Former Israeli Ambassador’s Assault on American Jewish Critics of Israel Is a Revealing Look at the Zionist Worldview

ALLY: MY JOURNEY ACROSS THE AMERICAN-ISRAELI DIVIDE By Michael Oren, Random House, 412 Pages, $30.00

In his new book, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, a native-born American who emigrated to Israel and renounced his U.S. citizenship, launches an attack upon President Barack Obama and American Jewish critics of Israel which is unprecedented for a former diplomat. It reveals a great deal about the Zionist worldview, perhaps more than Oren intended.

In op-eds and lectures prior to the book’s publication, Oren psychoanalyzes President Obama and accuses him of being too soft on Muslims because his Muslim father and stepfather abandoned him. He accuses the president of “intentionally, maliciously, abandoning Israel.” In Israel itself, this assault on Mr. Obama has been widely criticized. Oren, now a member of the Knesset representing the Kulanu Party, did not even gain his own party’s support for such claims. Instead, the party leader, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, apologized for Oren’s remarks in a letter to the U.S. ambassador.

Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan declared that, “Oren’s claims are disconnected from reality.” Columnist Nahum Barnea, writing in Israel Opinion (June 23, 2015), noted that, “Some of Oren’s colleagues in Jerusalem and Washington thought that he had gone mad.”

Main Argument Is Caricature

In his review of the book in The Washington Post (June 28, 2015), Philip Gordon, who served from 2013 until this spring as White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf region, declares that, “The problem with the book is that Oren’s main argument is a caricature, bolstered by exaggerations and distortion.”

To Oren’s charge that Obama is the first president to air differences with Israel in public and the first to break with the principle that there should be no “daylight” in the U.S.-Israel relationship, Gordon responds:

“Really? To take just a few examples. Dwight Eisenhower slammed Israel for the 1956 Suez operation and forced it into a humiliating retreat. Gerald Ford froze arms deliveries and announced a reassessment of the relationship as a way of pressing Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. Jimmy Carter clashed repeatedly with Prime Minister Menachem Begin before, during and after the 1978 Camp David summit. Ronald Reagan denounced Israel’s strike on the Osirik nuclear reactor in Iraq and enraged Jerusalem by selling surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. George H.W. Bush blocked loan guarantees to Israel over settlements. Bill Clinton clashed publicly with Israel over the size of proposed West Bank withdrawals; George W. Bush called for a settlement freeze in the 2002 road map for peace and afterward repeatedly criticized Israel for construction in the West Bank. In other words, Oren has a point — -except in the case of virtually every Republican and Democratic administration since Israel’s founding.”

Jewish Journalists’ Critical Coverage

When it comes to his attitude toward American Jews, Oren is particularly instructive. He claims that Jewish journalists are largely responsible for the American media’s critical coverage of Israel. In his view, Israel’s own actions and policies have little to do with the coverage he finds objectionable.

According to Oren, the work of such journalists as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, David Remnick of The New Yorker, Joe Klein of Time Magazine, the late Bob Simon of Sixty Minutes, Leon Wieseltier of The Atlantic and a host of others resembled “historic hatred of Jews.” He speculates that, “Perhaps persistent fears of anti-Semitism impelled them to distance themselves from Israel.”

Oren catalogues some of the criticism of Israel he found disturbing: “Tom Friedman … for him, Netanyahu was ‘annoying’ and ‘disconnected from reality’ and most commonly, ‘arrogant’ … American commentators, almost all of them Jewish — were fiercely indisposed to Netanyahu. Joe Klein of Time decried him as ‘outrageous, cynical and brazen.’ For The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Netanyahu was ‘smug and lacking diplomatic creativity,’ a firebrand who posed a risk ‘to the future of his own country.’ In The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier described him as a ‘gray, muddling reactive figure, a creature of the bunker.’”

