Reporting on Michael Oren: Scooped or duped?

Barak Ravid strikes again.

That was my first reaction to reading that Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, denies he ever said this was the worst U.S.-Israeli crisis in 35 years.

Ravid’s anonymously sourced report over the weekend appears to be the primary source for the widely cited claim that Oren did indeed say such a thing during a phone briefing with fellow Israeli diplomats.

[UPDATE: While Ravid’s article fueled much talk in the United States, he tells me that Yediot’s Shimon Shiffer also had the story. Here’s the Reuters report based on the Yediot article.]

Why "strikes again"?

Because, as Eric Fingerhut reported back in September, Ravid has a track record of fueling the Obama-Bibi-can’t-get-along narrative with anonymously sourced reports that end up being denied by the principals:

President Obama told Jewish leaders in a July meeting that Israel needs to “engage in serious self-reflection.” Israel’s new U.S. ambassador was “summoned” to the State Department to be lectured about Israel’s building settlements in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called two top aides to Obama “self-hating Jews.”

All of these reports appeared in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.

And they’ve all been disputed or denied by the principals involved.

Nevertheless, the tales have become an important part of the day-to-day narrative on the U.S.-Israel relationship. Partisans and pundits on both sides of the political divide have seized on the anonymously sourced stories to herald their own preconceived notions of the Obama administration and Netanyahu government.

U.S. and Israeli officials say these apparently inaccurate reports haven’t had any significant impact on the U.S.-Israel relationship, but Middle East experts say the prominence of such reports — and the leaks and spin that produced them — could be a sign of some tension. They also may be a sign of the declining standards in Israeli journalism.

All three stories were written by the same Ha’aretz correspondent, Barak Ravid, and he is standing by their accuracy.

Of course, just because Ravid is constantly finding himself in this position doesn’t mean he’s getting it wrong. Yes, it’s possible his sources are taking him for a ride. Then again, his sources might be impeccable and well placed, providing him with accurate, insider details. [UPDATE II: In case it wasn’t clear, no sarcasm implied]

To be honest, I’m not really sure what to think in this case.

It seems hard to believe that Oren, as a diplomat heavily invested in playing up the positives when it comes to the current state of the relationship, would have made such a claim, especially in such a setting, about things being as bad as they’ve been since 1975. Even if he thought it was true.

And, as a historian well versed in the history of U.S.-Israel relations, could Oren really believe such a thing? Could he really believe that things right now are worse than at any point during the Carter or Bush I administrations, especially after months of telling audience after audience that things were actually pretty good, with disagreements between the two sides being worked through in a positive atmosphere behind closed doors?

All that said, if Ravid had it wrong, then why did Oren wait two days to correct the record? Why, to borrow a phrase from Ron, would Oren and the embassy sit back and allow the claim to enter the crisis’ lexicon? Asleep at the switch? Or did Oren/the embassy see value in allowing the story to circulate, even if it was false?

At this point we could get into a lengthy discussion about the impact of the Internet and Israeli journalistic standards on the media.

But let’s not get distracted. In this controversy, whether Ravid get it right or wrong about Oren, the main question continues to be why the Obama administration decided to keep this controversy after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Vice President Joe Biden had appeared to have worked things out.