"We’re going to win.”
Former Israeli Amb. Michael Oren speaks with JEWDICIOUS: "We were wrong to think that we could change the DNA of Hamas. Terror is their DNA."
Editor’s Note: On Nov. 2, I had a wide-ranging conversation with former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren. We talked about his lifelong service to Israel, what he’s learned over the years, and how he is communicating about the current war against Hamas. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. — M.G.
Michael Golden:
Thank you for doing this today, Mr. Ambassador. I would be remiss if I didn’t first just ask you how you’re holding up personally. We’re talking about nearly four weeks since October 7. I know you’ve been through this drill many times, but I can’t imagine that this hasn’t affected you in a different way.
Ambassador Oren:
It’s affected me in many ways, Michael. Not just one way. First of all, it affected me as a parent, as a grandparent. My kids are in bomb shelters. My grandchildren are going through trauma in bomb shelters. As you’ve mentioned, I’ve been to a bunch of wars, so these rockets that come in every day don’t really bother me. It’s probably a matter of post-traumatic stress syndrome. It’s not heroism. I just don’t react anymore.
But everybody here knows people who have been killed, who’ve been taken hostage, who’ve been injured. And many, many people who are serving tonight in Gaza or up on the northern border are all in danger’s way. So it’s all intensely, intensely personal. I can give you the 30,000-foot strategic analysis. I can tell you what’s happening in the international press. I can tell you the challenges that Israel faces in the diplomatic realm — but nothing can overshadow the profoundly personal dimension of this war.
MG:
I can literally only imagine. Let’s stick with that personal part for a minute, because I think your path from a very young age tells a larger story. When you were 15 years old, you met the late Yitzhak Rabin, and that moment kind of changed your life. But it started even earlier than that. Explain.
Ambassador Oren:
I grew up in a mostly Italian neighborhood; think Happy Days. And Italians are great, but when you’re a kid in New Jersey, they’re going to call you Christ-killer or beat the crap out of you every day. And I’d come home beaten up every day. And my father was a U.S. Army veteran, a very highly decorated veteran of World War II. He had landed on Normandy Beach. He and his brother had fought their way across Europe, and they’d come home with an album full of photographs, of concentration camps, piles of bodies. And every time I’d come home beaten up, my father would open up this album and look at these pictures and he’d say, “You see that, son? You see that? That’s why we need a strong Jewish State.”
I grew up during the shadow of the Six-Day War, and everyone remembers the great victory of the Israeli forces, the Six-Day War. But people forget the three weeks before that, which were the waiting period where we all thought that we would witness a second Holocaust in a single generation — and the world wasn’t going to lift a finger. So that had a profound impact. All I wanted to do was go to Israel from the earliest age. Not only did I know that I wanted to visit Israel, I knew I was going to live in Israel.
When I was 15, I was a kibbutznik. I was a terrible farmer, but I loved being a kibbutznik. And then I came back to the States and I joined a Zionist youth movement. And like every good Zionist youth movement, their first field trip was to Washington, D.C. There, in the basement of a third-rate hotel, in walks Israel’s ambassador to the United States. And we all stood up and sang “Hatikvah” with him, and afterward I shook the hand of Yitzhak Rabin. I vowed at that moment that that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and believe it or not, I designed my whole subsequent academic and professional career around that goal.
I finally realized that vision back in 2009 and served in Washington for close to five years. Very tumultuous years, as you know. And great. My whole life, as you said, has been about service to Israel, whether it was being a failed farmer on a kibbutz or a lone soldier in the paratroopers or working with the Zionist underground in the Soviet Union. It’s been about service. And during this conflict, too, it is about service.
MG:
About a week ago, you wrote a column in The Free Press entitled “A War Against the Jews,” and right up front, you stated: “Hatred of Israel cannot be distinguished from hatred of the Jewish people. Incontestably now, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” Was there something about this particular attack, outside of its sheer brutality, that compelled you to say those two things are identical?
