07-22-24 Interview - Michael Oren Frm Israeli Ambassador to the US addressing anti semitism

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now joining me is a man who'sgoing to be appearing at the Steamboat Institute's
Freedom Conference. They always get thebest guests, they get the best speakers,
They are the most interesting conversations.If you would like to go to
the Freedom Conference, you need togo ahead and sign up now. And
if you are there, you willsee Ambassador to the United States from Israel,

(00:21):
Michael Orn, who is joining metoday to talk about a variety of
issues. First of all, Ambassador, welcome to the show. Being with
you, Mandy. Hi. Youknow today we were going to talk about
the rise of anti Semitism in theUnited States. But I'd love to throw
you a curveball if I could,because yesterday President, Yeah, President Joe
Biden announces he's not running for reelection. Honestly, we're not quite sure who's

(00:46):
running the country right now, andthis, I would imagine, has created
a bit of anxiety in Israel.What does this mean from your perspective in
the grand scheme of things, thechaos at the top in the United States
at a time when Israel needs astrong partnership. It's not just Israel,
Mandy, it's the free world.And I know I can speak for our

(01:10):
friends in Germany, Japan, SouthKorea and elsewhere. Everybody has the same
interest. Everybody's an interest in astrong United America that has confidence in itself
and is able to project power aroundthe world. And the minute in America
doesn't project power in the world,it loses the confidence in itself, then
bad actors, the Russians, theIranians and others will take note of it

(01:32):
and they'll take advantage of that situation. And Israel right now is in the
midst of a war. We hada bomb from the Huti rebels and Yemen
fall up the street from where I'mtalking to you now, Rockets from Hiabela
falling in the Galilee today, continuedfighting in Gaza. We need a strong
America. We need strong America tothe bad actors who are supporting these terrorists

(01:55):
around the world. And Iran,which is backing all of these these proxies,
has a close alliance today with bothRussia and China. You just mentioned
the fact that Iran is backing threeseparate rebel groups right now, the Huti's
that has Blah and Hamas. Sois Israel. We all know they are.
But at what point does Israel justsay we're with Iran. I wish

(02:21):
we would already. I've been waitingfor Israel to say that for a long
time, and I'm tired of Israeland just SUTs at Israel. United States
playing according to Ron's rules. Whatdoes Iran do? It gets its proxies
to shoot at US, or toshoot at American service people in Iraq,
in Syria, even in Jordan.It's gets its Hootis proxies to close off

(02:43):
international shipping at the cost of countless, countless billions of dollars, and nobody
ever extracts them a price from Iran. I Ran gets away, you know,
scott free. Every single time wefired back at the proxies, we
fired back at Hamas, we firedback at his Balla. Just a couple
of days ago, we fired backat the Hooties for the first time and
blew up a large oil refinery inthe port in Yemen. That's great,

(03:06):
but if you don't get it whatwe call the head of the snake,
the snake is going to keep oncoming at you. And it's about time
that Iran understands and the writing leadershipunderstands that if they're going to be this
type of distabilizing factor. If they'regoing to be the world's largest state sponsor
of terror, if they're going totry to overthrow a pro Western governments in

(03:28):
the Milice, try to destroy thecountry where I'm living, the Jewish State
of Israel, They're going to paya very high price, in fact,
a prohibitive price. You know we'vebeen talking today Kamala Harris is it will
just call her the presumptive nominee asof right now. Obviously there are a
lot of things to be settled.But then people are talking about her vice
presidential choice, and one of thenames that keeps coming up is a Jewish

(03:51):
governor from Pennsylvania named Josh Shapiro.I say this would be an interesting choice
because the Democrats currently have in theirparty. I'm going to call it the
pro Hamas anti Semitic wing of theDemocratic Party. I don't know how large
it is as a percentage of allDemocrats. I'm inclined to think it's rather
small. But if she was tochoose Josh Shapiro, does that effectively say

(04:15):
we're not going to put up withthat kind of nonsense in the party.
From where you're sitting, actively wouldsay that I don't know if it's going
to be a major change in policy. There is a limit to which the
vice president can impact the conduct offoreign policy. But yes, Josh Shapiro
is a person's very proudly Jewish.He's a graduate of Jewish schools, keeps

(04:36):
kosher as far as I know,and has a very strong record of support
for Israel. So that would sendan n equivocal message to the party and
the party supporters, certainly to itsJewish and pro Israel supporters around the country.
So Benjamin Etnia, who is supposedto be here this week as of
right now, we have been toldthe President Biden has COVID he is still

(04:57):
in Delaware. How important is thismeeting and if it ends up being with
Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden,what does that say about the relationship between
the United States and Israel. Well, my source is already telling me that
that there will be a meeting betweenBiden and Nathan how Kamala Harris and Nathanao
and Donald Trump and Natanaho sort ofa trifecta, and that's very significant usually

