Oren on the ‘self hating Jew’ crisis and more

I joined Jim Besser of the NY/NJ Jewish Weeks and Richard Greenberg of the Washington Jewish Week today in a sit-down with Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador to Washington.

He wanted to get the Rosh Hashanah interviews out of the way, predicting (and probably correclty) that it’s going to get crazy as the holiday approaches, what with talk of peace plans and Iran sanctions.

Much of the interview was about the fires he’s been busy putting out in his first six weeks at work. Here’s the brief I just filed, but there will be more to come.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel’s ambassador to Washington said he was asked immediately by Benjamin Netanyahu to reach out to top Obama administration officials to reassure them that he had not described them as "self-hating Jews."

"He was furious," Michael Oren, the Israeli envoy, said Friday in describing the Israeli prime minister’s reaction last month after Ha’aretz reported that he used the term in describing David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. Oren said Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, and Axelord, his top political adviser, acccepted Netanyahu’s unequivocal denial.

Speaking in a pre-Rosh Hashanah interview with Jewish media, Oren, appointed in June, said one of his frustrations is that the report refuses to die, resurfacing twice in recent weeks in The New York Times.

"It’s like the end of Fatal Attraction," he said. "It keeps coming back."

Equally as frustrating, he said, were reports that he was "summoned" twice to the State Department over differences on settlement policy. In both cases, he said, the differences were relayed in routine conversations, one time over the phone; "summoning" an ambassador implies a crisis in relations, and U.S.-Israel relations are thriving, Oren said.

He said he was working closely with State Department officials to tamp down such reports.

"We are together working to dispel any attempt to fabricate any sense of crisis," he said.

A State Department spokesman did not return a call.