THE MOSSAD'S AMBASSADOR TO WASHINGTON

THE MOSSAD'S AMBASSADOR TO WASHINGTON
by Barry Chamish

I knew Israel's new ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren. Now normally, so what? But I have been flooded with letters, petitions and articles asking why this non-diplomat, with one irrelevant book in his CV, was chosen over dozens of high- ranking Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, who toiled for years hoping to be appointed to the highest posting on earth. Let's summarize the confusion with a letter from a longtime source, followed by a phone call from him from Israel:

What an incredibly off the wall pick for ambassador. Absolutely no government service- and the only academic credentials he has is from Shalem Center. The pick reminds me of Dore Gold but that was to the UN- not US Ambassador. At least had an academic record. Oren is a one time author of a conventional book on one event in Israeli history. What gives?

Why so off the wall? Well for one thing, he opposes, on paper at least, PM Netanyahu's basic security positions:

Netanyahu's candidate for U.S. envoy backs one-sided pullout
By Barak Ravid Haaretz Last update - 06:01 24/04/2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080695.html

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's candidate for Israeli ambassador to Washington, Dr. Michael Oren, supports a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and an evacuation of most of the settlements.

Oren, a visiting Georgetown University professor, said in a lecture there last month, "The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements."

To get to the bottom of the mystery, I have something personal to contribute. In 1979, Michael Oren and I were drafted into the Israeli army on the same day, arrived at the Bakkum Induction Center on the same bus, and became really good buddies in the two days we waited until we were assigned separate units. I ended up a sand-eating drudge and he got the best the army could offer, induction into the Mossad.
Michael looked tall, blond and gentile, so he was given a press card from the Kansas City Star, and toured Middle Eastern capitals as a journalist, not for Kansas, but for Israel. After our service ended, we met and, while I could only describe a bland time in the military, he described his tours of Iraq and Syria, the risks of being discovered, looking down on the Galilee from the Syrian POV, and, I remember this point most clearly, how good the food was in Damascus.
What my correspondents didn't know was the Oren was not a nobody in the Israeli establishment, he was a Mossad, at least, asset, and probably much more than that. And the Mossad has decided to primp and prime him as a future Prime Minister for their purposes, though not necessarily for Israel's good.
A relevant digression: Oren was not the first high-level Netanyahu appointment I knew in Israel. In 1997 he appointed Dr. Dore Gold his UN Ambassador and I knew him somewhat more than superficially. My piano playing pal Bob Blake was friends with the Wouk brothers, and I knew one of them, Joey from our days at Hebrew University. The Wouk's father, Herman, wrote such hit books as The Caine Mutiny and War And Remembrance, the first much better than the second. The Wouk brothers were friends with Dore Gold and we all met at Bob's apartment in the center of Jerusalem on numerous occasions. I liked Dore, I found out, more than he liked me, but I did not consider him UN ambassadorial material.
But once in his new appointment, I understood the reason for his advancement. He began writing articles, endlessly praising the personal advice and written diplomacy of Henry Kissinger. Gold was on board and with my different reading of Kissinger, we were now officially on two separate ships...his, the far more dangerous for Israel.
Two Prime Ministers who came out of Israel's Washington embassy were Yitzhak Rabin and Binyamin Netanyahu. Kissinger was the primary American handler of both. Rabin began, in 1968, a modest kibbutz socialist and ended up going on the electoral stump for Nixon and Kissinger by 1972. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Kissinger told PM Golda Meir that if she wanted Israel rearmed, she would have to step down and somehow, appoint the political novice, Rabin, as her successor.
In September 1995, barely a month before he was murdered, Rabin told an unamusing story on Israeli tv. Apparently, Kissinger phoned him to complain about Netanyahu. It seems that he interrupted Kissinger the day before, asking Henry to alter his Golan Heights position. While I got the message loud and clear that both Israel's PM and the leader of the opposition were run by Kissinger, Rabin viewed the story as something that passed for lighthearted.
Rabin was corrupted after he arrived in Washington, Netanyahu was pre-corrupted, but both saw their careers rise by associating with Kissinger's think tank, the Council On Foreign Relations. And Israel pays the price with a government run by a mentality that has nothing to do with its people's actual thinking. (...)
In short, voting is a waste of time and change is cosmetic. In Michael Oren, Washington took its first steps to sneaking him in to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, whether the Israelis or Netanyahu like it or not.
As for who Oren will listen to as ambassador; as everyone says, once in the Mossad, always in the Mossad.