Free Republic

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...

On Nov. 8, 2011, President Obama met with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes after what had been a particularly rough week for US-Israeli relations. Modal Trigger The week prior, the UN agency UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. Congress responded by cutting off UNESCO’s funding, a move the Obama administration direly opposed. Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s US ambassador from 2009 to 2013, said the president, having opposed Palestine’s admission to the agency, “thought he had done enough . . . and did not need to punish them further.” President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for...

US. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu and asked him to issue a statement disavowing former Israeli Ambassador to Israel Michael Oren’s statements about President Obama. In MK Michael Oren’s new book, he accuses Obama of abandoning the two main principle of US-Israel relations: no public disagreements (“no daylight”) and no suprises in major policy changes. He also primarily lays the blame on Obama for the bad relationship with Israel. He says that while Netanyahu made mistakes, Obama purposely damaged US-Israel relations. The US State Department says Oren’s statements are, “absolutely inaccurate and false.” According to reports,...

US President Barack Obama’s radical worldview makes it impossible for him to empathize with Israel’s position, Israel’s former Ambassador to Washington said Monday. Former US envoy Michael Oren, who currently serves as a Member of Knesset for the Kulanu party, was speaking at the Yesha Conference in Jerusalem’s Lianardo Hotel, where community leaders and prominent activists from Judea and Samaria (Yesha) were gathered. Speaking in front of a staunchly nationalist audience, the centrist MK warned that the current American administration was gambling with Israel’s future—particularly vis-à-vis Iran. […] Oren’s upcoming book—Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, set for release...