Is the US-Israel Relationship Salvageable? – with Dr. Michael Oren

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Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used a major speech in Israel to lay out what many see as the foreign policy vision of a potential 2028 presidential campaign and his message was blunt: the U.S.-Israel relationship is at a crossroads.

In this episode, host Aviva Klompas is joined by Dr. Michael Oren to examine Emanuel's diagnosis of Israel's strategic position and the future of the alliance between Jerusalem and Washington.

They discuss Emanuel's claim that Israel has become too reliant on military power and his argument that decades of unconditional American support enabled some of Israel's worst decisions.

Guest Bio:

Michael Oren served in the IDF as a Lone Soldier in the paratroopers. He was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013 and later served as a Member of Knesset and Deputy Minister of Diplomacy.

He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including Six Days of War, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israel Divide, and Power, Faith, and Fantasy. Ambassador Oren published 2048: The Rejuvenated State in 2023 and is the founder of Israel Advocacy Group.

Mentioned in This Episode:
Rahm Emanuel’s Speech

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hatred of Israel has become an organizing principle for very large segments, certainly of the Democratic Party and a burgeoning segment of the Republican Party. And we're not about to change. And we're not about to endanger our children to, in theory, make Israel more palatable, but probably actually won't.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Today is Wednesday, July 15th. This is Boundless Insights, and I'm Aviva Klumpus. Last week, former White House Chief of Staff Rahmanuel delivered what seemed like the opening foreign policy address of a 2028 presidential campaign. Speaking to an audience in Israel, he argued that the U.S.-Israel relationship is at a crossroads and that the alliance cannot continue on its current course. Rahmanuel's diagnosis was blunt. He believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu has led Israel into a strategic dead end, winning military victories while bleeding diplomatic support. He argued that decades of unconditional American backing enabled decisions that have left Israel isolated, and he called for a new regional approach centered on a 23-state solution, in which Arab states would take the lead in building a credible Palestinian governing authority. Today we'll examine his arguments and discuss whether the U.S.-Israel relationship is salvageable. Joining me is one of our favorites, Dr. Michael Oren. He's a historian, former Israeli ambassador to Washington, and a leading voice on American-Israeli relations. Let's get into it. Michael Oren, welcome back to Boundless Insights.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

So good to be back with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Thank you so much. I want to talk to you about Rahm Emanuel's speech. So just for people that maybe didn't read it or get a chance to listen to it, I'll give a bit of background. He began his speech by acknowledging the failures of Oslo, the second Intifada, October 7th, the repeated rejections of a state on behalf of the Palestinians. But then he quickly turned to a long list of Israel's failures. And I'll summarize them as follows. Israel has become too reliant on military power. Prime Minister Netanyahu hasn't pursued military victories at the expense of diplomacy. He says Israel has become a diplomatic pariah. His words were you have lost Europe, you have lost the United States, and you have picked up Somaliland. And he says that decades of unconditional American support enabled some of Israel's worst decisions because Israeli leaders have come to believe that there will never be consequences. What do you say?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I've had contacts with him since then.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

He has pointed his stubby little finger at you.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Many times.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I love those stories. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

And uh usually with an expletive, not deleted, because Obama said that when Ram lost half his finger in a salami accident when he was 16, it's his middle finger. He lost half his vocabulary. If that's what half of the vocabulary is like, let's see the other half. But yes, and I never took it personally. I never took it personally because Ram was always a person for all of his criticism. And to say that he dislikes Neznao would be a massive understatement. I knew that he had Israel in his heart. His father was Israeli, fought in the Israeli army, his uncle died, I think, in the War of Independence, is buried on the Mount of Olives. Ram used to brag about being a veteran of the Israeli military. I think he was a volunteer in Sarel for a while. But that becomes very important to the background to his visit. So when he came here, he met with two people, public people. One was uh Yitzhak Herzog, Bougie, our president, and with yours truly, I had breakfast with him in Tel Aviv.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Oh, we're gonna get the scuttlebutt.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

