Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. By Michael Oren. Random House; 412 pages; $30.
DIPLOMATIC memoirs usually come out long after events, when the main players have left office and the crises and controversies they handled are entering history. Michael Oren has broken this convention with “Ally”, his account of being Israel’s ambassador to the United States, less than two years after leaving Washington in September 2013. Few in the political establishments of either country are pleased. The leader of his political party even called him in for an official rebuke. But do readers have cause to be thankful to a historian-turned-diplomat and now junior parliamentarian for lifting the veil from one of the most intriguing alliances?
For all the anger Mr Oren has caused in Jerusalem and Washington, “Ally” is lean on new details about the rocky relationship between the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and President Barack Obama, the main factor poisoning ties between the two countries. If anything, it attests to the limitations of formal diplomacy in a technological age where governments and leaders have little need of official envoys to convey messages. Not a professional diplomat, Mr Oren was appointed mainly to argue Israel’s case to the American public. Never a close confidante of Mr Netanyahu, of whom he seems...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1KRjDn3
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