Michael Oren
Encyclopedia
Michael B. Oren is an American-born Israel
i historian and author and the Israeli ambassador to the United States. He has written books, articles, and essays on Middle Eastern history, and is the author of the best-selling Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
, which won the Los Angeles Times
History Book of the Year Award. He was a Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center
in Jerusalem and a contributing editor to The New Republic
and the Shalem Center's quarterly journal, Azure
.
invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Korean War
. Oren grew up in West Orange
, New Jersey
in a Conservative Jewish
household. As the only Jewish boy in a heavily Catholic neighborhood, he says he experienced antisemitism on a daily basis. In his youth, he was an activist in Zionist and Jewish youth groups such as USY and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabiah Games
. At age 15, he made his first trip to Israel with youth movement Habonim Dror
, working on Kibbutz
Gan Shmuel.
In 1977, Oren completed his undergraduate degree from Columbia University
. He continued his studies at Columbia, receiving a Masters in International Affairs in 1978 from the School of International and Public Affairs
. After college, he spent a year as an adviser to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations
headed by Yehuda Blum. In 1979, Oren immigrated to Israel
. A few years later, Oren returned to the United States to continue his education, studying at Princeton University
. In 1986, he earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies.
. He served as a paratrooper in the 1982 Lebanon War
. His unit was caught in a Syrian ambush on the second day of the war. His commander was killed and nearly everyone was wounded. He then joined a unit stationed in Sidon
. Oren married in the summer of 1982 and returned the next day to Beirut.
During the 1991 Gulf War
he was Israeli liaison officer to the U.S. Sixth Fleet. He served as an army spokesman in the IDF reserves during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
. During the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict
, he was a media relations officer.
. He continued teaching at Yale in 2007. Beginning in 2008, he became a visiting professor at Georgetown University
's School of Foreign Service for the 2008–09 academic year as part of the faculty associated with the Program for Jewish Civilization.
President George W. Bush
appointed Oren to serve on the honorary delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.
. Ambassador Oren had to give up his United States citizenship in order to assume this post.
Oren strongly condemned the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
report, which determined Israel was guilty of possible war crimes. In an October 2009 op-ed in The New Republic
, he stated, "The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers
by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves."
In October 2009, Oren declined an invitation to attend a conference hosted by J Street
, a left-leaning Israel advocacy group, which has been critical of the Israel
government's foreign policy and relations with the Palestinians. He continued his criticism after the conference, calling J Street "a unique problem in that it not only opposes one policy of one Israeli government, it opposes all policies of all Israeli governments. It's significantly out of the mainstream." However, the two have since come to a more congenial understanding, with Oren stating that "J Street has now come and supported Congressman [Howard] Berman
's Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone Report; it has denounced the British court's decision to try Tzipi Livni
for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream."
On February 8, 2010, Oren spoke at the University of California Irvine. During his speech Oren was interrupted by 11 protesters who shouted, "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech," and "How many Palestinians did you kill?" The outburst and subsequent arrest of the protesters sparked controversy over whether the protesters were exercising free speech, as they claimed they were, or whether it was a suppression of free speech (i.e. of the right of Oren and his audience to a free exchange of ideas), as university officials claimed. On September 23, 2011, a jury convicted 10 Muslim UC Irvine students of disrupting Oren's February 2010 speech. The students were sentenced to 56 hours of community service and three years of informal probation, which could be lessened to one year if the community service is completed by the end of January 2012.
Following the Gaza flotilla raid
in May 2010, Oren wrote an op-ed
in The New York Times
, "An Assault, Cloaked in Peace", in which he accused the organizers of the flotilla of attempting to "create a provocation" in order to "put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo". He further made the claim that the Mavi Marmara was "a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means".
.
, a history of American involvement in the Middle East, was published by Norton and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. Power, Faith and Fantasy earned positive reviews from Newsweek
, The Washington Post
, The New York Times Book Review
, the San Francisco Chronicle
, and the Willamette Week
.
Oren's Six Days of War
is an historical account of the events of the Six-Day War
between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The book was widely praised by critics and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. It spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The New York Times Book Review
wrote positively of Six Days of War, as did the Washington Post, which called it "not only the best book so far written on the Six Day War, it is likely to remain the best."
, it tells of how "[f]ive decades after an unforgettable winter at Saint-Vith in Belgium's Ardennes
Forest, the surviving members of the 133rd Infantry Battalion receive invitations out of the blue to an on-site reunion. None of the men, despite age and its array of related obstacles, believes that it's an offer he can refuse. And in every case, the invitation opens a Pandora's box of guilty memories and recriminations. Oren captures the rhythms of these melancholy reveries with nicely observed portraits of lives nearing completion."