Characteristic of Anti-Semitism

Such criticism, Oren somehow concludes, has little to do with Netanyahu himself or his policies, but is, instead, characteristic of traditional anti-Semitism: “The antagonism sparked by Netanyahu, I gradually noticed, resembled that traditionally triggered by the Jews. We were always the ultimate other — communists in the view of the capitalists and capitalists in communist eyes, nationalists for the cosmopolitans and, for jingoists, the International Jew. So, too, was Netanyahu declaimed as ‘reckless’ by White House sources and incapable of decision making by many Israelis.”

Oren’s characterization of Netanyahu as a “biblical figure” tells us something of his mindset. He describes Netanyahu this way: “Netanyahu, a man of mighty contradictions, less than a modern Jew, he reminded me of a biblical figure with biblical strengths, flaws, appetites, valor or wrath, scything his foes with rhetorical and political jawbones … the images of Masada, Auschwitz and looming Jewish apocalypses permeated his speeches and even our private talks.”

Oren describes how, “The pinch I felt reading articles censorious of Israel sharpened into a stab whenever the names on the bylines were Jewish. Almost all of the world’s countries are nation-states, so what, I wondered, drove these writers to nitpick at theirs? Some, I knew, saw assailing Israel as a career-enhancer — equivalent of Jewish man bites Jewish dog — that saved struggling pundits from obscurity … Others still, largely assimilated, resented Israel for further complicating their already conflicted identity. Did some American Jews prefer the moral ease of victimhood, I asked myself, to the complexities of Israeli power? … I could not help questioning whether American Jews really felt as secure as they claimed. Persistent fears of anti-Semitism impelled them to distance themselves from Israel.”

Fanciful Analysis Overlooks Reality

This fanciful analysis overlooks another possibility, which is reality itself. The overwhelming majority of American Jews — journalists and others — do not believe in the Zionist worldview which so captivated Michael Oren as a teenager. He writes: “Zionism allowed us to assert our self- sufficiency, even independence from formal religion, but in the one place that our forebears cherished as divinely given. Zionism enabled us to return to history as active authors of our own story. And the story I considered the most riveting of all time was that of the Jewish people. I belonged to that people and needed to be part of its narrative. Being Jewish in America, while culturally and materially comfortable, felt to me like living on the margins.”

Oren’s Zionist teachers and youth group leaders evidently were very convincing in advancing their doctrine that Jews outside of Israel were in “exile,” and that Israel was the Jewish “homeland.” He followed their ideological imperatives, abandoned his American “exile” and emigrated to Israel and joined the Israeli army. Most American Jews, however, reject Israel’s presumptuous claim to be the “nation-state” of all Jews. They consider the “nation-state” of American Jews to be the United States. Rather than living in “exile,” they consider themselves very much at home. They view themselves as American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim.

Oren notes that, in his view, “the major chapter” of contemporary Jewish life “was being written right now … and not in New Jersey. History, rather, was happening in a state thriving against all odds and thousands of miles away. How could I miss it? In the summer of my 15th year, I finally purchased my ticket. I acquired my first U.S. passport and booked a plane to Israel … The pride of becoming part of the first Jewish army in 2000 years. This was the answer to exile, to the Holocaust.”

Tribalism Rather Than Religion

In fact, Oren’s notion of Jewish identity has little to do with Judaism, a religion of universal values which uniquely held that all men and women, of whatever race or nation, are created in the image of God. His view, instead, is one of tribalism, which he understands has little appeal to most American Jews. He writes, “More tormenting still were the widening gaps between Israel and American Jews. Whatever our differences, I insisted, and however disparately we practice our religion, we still belonged to the same tribe … I could not imagine anyone not being thankful for belonging to it.”

Of particular concern to Oren is that younger American Jews did not believe they were members of a “tribe,” but had an obligation to advance Jewish morals and ethics, to pursue Tikkun Olam, the mandate to repair the world. He provides this assessment: “No longer comfortable with defining themselves solely in tragic terms, younger American Jews searched for a fresh source of self-affirmation. This was Tikkun Olam. Meaning literally ‘Repair the World,’ the concept derived from the medieval Kabbalistic idea of reconnecting with the bright light of creation. But, in its 21st century American Jewish interpretation. Tikkun Olam became a call to rescue humanity. For liberal American Jews especially, Tikkun Olam served as Judaism’s most compelling commandment, almost a religion in itself. Addressing synagogues, non-Jewish politicians dependably mentioned the term … and like the Holocaust before it, Tikkun Olam tended to sideline Israel as the focal point of American Jewish purpose. How can we donate to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, when children went hungry in Honduras?”

