Oren says he hasn’t been offered ambassadorship

Michael Oren says he’d be honored to serve at Israel’s ambassador to the United States, but  has not been offered the job.

Oren was responding to a flurry of media reports in recent days speculating that he was a leading candidate for the ambassador post. A Maariv article earlier in the week (link in Hebrew) said, without citing any named sources, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had selected Oren, and on Tuesday Laura Rozen at ForeignPolicy.com reported that "sources in Israel and Washington" said Oren was the choice. Rozen updated the story on Wednesday, though, with a Yediot Ahronoth story which cited sources in the Prime Minister’s office saying that Oren was one of a number of candidates for the job and that Dore Gold was considered the leading contender for the ambassadorship.

"I haven’t received any offer," Oren told JTA on Wednesday, adding that he had read the same articles as everyone else. But Oren, who is best known for his books "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present" and "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" said it would be a "great privilege and a great challenge" to serve in the position

The Yediot article also quotes a "senior source close to the administration" as calling Oren an "odd choice" for the position bec ause of "harsh criticism" he had directed at Obama during the campaign. It cites an article Oren wrote last fall in which he compared how prospective Obama and McCain presidencies might handle Israel and the Middle East. He wrote, in part: 

It is reasonable to expect a McCain administration to maintain and perhaps accelerate the Annapolis process initiated by Bush last November, insisting that both Israelis and Palestinians live up to the Road Map’s requisites. But McCain is unlikely to ratchet up pressure on Israel, to oppose Israeli claims to Jerusalem, or to link the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with any of the region’s manifold struggles. He will not deal with Hamas, even in context of the national unity government that the organization is currently considering with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. An Obama presidency, however, may well launch an entirely new initiative, one based on zero tolerance for Israeli settlement-building and checkpoints, as well as on the belief that the road to Baghdad and Teheran runs through Bethlehem and Nablus. Obama might be expected to show deeper sympathy for the Palestinian demand for a capital in Jerusalem and greater flexibility in including Hamas in negotiations, if only indirectly, through the national unity coalition with Abbas. Obama will probably seek a broader accord, including Syria as well as other Arab countries, while McCain would focus on the Israeli-Palestinian dimension. McCain’s démarche is unlikely to ruffle the U.S.-Israel relationship; Obama’s is liable to strain the alliance, especially if, as recent polls predict, Netanyahu and the Likud return to power.

Oren said he stands by the article and that it was not meant as a criticism of Obama. "It was a purely academic article," he said, a "dispassionate" analysis weighing the two candidates’ positions and the ramifications of those stances — and not intended to favor one candidate or the other. He also pointed out that some of that analysis has already proven correct, noting, for instance, the president has already begun engagement efforts with Syria.

 

If Oren was named ambassador he wouldn’t have very far to move. He is currently serving as a visiting professor at Georgetown University through June 1.