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i historian and author and the Israeli ambassador to the United States. He has written books, articles, and essays on Middle Eastern history, and is the author of the best-selling Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Six Days of War
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a 2002 non-fiction book by American-Israeli historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, chronicling the events of the Six-Day War fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
, which won the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
History Book of the Year Award. He was a Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center
Shalem Center
The Shalem Center is a Jerusalem research institute that supports academic work in the fields of philosophy, political theory, Jewish and Zionist history, Bible and Talmud, Middle East Studies, archaeology, economics, and strategic studies...
in Jerusalem and a contributing editor to The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
and the Shalem Center's quarterly journal, Azure
Azure (journal)
Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation is a quarterly journal published by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, Israel. Azure publishes new writing on issues relating to Jewish thought and identity, Zionism, and the State of Israel. It is published in both Hebrew and English, allowing for the exchange of...
.
Early life
Oren was born Michael Bornstein in upstate New York. His father was an officer in the U.S. Army who took part in the D-DayD-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. Oren grew up in West Orange
West Orange
West Orange may refer to:Places:* West Orange, New Jersey, a township in Essex County, New Jersey* West Orange, Texas, a city in Orange County, TexasSchools:* West Orange High School , a public school in West Orange, New Jersey...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
in a Conservative Jewish
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...
household. As the only Jewish boy in a heavily Catholic neighborhood, he says he experienced antisemitism on a daily basis. In his youth, he was an activist in Zionist and Jewish youth groups such as USY and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabiah Games
Maccabiah Games
The Maccabiah is an international Jewish athletic event similar to the Olympics held in Israel every four years under the auspices of the Maccabi Federation, affiliated with the Maccabi World Union. The Maccabiah Games is the third largest international sports competition in the world...
. At age 15, he made his first trip to Israel with youth movement Habonim Dror
Habonim Dror
Habonim Dror is a Jewish Labour Zionist youth movement formed by the merger in 1982 of the Habonim and Dror youth movements. Habonim Dror's sister movement in Israel is Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, the Working and Studying Youth.-Ideology:...
, working on Kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
Gan Shmuel.
In 1977, Oren completed his undergraduate degree from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He continued his studies at Columbia, receiving a Masters in International Affairs in 1978 from the School of International and Public Affairs
School of International and Public Affairs
The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University is one of the most prestigious graduate schools of public policy in the world. Located on Columbia's Morningside Heights campus in the Borough of Manhattan, in New York City, the School has 15,000 graduates in more than 150...
. After college, he spent a year as an adviser to the Israeli delegation to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
headed by Yehuda Blum. In 1979, Oren immigrated to Israel
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
. A few years later, Oren returned to the United States to continue his education, studying at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. In 1986, he earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies.
Military service
In 1979, Oren joined the Israel Defense ForcesIsrael Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
. He served as a paratrooper in the 1982 Lebanon War
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
. His unit was caught in a Syrian ambush on the second day of the war. His commander was killed and nearly everyone was wounded. He then joined a unit stationed in Sidon
Sidon
Sidon or Saïda is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate of Lebanon, on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km north of Tyre and 40 km south of the capital Beirut. In Genesis, Sidon is the son of Canaan the grandson of Noah...
. Oren married in the summer of 1982 and returned the next day to Beirut.
During the 1991 Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
he was Israeli liaison officer to the U.S. Sixth Fleet. He served as an army spokesman in the IDF reserves during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War #Other uses|Tammūz]]) and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War , was a 34-day military conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. The principal parties were Hezbollah...
. During the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict
2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict
The Gaza War, known as Operation Cast Lead in Israel and as the Gaza Massacre in the Arab world, was a three-week bombing and invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel, and hundreds of rocket attacks on south of Israel which...
, he was a media relations officer.
Academic career
In 2006, Oren was a visiting professor at both Harvard and Yale UniversityYale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. He continued teaching at Yale in 2007. Beginning in 2008, he became a visiting professor at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
's School of Foreign Service for the 2008–09 academic year as part of the faculty associated with the Program for Jewish Civilization.
President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
appointed Oren to serve on the honorary delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.
Ambassadorship
On May 3, 2009, Oren was appointed as ambassador of Israel to the United States by Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, succeeding Sallai MeridorSallai Meridor
Sallai Meridor is an Israeli politician. He was the Israeli Ambassador to the United States between 2005–2009, appointed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert...