Making Israel rather than God the “focal point” of American Jewish life is, in reality, a form of idolatry, much like the worship of the golden calf in the Bible. But to Oren and those who share his tribalistic and ethnocentric views, this form of idolatry represents the essential core of what it means to be Jewish. He writes: “The drift away from an Israel-centric American Jewish identity distressed me, of course. I welcomed the willingness of American Jews, who once only whispered about it behind closed doors, to publicly reckon with the Holocaust. But, for me, the annihilation of the 6 million remained a uniquely Jewish catastrophe whose recurrence was best prevented by Israeli power. By contrast, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial conveyed a universalist message that stressed tolerance as the cure for future genocides.”

Lamenting Jewish Generosity and Sense of Belonging

Michael Oren is deeply troubled by the generosity of American Jews to others and their sense of belonging as an intrinsic part of the fabric of American life. He notes that, “ … ambivalence characterized my feelings about Tikkun Olam. Here, on the one hand, was an outstandingly prosperous community recalling its humble origins and responding to Judaism’s ancient compassionate appeal. And yet, in fulfilling their commitment to aid the world, what resources would American Jews retain for assisting our own people?”

The “Jewish identity” with which Oren identifies, one which is “tribal” and nationalistic rather than religious, is one he finds largely absent among young American Jews. “The supreme question asked by post-World War II Jewish writers such as Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, ‘How can I reconcile being Jewish and American?’ was no longer even intelligible to young American Jews. None would feel the need to begin a book, as Saul Bellow did in The Adventures of Augie March, with ‘I am an American, Chicago born.’ Bred on that literature, I saw no contradiction between love for America and loyalty to my people and its nation state. But that was not the case of the Jewish 20-somethings, members of a liberal congregation I visited in Washington, who declined to discuss issues such as intermarriage and peoplehood , that they considered borderline racist. Israel was virtually taboo.”

Israel, rather than bringing Jews together, Oren found, instead divided them: “Israel ruled over more than 2 million Palestinians and settled what virtually the entire world regarded as their land. The country that was supposed to normalize Jews and instill them with pride was making many American Jews feel more isolated and embarrassed.”

Early Zionists Never Understood America

The history of Jews in America, where religious freedom existed from the beginning and where there was never a religious test for citizenship or public office, in which our first president, George Washington, wrote a Jewish congregation that in America bigotry would be given no sanction, was something the early Zionists never anticipated or understood, and fail to comprehend at the present time.

Michael Oren seems to have some understanding of this dilemma. He writes that, “Zionist pioneers never came to grips with an America that defied their definition of Diaspora life as a cultural and political dead end. Their point of reference was Alfred Dreyfus, the French captain who, though thoroughly assimilated, was accused of spying in 1894 and sentenced to Devil’s Island. Covering the Dreyfus trial, encountering mass anti-Semitic protests, the journalist Theodor Herzl concluded that Jews could never be part of Europe but rather must leave and establish their own Jewish state. Herzl and the early Zionists could not have conceived of the sight that I came to regard as commonplace — of six Jews, three Israelis and three Americans, sitting in the White House and discussing Middle East peace.”

Similarly, writes Oren, those early Zionists “could not have foretold the question I would one day pose to my son Noam, now an officer in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), ‘Who do you feel you have more in common with, your Bedouin Sgt. Mahmud or your cousin Josh in Long Island? And no pioneer could have predicted Noam’s answer, ‘Are you serious?’ he shrugged. ‘Mahmud slept in the dirt with me. Mahmud fought for this country.’”