Ambassador Oren:
Let me be clear, I never doubted for a minute that anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism. And even in closed meetings of the interagency task force on the public diplomacy, I would always caution the participants: Yes, we can influence public opinion, but we must remember that at the end of the day, we are the Jewish State. And we will never be treated as a normal state. We’ll always be judged by a completely different standard.
And it has been my experience over the years to note the way the press teaches us. You can look behind the headlines, look behind the script, and see medieval anti-Semitic tropes. Whether it’s the blood libel, or the massacre of the innocents, or deicide—the notion that an innocent Jew is an oxymoron, that we are guilty by birth and ancestry. I did not have this just beaten into me by the neighborhood kids; I see it all over the place. I see anti-Semitism in the criticism of Israel.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have criticism of Israel, but I am saying that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And what I’m going to say is very hard, Michael, so brace yourself: There’s been a tragic silver lining to this horrific event, and that is that Hamas has reminded us — a nation that was very divided before October 7 — it has reminded us that we are one state, and one nation. One people, and one family. And the anti-Semites of the world have revealed themselves. Behind their anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
So when people are chanting outside the Sydney Opera House, “Screw the Jews,” or “Back to Auschwitz with the Jews,” and “Gas the Jews,” when Jews are being targeted on American campuses or beat up on American city streets or synagogues being blown up in Europe, and this is somehow triggered by Israel’s war on Hamas — what is this? Antisemitism is directly linked to anti-Zionism.
When thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people around the world are cheering on Hamas for mutilating, raping, burning, eviscerating and taking hostage hundreds and hundreds of Jews, what is that other than anti-Semitism? When I say it’s incontrovertible, it’s unassailable right now. It’s not even an issue. And it’s funny, the Biden administration, in its May program to fight anti-Semitism, stopped short of calling anti-Zionism “anti-Semitism.” It is no longer doing that.
MG:
That’s a great segue to a question I wanted to ask you about this administration. I think people understand on a general level that America’s opinion — basically the words of our president — are extremely important when it comes to any international military conflict. But I’m not sure they understand just how historic Joe Biden’s stance has been about Israel over the last four weeks. Can you put that into words, especially from the vantage point of someone who’s been doing this awhile?
Ambassador Oren:
I have never heard a speech like that (view speech on October 10). There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. As you’ve said, I’ve been involved in this U.S.-Israel relationship, both as a practitioner and as a historian, for 50 years, and I’ve never heard a speech like that. And I’ve heard some great speeches. I was a member of George W. Bush’s delegation to Israel in 2008, where he said America’s not a nation of 300 million; it’s a nation of 308 million. What that meant to us.
But Biden’s speech was on a completely different level. First of all, he got up there and talked about his own pain, someone who had lost a wife and two children, and what that pain was like, that great, hollow ... that feeling that the air has been sucked out of your chest. This is the president of the United States getting in front of the world and saying this, identifying with our pain.
MG:
Compare that to when Henry Kissinger said to Golda Meir: “You must remember that first I am an American, second I am secretary of state, and third I am a Jew.”
Ambassador Oren:
Right. And Golda said, “Yeah, we read left to right.” But look at what Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken said later that week. He gets up there and says, “I’m Jewish. I feel about this. I’m Jewish.” We are in a different realm with these two.
I know them quite well because I work with them in Washington, and I know all of this was completely genuine. And the unequivocal support that Biden gave us, the categorical denunciation of terrorism. Not trying to qualify it in any way, as people do, “Oh, this is because there’s no peace process” and “Of course, Jews had it coming to them.”
The fact that Biden was willing to go against the grain, and that’s an understatement in Washington, certainly in his own party, which is adamantly opposed to further military entanglements anywhere in the world, much less the Middle East. Then Biden turns around and sends two of the largest naval forces in the world to guard the State of Israel.
By the way, they’ve been engaged in taking down rockets aimed at us. So America has engaged militarily on our behalf. That was amazing.
