steinitz. (Steinitz subsequently acknowledged his role but said that Israel had preferred not to reveal it; one might ask why Oren chose to do so.) In a series of prepublication interviews and articles, Oren has sharpened his criticism of the president and his team--his article in the Wall Street Journal was entitled "How Obama Abandoned Israel," and a poll revealed that 49 percent of Israelis agree with him that Obama is mostly responsible for the recent damage to U.S.-Israeli relations.

Oren is an accomplished historian who writes with style and grace. Not surprisingly, his account of his years as Israel's ambassador to Washington from 2009 to 2013 is as engrossing as it is readable. But Oren has also been a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and his account often resembles a spokesman's press briefing. His aim is not merely to enlighten but also to convince: as he reiterates numerous times throughout the course of his memoir, he seeks the rapid closure of the rift between the two allies so as to preserve their "special relationship." Yet the "divide" in the book's title arguably has widened as a result of its publication.

Contrary to Oren's assertion, Israel's relationship with the United States is not special in the sense that the Anglo-American alliance is special. Rather, it is unique. Ever since the 1967 Six-Day War, superpower America has certainly been tiny Israel's staunchest ally, even when it has differed sharply with the Jewish state over the disposition of the territories that Israel conquered in that war. More recently, while the two countries have also diverged over the question of how best to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Washington has been unstinting in providing Israel with the military weaponry and know-how to deter, if not eliminate, any Iranian threat of an attack.

Oren acknowledges American magnanimity, even under Obama--how can he not?--but goes much too far in characterizing the ties between the two countries. As if somehow trying to browbeat his reader into believing that there is no country closer to the United States than Israel, he asserts that the Israeli-American relationship is "the world's most precious alliance"; that the relationship is the "deepest bilateral friendship that either has sustained since Israel's founding in 1948"; that Israel is America's "unconditional" friend; that Israel is "America's ultimate ally"; and that the ties between the two countries are "immemorial." Surely the ambassador doth protest too much.

No one could deny that the relationship with the United States constitutes the "most precious" alliance for Israel, that America is Israel's "ultimate" ally or that, for Israel, its ties to America are the "deepest" ones it has with any other state. But that feeling is not really...