Israelis Look Down on American Jews

Not recognizing that American Jews have a country of their own, Oren reports that, “Many Israelis, the world’s only Jews without a compound identity — looked down on an American Jewry that preferred comfort to sovereignty … The presence of so many Jews in print and on the screen rarely translates into support for Israel. The opposite is often the case, as some American Jewish journalists flag their Jewishness as a credential for criticizing Israel. ‘I’m Jewish,’ some even seem to say, ‘but I’m not one of those Jews — the settlers, the rabbis, Israeli leaders, or the soldiers of the IDF.’ The preponderance of Jews in the U.S. media often means, simply, that Israel is subjected to scrutiny and standards imposed on no other foreign nation.”

When Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote of an appearance by Benjamin Netanyahu before Congress that, “I sure hope that Israel’s Prime Minister … understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby,” Oren “called him the moment the article came online and urged him to retract it.” He told Friedman: “You’ve confirmed the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes that Jews purchase seats in Congress.” Friedman was unmoved. He replied: “For every call I’ve received protesting, I’ve gotten ten congratulating me for finally telling the truth. Many of those calls were from senior administration officials.”

Ally has come under widespread criticism from many prominent American Jewish voices. According to The Atlantic’s Leon Wieseltier, long a vocal supporter of Israel, “Oren might … consider the possibility that it is not fear of anti-Semitism that impels his brethren in America to distance themselves from Israel and its often controversial policies, but the policies themselves … American Jewish insecurity? You must be kidding … Our problem over here is not Jewish self-hatred but Jewish self-love, we are secure to the point of decadence.”

Critics Might Be Right

Foreign Policy editor Philip Rothkopf, a former Columbia University roommate of Oren, declares: “He proposes their (American Jewish journalists) critique of Netanyahu is similar to the age-old, anti-Semitic image of the Jew as the ‘other’ … Nowhere does he entertain the possibility that those critics might just be right and their views motivated by the same hope for a better future for the U.S.-Israel relationship or for Israel itself, as are his. This view is not just wrong, it is profoundly, offensively wrong … He is rationalizing his view with perspectives and analyses that twist reality, pervert his analysis and make it hard for him to accept the idea that perhaps these criticisms don’t come from American Jews because of their flaws but because of their strengths.”

In an article titled “Michael Oren, You Hardly Know Us At All,” Jane Eisner, editor of The Forward, notes that, “The pluralism Oren ridicules is now built into the DNA of American Jews … We feel accepted here because we are, and that leads many of us to broaden that acceptance to those not as privileged. Of course, the president looks awkward wearing a yarmulke in the official Seder photograph, but that image serves as a powerful acknowledgment that our religious tradition is on an equal footing with the Christianity that once dominated America. The same cannot be said for Reform and Conservative Jews in the Israeli religious context.”

In his review of Oren’s book in The New York Times Book Review, Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, describes the debate over U.S. Mideast policy as, more and more, an intramural Jewish enterprise: “On the one side are traditional liberal Jews who continue to see Israel as an egalitarian version of America … On the other side are more conservative Jews and Christian evangelicals who believe that this is sentimental piffle. Instead of lecturing Israel, Americans should unflinchingly stand by it … and recognize that peace is an illusion. It is here that Oren’s memoir is most illuminating … his personal odyssey exemplifies the shift from a liberal and secular Zionism to a more belligerent nationalism.”

Lens of Ethnic Identity

In Heilbrunn’s view, “It’s difficult to avoid the impression that Oren continues to carry a large chip on his shoulder. He complains, for example, that ‘The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, both Jewish-edited, rarely ran nonincriminating reports on Israeli affairs.’ The odd formulation ‘Jewish-edited’ suggests that Oren views everything through the lens of ethnic identity. In addition, Oren hastily dismisses the historian Tony Judt as someone who ‘opposed Israel’s existence.’ If anything, Judt’s apprehensions about Israel’s future seem more cogent than ever.”