The scuttlebutt. And a very interesting conversation, to say the least. I said, you know, basically I said to him, okay, you let us have it. Great. You came here, you get this whole litany of complaints against us. But here's the bottom line. And I'll go into deep on this. The bottom line is that if there's a different government tomorrow, if Benjamin Nadu loses the election in the fall, you have either Prime Minister Natali Bennett or Prime Minister uh Eisencott. 95% of their policies are gonna be the exact same policies. Nobody here is gonna withdraw forces from Gaza, no one's gonna withdraw forces from southern Lebanon, no one's going to create a Palestinian state, no one's gonna redivide Jerusalem. And you're dealing in the United States with a situation where people for an increasing percentage of the American population are no longer opposed to us because of what we do, but because of who we are. It's no longer a matter of foreign policy, it's a matter of culture. Hatred of Israel has become an organizing principle for very large segments, certainly of the Democratic Party and a burgeoning segment of the Republican Party. And we're not about to change. And we're not about to endanger our children to, in theory, make Israel more palatable, but probably actually won't.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I think that's so important because when I heard his speech, he speaks on the assumption that there remains a broad democratic constituency for a pro-Israel relationship, but it's detached from reality because the party is increasingly influenced by voices that aren't just critical of Netanyahu or settlements or the IDF in Gaza. They reject Zionism. They believe Israel is illegitimate.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

They believe Israel is the root cause of all the evil in the world. It's probably more than that. You know, you have candidates who are running on platforms that don't talk about housing, don't talk about unemployment, don't talk about crime, they talk about Gaza and Israel. We are in a different universe here now. So I'm getting off topic. I'm talking about Iran Emanuel. And my goal in this conversation was very simple. Okay, is the situation fixable? And if so, how? Is there a way back? And he gave me a couple of policy ideas, which were very good. One of them had to do with very quickly advancing toward a non-belligerency treaty with Syria, which is perfectly fine. Improving the healthcare services in the West Bank for the Palestinians and bringing them up to the same level as Israeli health care, all fine. Will that make a dent? Will that convince the Mamdanis of the world that we're okay? I kind of doubt it.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Those are not the policies that he spoke about in his speech.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Here's my problem with his speech. Now, I understand the speech politically.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Let me say the policies he did suggest in the speech so that you can speak to them. He wants to see sanctions on Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and on the companies and banks that support settlements. He wants an end to U.S. subsidies of Israel's defense budget. And he suggests, which I'm very curious to hear your thoughts about, this 23-state solution.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Aaron Powell Forget about it. It's not even worth talking about. It's a J Street program. And it's not worth talking about. The other ones are much more serious. And I want to get into that. I want to delve into that. But before that, understand why he came here. Here's a person, again, who had been proud of his connection to Israel all of his political career, made political hay of it, certainly in various campaigns, and now finds itself, you know, burdened with this. So how do you get around it? You embrace it. Okay, I'm I'm gonna go to Israel and I'm gonna give a speech, but I'm gonna tell those Israelis exactly what they're doing wrong and how miserable and terrible and demonic they are. And maybe that will make me more palatable to the still semi-sane uh branch of the Democratic Party.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

So let me check on two things. You're saying from your history and relationship with him, he cares about Israel.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yes, he does.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Genuinely?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yes, genuinely. We talked about the one thing that mattered to me more than anything else that he said is that I am committed to the QME.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Qualitative military edge.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yes, which is crucial. So is a commitment made by the Congress, a totally unique commitment by the Congress that said that the United States will ensure that Israel can defend itself by itself against any Middle Eastern threat or any combination of Middle Eastern threats. So right now there's a big debate whether the United States will sell F-35 jets to Turkey.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

All right, which is our qualitative military edge. And then the question is going to come up: is Turkey in the Middle East or not in the Middle East?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Right. It's a NATO member.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, it's a NATO member. But it's also don't tell Erdogan that he's not a Middle Eastern leader. Okay. So that kind of issue. I'm committed to the QME. In many ways, that was more important than all the other, you know, other things he said. But where does it get problematic? And this is where he wouldn't like me saying this. This is where Rahm Emanuel meets J.D. Vance. Well, they basically said the same thing, just with different words. So J.D. Vance said two things. He said, Israel has no other friends in the world. The United States is our only friend. And then he said something that was truly problematic. He said, you cannot kill your way out of every problem.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

