The former
Israeli ambassador to the U.S. thinks that if the U.S. is unsuccessful in
forcing Israel to give up land for nothing, Israel should do it all on its own.
By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus Published:
January 14th, 2014
If/when
this round of peace negotiations fail, former ambassador Oren thinks Israel
should withdraw from the disputed territories If/when this round of peace
negotiations fail, former ambassador Oren thinks Israel should withdraw from
the disputed territories
Have you
seen the cartoon of a man holding a gun to his own head, with the caption,
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”? If so, you know where this column is going. Recently
retired Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren left his post
after what must have seemed to him like four and a half very long years.
Now that Oren is no longer representing
what the media he must love incessantly refers to as the hawkish Binyamin
Netanyahu, the newly former ambassador is no longer diplomatically bound to
have his mouth buttoned shut. And with the new Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.
firmly ensconced and actually comfortable with the positions of Israeli Prime Minister
Netanayahu, Oren is once again speaking out of the side of his mouth connected
to his inner Disengager.
Oren told an audience at Georgetown
University in February of 2009, that he was amongst a minority of Israelis and
was an outlier at the foundation where he then hung his hat: “I am one of the
last remaining unilateralists.” It was Oren’s belief in 2009, as it appears to
remain so today, that in order for Israel to remain a Jewish state it would
have to withdraw from the disputed territories popularly known as the West
Bank.
What he
said then was that in order for Israel to remain a Jewish State it had to
maintain a Jewish majority and that in order for that to happen it would have
to “redraw its borders and withdraw from its settlements in the West Bank.”
(What Oren actually said was that Israel would have to withdraw its borders and
withdraw from its settlements, but that only makes sense if what he meant to
say was that the borders would have to be redrawn, not withdrawn.) This past
Saturday, Jan. 11, the day former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon died, a eulogy
for Sharon penned by Michael Oren appeared on the CNN website. The eulogy is
relatively short, only 802 words, but Oren managed to get in some beautiful
oratory.
It opens
with: “Written on every page of Israel’s history, in ink and in blood, is the
name Ariel Sharon.” Oren is a masterful writer, a lovely speaker and appears to
be a very decent man. But. Oren also managed to weave in to his presentatio of
Sharon’s legacy the message that the former ambassador is still clinging to his
earlier view that in order to save itself, tiny Israel must constrict still
further. Along the way Oren revealed that where he saw Sharon acting to protect
Israel’s security, Oren saw those acts then and described those actions now as
ones taken without considerations about peace. But when Sharon pulled out the
Israelis he himself had placed in communities in Gaza, Oren described Sharon as
“pivoting toward peace.”
Oren is still clinging to the idea that
the further concentrated Jews are in a land called Israel, the more secure they
will be. Indeed, Oren concludes his ode to Sharon on CNN by using the public
platform to promote his own view of a Smaller Israel. He uses the opportunity
to first compare secretary of state John Kerry to the (good) Sharon, the Sharon
“pivoting toward peace.” Oren points to Kerry’s current efforts “to pursue a
peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,” and says that Israelis
are asking “what happens if the peace process fails?” It is unclear how many
Israelis are actually wandering through the streets asking that question.
Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/former-ambassador-for-israel-again-ambassador-for-a-smaller-israel/2014/01/14/
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