Oren’s contention that President Obama has embraced ideas of pacifism is also challenged by Heilbrunn: “Oren seems stuck in a time warp. Obama has never sought to resuscitate warmed-over pacifist ideas from the 1960s. As it happens, Obama ramped up the drone war and attacked Libya. Nor has he extricated the United States from either Afghanistan or Iraq. So much for the bogus notion that Obama reviles military power. … What Oren, much like Netanyahu himself, refuses to countenance is that Obama’s focus on reaching a deal with Iran isn’t based on wishful thinking but on cold strategic considerations. Oren concludes by saying that Israel should not take America for granted and that he wants to help restore ties between the two. If so, he has a funny way of going about it. ‘Ally’ does not strengthen the alliance but could further erode it.”

Jewish publications have also been highly critical of Oren’s book. Editorially, The Forward (July 3, 2015) provides this assessment: “Oren’s reputation as a respected historian has … taken a beating … as the version of events outlined in Ally has been challenged repeatedly … A fair and careful reading of Ally reveals an ambassador so intent on analyzing what he perceives to be a hostile White House that he doesn’t try hard enough to understand why most American Jews not only continue to support Obama but also align themselves so fulsomely with progressive values and politics.”

Anti-Semitism Not a Lived Experience For Most Jews

To Oren’s argument that fear of anti-Semitism causes Jewish journalists and others to distance themselves from Israel, The Forward responds: “Fears of anti-Semitism don’t impel American Jews to distance themselves from Israel. Anti-Semitism is at historic lows … it is simply not a lived experience for most Jews today — especially younger Jews, who are more likely to question the controversial policies Oren cites or to reject Netanyahu’s persistent warnings that it is 1939 all over again. Oren is famed for writing brilliantly about the Six Day War, but for many Jews who came of age since 1967, Israel is seen not as David but as Goliath, not as victim but as occupier. That same generation’s experience of American military engagements — Iraq and Afghanistan — has understandably persuaded them that the ‘soft power’ Oren derides is far preferable to pursue than the reckless wars championed by George W. Bush and his contemporary acolytes.” In an editorial with the headline “Oren’s Un-Diplomacy,” Washington Jewish Week (June 25, 2015) declares: “ … these kinds of attacks on a sitting U.S. president are highly unusual — all the more so when coming from a diplomat. There is much blame to go around for the foundering U.S.-Israel relations, and Oren is certainly entitled to his opinion. But we are troubled that nothing in his book appears to be designed to improve relations between the two countries. Add to what has been described by others as Oren’s ‘amateur psychoanalysis’ of Obama and his veering ‘into the realm of conspiracy theories’ and we are left with a work that is both undiplomatic and a- historical. All in all a disappointing turn of events for a respected historian and former ambassador.”

Writing in Mondoweiss (June 17, 2015), Philip Weiss notes with regard to Oren’s reference to Israel as the “nation-state” of all Jews: “… our own nation state. This is of course why Oren moved there from the U.S. — and now is a member of the Israeli parliament — he believed it was his country. And he expects us to hold the fort in the U.S. for our own little piece of heaven in the Middle East, and keep the checks coming, but keep our mouths shut when

Israel adopts the same kind of Jim Crow … policies that we fought in the U.S. … I’m thrilled by Michael Oren’s shot, as a sign of what is coming: open warfare between the American Jewish community and the Israeli one will break out in the U.S. press. Even Abraham Foxman is criticizing Israel these days … almost all American Jews will stand by the country they live in. Zionism will be seen by everyone to be what it has worked out to be, a segregationist ideology, and important liberal Zionists, led by Peter Beinart, will with sadness and sagacity renounce it.”

Oren Tried to Influence Times on Danon Article

After The New York Times published an article by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, which Oren believed was historically inaccurate, he called the editor of the op-Ed page, Andrew Rodenthal, and urged him to publish a response by Israeli President Shimon Peres. Oren writes that, “Rosenthal said that he already had an article by Knesset member Danny Danon. A rightist who opposed the two-state solution, Danon would only make Israel look more extreme, I knew, which is perhaps what Rosenthal wanted. ‘Hold off on Danon,’ I urged the editor. ‘I’ll get you the Peres piece in time to go to press tomorrow.’ … The next day The Times published Danon’s article. How to explain such chicanery?”