This was in Israelis criticizing the MOU with Iran. Right. That's when he said this. And I just want to say when I read what he said, my headline on it is men who negotiated deal desperately defends deal.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, there's an Emperor News Close aspect of this, and nobody likes the person who calls out the Emperor New Close. So, you know, that were Israeli ministers smart by coming out and attacking it? No. But do they know that we know what the MIU represents? They know, believe me. And that's where you get all the spins in the White House, how you know BB dragged Trump into this war against the advice of his staff and all these things, you know, to take this humiliation and sort of roll it onto us. I get it. It's fine. All right. We're adults in the room here. We know how politics work. So what does Vance say? He said these two things. We have no other friends in the world. We're allowed to lose the United States. And two, basically, we kill our way out of every problem. Well, the first is just factually wrong. All right. Factually wrong because, you know, a day before the war broke out with Iran, we had Mr. Modi of India here getting up to the stage of the Knesset and expressing his unbridled love for Israel, the Jewish state. And he knew the war was going to break out, and he came anyway. And India, what can I say? It's it's four times the size of the United States. It's a friend. It's a serious friend. We have other friends in the world too. You know, I'm have a connection to South America through my wife. We just had an election in Colombia that elected a president whose first remark was to come out and talk about how much he loved Israel. We've seen what's happened in Argentina. We see what's happened in Africa. There's other places we have friends in the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Don't forget Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, are good little friends who always vote with us at the United Nations.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

But I'm being serious, though. We do have serious friends. That's a Palau, with all due respect to the Marion.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

They have a vote at the UN that exactly the same number as votes as India and China.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

But India is our largest customer for buying our military hardware. The islands of the South Pacific are not.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Okay, fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

And they are the up-and-coming economy of the world. And they're the largest population in the world. So this is no small, small factor. And we've had situations in the world where we've had uh great power allies uh ditch us. It happened with the French. It happened with our first ally was the Soviet Union. We fought our War of Independence with Soviet arms in 1952. They went over to the other side. Then we fought the Second Arab-Israeli War, 1956, and the Six-Day War, uh, with French arms, not American arms. And the French under de Gaulle went over to the other side. So we've had these transformations in the past. This is not to say that there's a ready substitute for our alliance with the United States of America, which shares our values, which shares so many things. But, you know, it will not be the death of the Jewish state. And we've learned to be more adaptive and we'll move on if that's the case. We hope it's not the case. But factually, that that state that we have no other friends in the world is just wrong. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

My question about that point is really how much should international legitimacy factor into Israel's national security calculations?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Aaron Powell Well, it just to factor, but if we have to choose between writing off the south of the country and writing off the north of the country, both of which could be rendered uninhabitable if we gave into American pressure, then we have no choice. And I kept on saying, you know, about the situation in Lebanon, people when they had reached the MOU, and Israel's not even mentioned in the MOU, but Lebanon is mentioned, and the United States recognized the degree of Iranian hegemony over Lebanon and gave it a degree of American protection over Hezbollah. And the big question that was being asked daily in the Israeli press was, you know, is Israel going to go eyeball to eyeball with the Trump administration over this? And my response was, we have no choice. It's not what Israel can do, it's what Israel must do. There's no wiggle room there. There's no way. Otherwise, we've just ridden, we've written off the north. And it won't be just the north, because Hezbollah has rockets that can reach Ashtod and Ashkala. And they'll internalize that if they can render the North uninhabitable, why not render Tel Aviv uninhabit? Why not? So it's not even a question. And Israeli leaders have faced similar situations and dilemmas in the past, and always, always they've come down on the side of Israel's security interests, fundamental security interests, because that's why you, you know, that's the job. That's why you get the big shekels.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