. Ambassador Oren had to give up his United States citizenship in order to assume this post.
Oren strongly condemned the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report, was a team established in April 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council during the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged violations of international...
report, which determined Israel was guilty of possible war crimes. In an October 2009 op-ed in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, he stated, "The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves."
In October 2009, Oren declined an invitation to attend a conference hosted by J Street
J Street
J Street is a nonprofit liberal advocacy group based in the United States whose stated aim is to promote American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. It was founded in April 2008....
, a left-leaning Israel advocacy group, which has been critical of the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
government's foreign policy and relations with the Palestinians. He continued his criticism after the conference, calling J Street "a unique problem in that it not only opposes one policy of one Israeli government, it opposes all policies of all Israeli governments. It's significantly out of the mainstream." However, the two have since come to a more congenial understanding, with Oren stating that "J Street has now come and supported Congressman [Howard] Berman
Howard Berman
Howard Lawrence Berman is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He earlier served in the California State Assembly from 1974 to 1982, and as the U.S...
's Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone Report; it has denounced the British court's decision to try Tzipi Livni
Tzipi Livni
Tzipporah Malkah "Tzipi" Livni is an Israeli lawyer and politician. She is the current Israeli Opposition Leader and leader of Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset. Raised an ardent nationalist, Livni has become one of her nation's leading voices for the two-state solution. In Israel she has...
for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream."
On February 8, 2010, Oren spoke at the University of California Irvine. During his speech Oren was interrupted by 11 protesters who shouted, "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech," and "How many Palestinians did you kill?" The outburst and subsequent arrest of the protesters sparked controversy over whether the protesters were exercising free speech, as they claimed they were, or whether it was a suppression of free speech (i.e. of the right of Oren and his audience to a free exchange of ideas), as university officials claimed. On September 23, 2011, a jury convicted 10 Muslim UC Irvine students of disrupting Oren's February 2010 speech. The students were sentenced to 56 hours of community service and three years of informal probation, which could be lessened to one year if the community service is completed by the end of January 2012.
Following the Gaza flotilla raid
Gaza flotilla raid
The Gaza flotilla raid was a military operation by Israel against six ships of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on 31 May 2010 in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea...
in May 2010, Oren wrote an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, "An Assault, Cloaked in Peace", in which he accused the organizers of the flotilla of attempting to "create a provocation" in order to "put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo". He further made the claim that the Mavi Marmara was "a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means".
Political commentary
Oren has written many articles commenting on current political issues. He is a frequent contributor to The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
.
Middle East history
Power, Faith and FantasyPower, Faith and Fantasy
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present a history of American involvement in the Middle East by Michael Oren, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2007 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller....
, a history of American involvement in the Middle East, was published by Norton and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. Power, Faith and Fantasy earned positive reviews from Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
, the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, and the Willamette Week
Willamette Week
Willamette Week is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, United States. It features reports on local news, politics, sports, business and culture....
.
Oren's Six Days of War
Six Days of War
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a 2002 non-fiction book by American-Israeli historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, chronicling the events of the Six-Day War fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
is an historical account of the events of the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The book was widely praised by critics and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. It spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
wrote positively of Six Days of War, as did the Washington Post, which called it "not only the best book so far written on the Six Day War, it is likely to remain the best."
Fiction
Oren ventured into fiction. His book Reunion was published in 2004. According to Publishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, it tells of how "[f]ive decades after an unforgettable winter at Saint-Vith in Belgium's Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
Forest, the surviving members of the 133rd Infantry Battalion receive invitations out of the blue to an on-site reunion. None of the men, despite age and its array of related obstacles, believes that it's an offer he can refuse. And in every case, the invitation opens a Pandora's box of guilty memories and recriminations. Oren captures the rhythms of these melancholy reveries with nicely observed portraits of lives nearing completion."
Published work
- Oren, Michael (2002). Six Days of WarSix Days of WarSix Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a 2002 non-fiction book by American-Israeli historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, chronicling the events of the Six-Day War fought between Israel and its Arab neighbors...
:June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Presidio Press. ISBN 978-0345461926. - Oren, Michael (2003). Reunion. New York: Plume. ISBN 978-1931561266.
- Oren, Michael (2007). Power, Faith, and Fantasy: The United States in the Middle East, 1776 to 2006. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0393330304.
- Hazony, David; Hazony, Yoram; and Oren, Michael B. (Eds.) (2007). New Essays on Zionism. Shalem Press. ISBN 978-9657052440.