Oren seems to be saying that presenting Danny Danon in the Times as a representative of Israel represents “chicanery” and an effort to portray Israel in a negative light. This seems a strange assessment in light of the fact that in August, Prime Minister Netanyahu named Danon as his next ambassador to the United Nations. According to The New York Times, “Mr. Danon is an ambitious, headline-grabbing young politician who has called for Israel to annex all West Bank settlements, annul the Oslo Peace Accords and allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. He has described the Obama administration’s criticism of Israeli construction in East Jerusalem as racist and said the United States is not an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Israelis understand the meaning of Danon’s appointment. Alon Liel, a former director of Israel’s foreign ministry, said that it showed Mr. Netanyahu’s disdain for the diplomatic corps, which is more moderate than the government’s ministers. “This is a right-wing government; it’s not a center- right government,” Mr. Liel said’ “The message goes through, I think, that Israel is not surrendering on the issue of two states.” The center-left Zionist Union faction of Israel’s parliament, issued a statement calling the appointment “another nail in the coffin” that Netanyahu was “putting in Israel’s foreign relations.” One of its lawmakers, Erel Margalit, called Danon “a right-wing extremist with the diplomatic sensitivity of a pit bull.”

Danon Is Representative of Today’s Israel

While Michael Oren, in effect, told Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times that Shimon Peres, rather than Danny Danon was more representative of Israeli thinking, he seems to have been mistaken in his assessment. Danon’s extremist views, and willingness to give them full expression are instructive. He has likened the nuclear agreement with Iran as “providing a pyromaniac with matches,” described President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority as having hands “drenched with the blood of innocent civilians,” and said Secretary of State John Kerry was “disconnected from the reality on the ground and is ignoring the basic security needs of Israel.” A 2013 profile in The New Republic said that Danon “was doing everything he can to push his party — and his country to the right.”

Danny Danon tried to torpedo Secretary of State Kerry’s peace talks with the Palestinians by saying that a majority of Netanyahu’s government and Likud leaders opposed a two-state solution, and by threatening to quit if the prime minister released more Palestinian prisoners as promised. “The international community can say whatever they want and we can do whatever we want,” he told The Times of Israel at the time. Michael Oren may still believe that Shimon Peres is more representative of the “real” Israel than Danny Danon, but the available evidence does not support that view.

The case of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was of particular interest to Oren, who did his best to secure Pollard’s release from prison. He acknowledges that Pollard violated the law and even points to his lack of remorse. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, then a reporter for The Jerusalem Post, Pollard declared: “I want to be very clear. I do not believe the operation was a mistake.” Oren notes that, “After initially disassociating itself from Pollard, Israel granted him citizenship in 1995. Israelis increasingly viewed him as a principled Jew who sacrificed his freedom for his people, a soldier who must not be abandoned in the field.”

Oren and Pollard

American Jewish opinion on the Pollard case was divided, although at the time of his arrest his act of espionage received little sympathetic support. Oren notes that, “While many community members, especially the more conservative and religiously observant, rallied for Pollard’s freedom, others upheld the verdict. ‘Pollard is no hero of Israel,’ Martin Peretz, the avidly pro-Israel editor emeritus of The New Republic, blogged. ‘He was paid for his filthy work … and his moral profile is truly disgusting.’ Such revulsion reflected, at least in part, American Jewry’s lingering fear that the Pollard affair exposed it to accusations of dual loyalty … Indeed, Pollard’s supporters accused the half-Jewish (Secretary of Defense) Caspar Weinberger of seeking the harshest possible punishment in order to deflect charges of conflicted loyalty from himself.”