And that's how Israelis ultimately vote. It's always going to be about security.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Right. And sometimes, you know, if it's perceived that the Prime Minister is getting into a spitting match with the president, such as that happened with Yizakh Shamir and George Bush Sr., they'll vote Shamir out of office. But sometimes, if it seems that the president is coming down on us too hard, and the prime minister stands up to him as the case with Netanyahu and Obama, he'll get credit for it.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Or Netanyahu now, because he went and did the news rounds this week. He was talking about not selling the jets to Turkey.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, that's not big enough in the Israeli society. That's not a big issue here. But yes, it's true. He's willing to stand up to a certain degree. And we did in Lebanon. We we we gave in a little bit too much with Lebanon, I thought. We focused all of our military activity to the South and basically gave Hezbollah a free pass elsewhere in the country. And many people in the North were resentful of it. And uh, and I think legitimacy so. But I think we're getting off track. We're talking about, we're talking about Vance and we're talking about Rahm Emanuel and where their two speeches, their remarks, though couched in different language, why they were saying essentially the same thing. One was we have no friends in the world. Rahm says we've lost Europe, and I'm not sure that we've lost all of Europe. Let's see what happened to the elections in Europe. Let's see if you know, if there's a change of government in Britain, change of government in France. We don't know that we've lost Europe, but okay, but let's say we lost Europe. And I've come on and I said, you know, we should we should also be looking for alternatives to Europe all the time. We've lost America. I don't know if we've lost America. There are large populations in America that remain very, very pro-Israel. There's, you know, Filipinos and evangelicals and Jews, even some Jews there who remain pro-Israel. So it's not lost. It has taken a major blow. True has taken a major blow, and we don't know who's going to win the next election. But even given that, it's factually untrue that we have no friends and that we've lost. But the more problematic remark was when Vance said that we cannot kill your way out of every problem. And basically, Ron was saying the same thing. We use undue force, we approach all problems like a hammer does to the head of a nail, which again is factually profoundly untrue.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It's an old Jewish trope masqueraded with new terms.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Let me get to the old Jewish trope. Let's we're not there yet, okay? Let's start off with the obvious, what they call in Judaism the Pshat of it. The Pshat of it is untrue. This is a country which in 1949, you know, months after five Arab armies try to wipe us off the map, we signed armistice agreements with them. This is a country which in 1967, more than almost quadrupled its size, and yet offered on the day after the Six-Day War to return most of those territories to the Arabs for peace and got the three nodes of Khartoum. No recognition, no negotiations, right? No acceptance. This is the country that gave back the Sinai Peninsula, an area literally three times the size of the state of Israel, in turn for peace with one Arab country, with Egypt. This is the country that made a peace with its arch terrorist enemy, Arafat. And even after Arafat, you know, embarked on a course of terror, we still try to make peace with them again and again. This is the country that has tried to make peace all the time. To say that we look at every problem as something we have to kill or hit on the hell like a nail is factually, factually untrue and deeply, deeply unfair. Because almost everything I've mentioned now has been with American mediation, American encouragement. And it was Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden, and Mr. Trump all together who encouraged Israel to give Qatari money to Hamas. Yes, Netanyahu bears the responsibility because the buck ended there, but that was an American policy. And you saw how well that worked out. So it's profoundly, profoundly untrue and unfair. But beyond that, and this is what you were getting at before, is that it smacks of an ancient anti-Semitic trope, which is that Jews love to kill.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Those bloodthirsty Jews.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

It's the bloodlust. It's blood libel right out of the Middle Ages, and I encounter it every time I go on TV where they talk about the 70,000 killed, or they talk about how Israel has displaced a million Lebanese, never mentioning Hezbollah once. Why? Because everybody you know in the state of Israel gets up in the morning and thinks that the most, most desirous thing we can do is go out and kill people who are innocent. So it's an assumption or presumption of Jewish evil that is deeply embedded in Western society and consciousness, deeply. And you saw it with J.D. Vance, and I think maybe he was coming at it from a very uh deep place himself. And you saw it with Rahm, and uh I don't know whether he believes it or not, but he was certainly pandering to it, uh, to the people who believe that. It is not just unfair and inaccurate, it is very dangerous. And where that ends up is not problematic for Israel. We have the idea of to defend us, but it will be dangerous for Jewish communities across the diaspora, particularly in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