He made the perfunctory warning that we should adhere to international law as we go into Gaza. We hear that from all presidents… I think he genuinely cares about Palestinian casualties, too. But what I heard, which I have not heard very often in public life, was moral clarity, but of a pristine kind. And I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget it. And it’s not that I don’t have criticism of the administration’s policy. Two democratic administrations built up Iran, and Iran is behind this. We all made mistakes.
MG:
Say more about that.
Ambassador Oren:
For about a year and a half, when I was in government, I was in charge of the Gaza issue. And we were all part of this “conception” which said that we could incentivize Hamas to be a responsible sovereign and not be a jihadist organization by giving them huge wads of Qatari cash and by letting workers into Israel. And it turns out Hamas didn’t care.
But our criticism of [Barack] Obama was that he did precisely the same thing with Iran. He says, “Oh, we’re going to give you sanctions relief. We’re going to treat you with respect,” and Iran would become, quote, unquote, a respectable Middle Eastern power. Guess what: He was wrong — but we were wrong in the same way. We were wrong thinking that we could change the DNA of Hamas. Terror is their DNA.
MG:
It’s rare these days to hear anyone in government say they were “wrong.”
Ambassador Oren:
You just heard it here. We were wrong.
MG:
You’re saying that it’s clear to everyone now that Hamas just doesn’t care about “its people.” No matter what Israel does, Hamas’ objective is not to increase the quality of life for those living in Gaza. Its one goal: to eliminate Jews. That’s it.
Ambassador Oren:
And everything justifies that means, including inflicting incredible suffering on their own people. They don’t care. They’ll all just be martyrs. It’s OK. It reminds me of the people who assassinated [Anwar] Sadat in October 1981. They killed a lot of people in the bandstand with Sadat. And they were asked later, “How could you kill all these innocent civilians?” And their response was, “If they were good Muslims, they would’ve gladly died anyway to be martyrs.” See how that works?
MG:
Mr. Ambassador, now that we’ve gotten into Hamas a bit, I want to ask you about the broader Abraham Accords. These other countries that were moving at a good pace to normalize relations and do things that would be very advantageous to Israel — now they’ve pulled back. Morocco, Bahrain. Hamas is getting exactly what it wanted, and it’s infuriating to watch. But what about these countries’ leaders? How do you square the dichotomy of the moderate leaders in these Arab countries who speak supportively about Israel in private — but they blame the “Arab street” for their failure to do so publicly? I mean, if they’re going to lead into normalization, shouldn’t they actually lead — take a stand?
Ambassador Oren:
[Hamas] is getting what it wants around the world. We have a very difficult time stopping it. But it’s different with the Arab countries. Listen, the street is a real thing, and these countries are not democracies and some of them are sitting on powder kegs. And while they have a total confluence of interest with us, they face the dual threat of Sunni extremism and Shia extremists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. We’re the only country in the region that’s standing up to both, especially after the American withdrawals of recent years. So that — in addition to the economic benefits of a relationship with Israel — should get us through this. It may not. It may not. We’ll see. I’m rather confident that it will. But as for their public opinion, they’re fed an endless diet of conspiracy theories — anti-Semitism of the worst type.
You go into any bookstore in the Arab world, you got stacks of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that’s what they read. And that cannot be changed unless there’s an educational change. In Egypt, for example, the government, which has a very close strategic relationship with Israel, encourages and promotes anti-Semitism of the worst type. It’s a way that they mobilize public opinion. They distract public opinion from the government’s failings, and the government’s failings are legion. So we have that.
MG:
The fact that much of what’s happening now is cyclical I find infuriating. I wrote about it earlier this week. Obviously, the thing that’s most horrifying and evokes the most anger is what happened on October 7. And the way it happened. But every day since, I’m just plain angry that Israel has been put into this position, this no-win position that it gets sucked into. There is no way to not respond. Yet there’s no way for Israel to not be criticized for the way it’s fighting — no matter how incredibly skillful it is at trying to salvage innocent human life, which is the whole difference between Israel and this savage enemy. I guess what I’m asking you is: How do you think rationally about this? Because it’s hard for me to reconcile these things.