Oren saw similarities between himself and Pollard: “Pollard, roughly my age, was disconcertingly familiar. Like me … he bore the burden of the Holocaust, and exulted in Israel’s rebirth. ‘There was no difference between being a good American and a good Zionist,’ he explained to Blitzer. ‘American Jews should hold themselves personally accountable for Israel’s security.’ “

Among American Jews in sensitive U.S. Government positions, hostility to Pollard and to calls for his release was overwhelming. Oren recalls that, “One senior member of the National Security Council told me over breakfast, ‘As an American Jew, I believe Jonathan Pollard should get out of prison … ‘ He paused … ‘In a coffin.’” What Oren does not properly consider is the fact that Jonathan Pollard, more than anything, was a victim of Zionism. In religious school, in youth groups, in summer camps, young people such as Pollard viewed the Israeli flag flying. They were told that Israel was their “real” homeland and that they were in “exile” in America. Their highest religious obligation, they were instructed, was to make “Aliyah,” emigrate to Israel. Most young people who are subject to such ideological thinking, reject it, recognizing that it has no connection with the reality of their lives. A few, like Pollard and Oren, believe it and act upon it, although in different ways. It is not a question of “dual loyalty,” a dubious proposition at best. Oren, after all, left America, fought in the Israeli Army, and abandoned his U.S. citizenship. He lived the Zionist dream, very much involving a “single” loyalty. Jonathan Pollard lived a variation which turned into a nightmare.

Little Introspection

There is little introspection in Oren’s book. He never mentions the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, of which, as an historian, he must surely be aware. Prior to the mid-20th century, the overwhelming majority of all Jews rejected Zionism. In 1929, Orthodox Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamarat wrote that the very notion of a sovereign Jewish state as a spiritual center was a “contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate purpose.” He wrote: “Judaism at root is not some religious concentration which can be localized or situated in a single territory. Neither is Judaism a ‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the three-foldedness of ‘homeland, army and heroic songs.’ No, Judaism is Torah, ethics and exaltation of spirit. If Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of Torah, ‘It’s measure is greater than the earth.”

At the beginning of Reform Judaism, perhaps its most articulate spokesman, the distinguished German rabbi and scholar Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) argued that Judaism developed through an evolutionary process that had begun with God’s revelation to the Hebrew prophets. That revelation was progressive; new truth became available to every generation. The underlying and unchangeable essence of Judaism was its morality. The core of Judaism was ethical monotheism. The Jewish people were a religious community, destined to carry on the mission to “serve as a light to the nations,” to bear witness to God and his moral law. The dispersion of the Jews, Geiger pointed out, was not a punishment for their sins, but a part of God’s plan whereby they were to disseminate the universal message of ethical monotheism. Geiger deleted all prayers about a return to Zion in a Reform prayerbook he edited in 1854.

One of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for civil rights for all people, said, “Judaism is not a religion of space and does not worship the soil. So, too, the State of Israel is not the climax of Jewish history, but a test of the integrity of the Jewish people and the competence of Israel.”

Ignoring a Long History

One would think that a highly educated observer such as Michael Oren, while embracing the Zionist philosophy and worldview himself, would acknowledge that most American Jews are ambivalent at best about Zionism’s claims. From the beginning, American Jews considered themselves full and equal citizens and embraced the promise of the American Dream. In 1841, Rabbi Gustav Poznanski of Charleston, South Carolina spoke at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Elohim. He declared: “This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our Temple.”

Jews in Europe were equally critical of Jewish nationalism which they viewed as a substitute for religion. Adolf Jellinek, who became the greatest Jewish preacher of his age and a standard bearer of Jewish liberalism from his position as rabbi at the Leopoldstadt Temple in Vienna, deplored the creation of what he called a “small state like Serbia or Romania, outside Europe, which would most likely become the plaything of one Great Power against another, and whose future would be very uncertain.”

In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. The resolution stated: “Zion was a precious possession of the past … as such it is a holy memory, but it is not our hope for the future. America is our Zion.” In 1904, The American Israelite, edited by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the leader of American Reform Judaism in the 19th century, noted: “There is not one solitary prominent native Jewish American who is an advocate of Zionism.” In a speech to the Menorah Society Dinner in New York City in December 1917, Chief Judge of the New York State Supreme Court Irving Lehman, brother of Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, stated: “I cannot recognize that the Jews as such constitute a nation in any sense in which the word is recognized in political science, or that a national basis is a possible concept for modern Judaism. We Jews in America, bound to the Jews of other lands by our common faith, constituting our common inheritance, cannot as American citizens feel any bond to them as members of a nation, for nationally we are Americans and Americans only, and in political and civic matters we cannot recognize any other ties. We must therefore look for the maintenance of Judaism to those spiritual concepts which constitute Judaism.”