I agree with you completely, because the glaring omission in his speech is the surge at anti-Semitism in the United States, particularly in the Democratic Party. And the unspoken implication of all of his remarks is that because of what's happening in Israel, because of the actions of Netanyahu or the IDF, he's saying we deserve to be hated, we deserve to be harassed, we deserve to be ostracized. And I want to remind people that Rahm Emanuel endorsed Graham Platner, the far-left Senate candidate who's now dropped out from Maine, who called to block U.S. military aid to Israel, the guy with the Nazi tattoo. Right. That's a person that Ram Emanuel endorsed.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

So, you know, cards on the table, I've called for years for the end of American military aid to Israel. We've talked about it several times on this program.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Right. And Netanyahu has spoken about it also.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Well, it's about time. It took him a long time. He thinks he has 10 years, he doesn't have 10 years. We have to end it before they end it. Because if a Democratic candidate does come back into the White House, or if the Democrats get control of the Congress, they will move not just to cut off aid, they'll cut off far more than that. And the point is that if there is a President AOC, or he can't be a President Mamdani because he wasn't born in the United States.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Well, first President AOC changes the Constitution, and then we can have President Mamdani.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Okay. So that's my consideration. Both these gentlemen, I they would hate me saying this, that Vance and Rahm on those two issues, that we have no friends and that we enjoy killing, we're very, very similar.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

We agree that their statements, their remarks, Rom's speech was inaccurate and unfair, but was there anything in that speech that Israelis should take seriously?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yes. Yes, there are. Certainly. About Ben Ver and Schmutrich and the things that they do and settler violence. And and I think that one of the things that Rom said to me again and again at breakfast is you have to show movement. If you don't show movement, you're you're vulnerable. And he's absolutely right. We do not show movement. And the fact that, you know, as a leading Democratic candidate, he was willing to come here. It's already something. Okay. Basically, he was setting down a marker. This is the best you're going to get. You're not going to get much better than this.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Certainly from his party.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Yeah, from his party. It was sobering. It was very sobering. We have to listen to it as painful as this. It doesn't mean even though it's inaccurate, even though it's unfair, even in some cases, it's dangerous what he's saying. This is the reality that we have to confront. And that was one of the messages that Ron was saying. That you think you're going to go back to what it was, it's never going back to what it was. And I represent, at best, at best, he was saying, the new reality. And that's what Israel Israelis had to listen to.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Lindsey Graham passed away suddenly and tragically over the weekend. I know that the two of you were friends and had a long relationship. Do you want to say a few words about him?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

I'm going to get very emotional. I love Lindsay. Here's a guy who comes from South Carolina, not a lot of Jews in his constituency, and loved the state of Israel, understood the state of Israel. He, together with the other two amigos, with John McCain and Joe Lieberman, were what a privilege it was for me to serve at a time when these three senators dominated the foreign policy of the United States in so many ways. And with clarity, with fairness. But it's not what it was. And I don't know who's going to replace uh Lindsay or whether he can be replaced. But all I can say is that he was a dear friend to me, but more importantly, he's a friend of the people of Israel, the state of Israel, the Jewish people worldwide. And we Jews, we have a long memory of Eva. We don't forget people like Lindsey Graham. And there should be a street in downtown Jerusalem named Sterot Graham, okay? Graham Avenue in the future.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

I love that idea. Michael, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

That's a wrap on today's episode of Boundless Insights. Whether you've been with us from the start or are just discovering our show, we're so glad you're here. If today's conversation sparked a question, challenged your thinking, or made you shake your head, I want to hear from you. Email me at podcast at boundlessisrael.org. Your feedback gives us ideas for new topics and new guests. And if you believe these conversations matter, there are three ways to support the show. First, hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. Second, help us spread the word. Share an episode with friends and family, post about it, or mention it in a group chat. It really does make a difference. And third, consider supporting our work. Boundless is a nonprofit and we rely on donors to keep the show going. You can make a gift at boundlessisrael.org slash donate. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and keep the conversation going.