Obama played Israel and American liberal Jews, says Michael Doran. Photo: Screenshot.

Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Department of Defense official, Michael Doran, derided President Barack Obama for “playing” Israel and American liberals over the nuclear issue with Iran, in an article published by Mosaic magazine on Wednesday.

Doran’s conclusion was based on a reading of former Israeli ambassador and current Knesset member Michael Oren’s political memoir on his time as emissary to the U.S., which claims that the Obama administration sought a policy redefining the Israel-U.S. relationship that put daylight between the two nations.

“At one point in Ally, Oren notes that ‘the worst word one could call an Israeli [is] a freier— Hebrew slang for a sucker,” writes Doran, referring to Oren’s book. “Especially with respect to Iran, Obama played Israel and its liberal American supporters for suckers.”

Doran contends Oren’s book approached its subject from two perspectives, Oren who attempted to mend bridges with the Obama administration, and the Oren who knew from the get-go Obama’s ideology was at odds with long-standing U.S. policy toward Israel.

Related coverage

February 7, 2021 12:51 pm

0

Netanyahu: ICC Decision to Investigate Israel ‘Pure Antisemitism’

JNS.org - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused the International Criminal Court at The Hague of antisemitism after...

“Oren … cultivated the liberal Democratic elite and worked in close coordination with the weathervanes of American liberal opinion,” Doran writes, noting that Oren came to Washington to “win the president’s trust.”

Among these efforts were Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2012 speech at the U.N. General Assembly in which he indicated Israel would hold off on a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear sites.

But the conciliatory Oren, who was Israel’s ambassador in 2012 and who spoke out as an Israeli politician against Netanyahu’s speech at Congress earlier this year, was apparently hoodwinked by the Obama administration, Doran contends, underlined by the Obama administration’s secret negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Actually, all of Israel, and American liberals too, were also duped, he said.

“How many presidents, prior to Obama, had treated Israel in so cavalier a fashion? Hiding from the Israelis the existence of talks with their most powerful foe was hardly a recipe, to put it mildly, for building trust,” concluded Doran.