Ambassador Oren:
I think I’ve said to you earlier that I assume that much of world opinion and much of the international press is going to be against us strictly as these wars progress, and that anti-Semitic tropes will come to the fore. So then what’s our goal? We can’t win this war — the public diplomacy war. But our goal should be this, Michael: to gain the time and space for the IDF to do what it has to do. Time and space. That’s all it’s about. And we, myself, others like me, are working literally around the clock to give the IDF time and space. It’s frustrating for me. I’d much rather be a paratrooper still. I’d rather face Hamas than the BBC.
Ultimately, that time and space is going to constrict, it’s going to shrink, and then we’ll have to make a decision. Are we just going to say, “The hell with it”?
MG:
You mean do what is necessary to win.
Ambassador Oren:
Might as well do what we need to do to win.
And I think that Israel is close to that right now. Tonight, I think we’re close to that because the world is condemning us for what we’re doing in the Jabalia refugee camp. And I think Israelis are basically shrugging. No one wants to see Palestinian civilians hurt, killed, certainly. These are painful images for us too. But we have no choice, period. Hamas is under these buildings. It’s under the refugee camps. It is keeping the refugees from leaving. What are we supposed to do? What option do we have? We have none.
MG:
Last question, Mr. Ambassador. We know that most people have their minds made up one way or the other in terms of which side they support in this war. But there are also a whole lot of people who do not follow it closely — and do not know much about its dynamics and drivers. If there is one thing you could make sure those folks know about the history of this conflict — or do not misunderstand — what would it be?
Ambassador Oren:
We are indigenous.
(pause)
Not interlopers.
(pause)
This is our homeland in every way. It’s not a line, it’s our homeland. Even the Arabic place names, for towns, for the Jordan River — are all Hebrew. We actually have a neighboring Arab country that has a Hebrew name called Jordan.
We are a people. There are thousands of peoples in the world, but very few of them are capable of sustaining a nation-state. But you can take Jews from 70 different countries that don’t share a common language, don’t share a common culture, share a common faith, but you can stick them in a country that has no natural resources surrounded by adversaries without allies. This is in 1948, where we had enough bullets to fight for a week.
And we are going to create — three years after the Holocaust, three years after one out of every three Jews was murdered — we’re going to create one of the world’s most successful nation-states. Because guess what: We are a people that has such internal cohesion that we are capable of sustaining war after war after war. How many wars have we had, how many wars have I been in?
I’ve seen these people in the last four weeks. I thought I couldn’t be astonished anymore. I am awestruck by these people, awestruck by the volunteerism, by the 150% rate of reporting for reserve duty. Everybody is doing something. What a people. And it’s moments like that where you realize why we have been around for 4,000 years. It’s not by accident.
MG:
A great place to leave it, Ambassador. I could talk to you for another hour, but I know that you probably have another five interviews before you can even try to get to sleep.
Ambassador Oren:
I go right back on in 10 minutes. Ten more minutes.
MG:
Thanks a ton for doing this. We really appreciate it.
Ambassador Oren:
It’s my pleasure. Keep doing the great work you’re doing. Stick with us. We’re going to be OK. We’re going to win.
Michael Oren served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, as a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and as IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009. A former member of the Knesset, he has also acted as an emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union and as an advisor to Israel's delegation to the United Nations.
Michael Golden is the Editor-in-Chief of JEWDICIOUS.
Free subscriptions to JEWDICIOUS are available until the end of 2023!
From decoding politics to the cutting edge of wellness to the human angle on sports to parenting and personal relationships — plus our unsparing take on what’s happening in the Jewish world — the canvas at JEWDICIOUS is limitless. Our 18 scribes share one overarching goal: To present you with new ideas and slices of life that will hit your head or touch your heart!
This is an extraordinary interview with an incredible, straight talking , dedicated human being. Thanks Michael!
Thanks for reading and sharing, Ethelyne!! MG :)