Idolatry, Which Judaism Abhors

Beyond showing no understanding of the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, Oren’s embrace of what he admits is “tribalism,” and his rejection of the mandate of “tikkun olam,” to repair the world, pushes him to make the State of Israel into a virtual object of worship, the very kind of idolatry which Judaism abhors. He states many times that Israel and the United States share “common values,” but this is hardly the case. We believe in religious freedom and separation of church and state. Israel is, in effect, a theocracy with a state religion, Orthodox Judaism, which is supported by Israeli taxpayers. Reform and Conservative rabbis have fewer rights in Israel than any place in the Western world. They cannot conduct weddings and funerals and their conversions are not recognized. There is no civil marriage in Israel. For a Jew to marry a Christian or a Moslem or a Jew whose mother is not Jewish is impossible, without leaving the country. These are hardly “common values.”

Israel’s current government makes no secret of its contempt for religious diversity. In July, its minister of religious services, David Azoulay, said that he did not consider Reform Jews to be Jewish. He declared, “The moment a Reform Jew stops following the religion of Israel, let’s say there’s a problem. I cannot allow myself to call such a person a Jew.” Even so vocal a supporter of Israel as Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said that the Israeli government’s “refusal to recognize the vibrant diversity of mainstream Jewish religious practice is of particular concern to the American Jewish community.” He referred to Mr. Azoulay’s “demeaning and hateful comments about Reform Jews.” Some years ago, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, when he was a member of parliament, attended a service at a Reform synagogue in New Jersey. As he left, he told an Israeli newspaper, “This is idol worship, not Judaism.” In June, Rivlin reneged at the last minute on a plan to host a disabled children’s bar mitzvah ceremony under the auspices of Orthodox and Conservative rabbis. He agreed to hold it only if the Conservative rabbis did not participate.

Rabbi Burt Visitzky, a Reform rabbi in Connecticut, declares that, “We’re commanded to love one another … So why are we teaching hate, and not just Jew against Jew. We have raised a generation of Israeli kids who can set fire to a bilingual school and then, when they’re sentenced at trial, hear them say it was worth it? Why are we raising a generation of kids in yeshivot who can spray-paint ‘Death to the Arabs’? … How did this happen? … Instead of working to find ways to talk to one another, we find ways to shut one another out.”

Beyond this, the U.S. and Israel do not share “common values” when it comes to citizenship. Israel proclaims itself as the “nation-state” of “the Jewish people,” even though 20 per cent of its population is not Jewish. American nationality is not based on common race, religion or ancestry but upon a common commitment to the idea of freedom. “If you shed one drop of American blood,” Herman Melville wrote, “you shed the blood of the whole world.” Sadly, at the present time Israel represents the tribalism Oren embraces. This, however, is not a “common value.”

Sovereignty as Americans

It disturbs Oren that “American Jews prefer comfort to sovereignty.” But it is not “comfort” with which American Jews identify, but an American identity that guarantees freedom and equality to all citizens, regardless of background. They already exercise sovereignty as Americans.

Oren abandoned America to join his “tribe.” Zionism did a good job of alienating him from his native country. In this sense, it remains a uniquely subversive enterprise. It is still doing its best to alienate young Americans from their country. Few, however, are heeding its call and following in Oren’s footsteps. This accounts, in large measure, for the dismay he feels about younger American Jews who, he observes, are committed to universal Jewish values rather than the “tribal” identity he has embraced.

When he laments that not very many in the younger generation are following his example, Oren seems at least to recognize that Israel and American Jews are going in decidedly different directions. In that sense, this book serves to illustrate the ever growing gap between American Jewish values and Israel’s exercise of power — perhaps a different result than the author intended. But he has done us the service of making Zionism’s worldview clear to all, something we seldom encounter, since obfuscation serves a philosophy such as this far better than clear explication.