(05:24):
with any foreign leader, but certainlythe leader of visual comes to the addresses
a Joint Session of Congress, andthis will be Nan How's fourth address to
a joint session. He's actually beatingout Churchill's record. Usually people want to
hear what he has to say inthe speech, and this speech will be
very, very important. He's agreat orator, He's got a great speech
writing team, and he'll talk aboutthe way the world looks from an Israeli

(05:45):
perspective since the morning of October seventh, that horrible morning. He'll talk about
the plight of the hostages and theirfamilies, the plight of nearly eighty thousand
Israelis who have been displaced and uprootedfrom their homes in the North because of
his bullow rocket fire, and aboveall, who put a tremendous emphasis on
the Iranian nuclear threat as Iran comesvery very close to making a nuclear weapon

(06:06):
and sort of restoring that issue tothe top of the American and international agenda.
All of that will be there,but because of the great sort of
upheaval going on in Washington, there'llbe probably less interest in the content of
the speech. They'll be much moreinterest, by contrast, in the meetings
Thatta who conducts now Whether you likebenjamintenawho or not, he's one of the

(06:30):
most recognized international figures in the UnitedStates. I don't know how many Americans
know who the the Prime Minister ofGreat Britain is, or the President of
France, or certainly the chairman ofthe Communist Party of China. But a
lot of people know who Benjamin natanauWith is and they have very strong feelings
about him. So when he meetsan American leader, that is a that
is certainly a media moment, andpeople be watching very carefully. For each

(06:50):
of those meetings, there's sort ofa different interest. I think that for
President Biden, it's a way ofshowcasing so casing that he's still the president,
he's still competent to be the president. People have been raising questions about
that. For Donald Trump, it'sa way to show that the Republican Party
is solidly pro Israel and that severalremarks that the former president has made in

(07:12):
support of Israel not just off thecover remarks but actually reflective of a solid,
sort of grounded policy. And Ithink the most important meeting will actually
be for Kamala Harris. This willbe her first meeting that will showcase her
status as a presidential like candidate theinternational stage, interacting with an internationally renowned

(07:33):
statesman, and probably also give heran opportunity to I would say, cut
center towards the center of the DemocraticParty, because previously she's really been framed
as on the progressive wing of theDemocratic Party and the leftist wing. So
I don't think that any handiate wantsto run on that wing, and I
think she will use this opportunity notonly to sort of make peace with it

(07:55):
and now she says some pretty hardthing about him in the past, but
also to frame her candidates her candidacyin a different way. I'm speaking with
Ambassador Michael Orin. He is aprevious ambassador to the United States from Israel.
I want to ask you about BenjaminYette now, who's popularity at home
and some of the stuff that's swirlingaround around him, because one of the

(08:18):
most interesting text or tweets that Isaw this morning was Joe Biden did what
Benjamin Ytte, Yeah, who won'tdo, which is step down for the
good of the country. He's notbeloved by everyone, But what is his
current status in Israel from your perspective? Well, a lot of parallels here,
not actually with with Biden, butactually with Trump. I'm talking to

(08:41):
you from south tel Aviv as aworking class neighborhood, people from Eastern backgrounds,
and people love Natagnell who are here. If you go about a mile
north of here, you have acompletely different attitude. You get into sort
of the middle class, upper middleclass neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, different ethnic
background, maybe a little bit lessreligious. People are much more critical than
the town. I want him tostep down. The polls don't don't redown

(09:05):
in his favor. Sometimes as manyas seventy percent of Israelis would like to
see him step down. Enough,I's he's been serving for a very long
time, is the longest serving primeminister in his wass history, is actually
the longest serving democratically elected leader inthe world. And many people feel that
he bears a tremendous opportunity responsibility forthe failures of October seventh, and it's
time for him to go. Havingsaid that, and I want to say

(09:28):
this unequivocally, Mandy, the jobof the Prime Minister of Israel is,
without exception, the most difficult jobon the planet Earth. And I've worked
with prime ministers. I work withpresidents. There's no comparison. The prime
minister has no vacations, no weekends, no nights, and there are very
very people who can fulfill that.And what's interesting about the polls, they

(09:48):
say the seventy percent of of Israeliswant that's now to step down, but
not of our majority of the largemajority of Israelis think that there anybody else
who can fulfill his shoes because that'snow, how was a very difficult act
to follow? Well, I meanto your point about being the prime minister
of Israel's the hardest job in theworld, is it? Because they are

(10:09):
constantly under attack. You always haveto be on a defensive posture. And
you know we've said this before whenpeople talked about the failures of nine to
eleven. You have to be rightall the time, and terrorists only have
to be right once right. Imean, they can put all of their
energy into planning something for ten yearsand the intelligence failures that obviously had to
have happened in Israel. Something wentterribly wrong here. But sometimes a blind

(10:33):
squirrel finds a nut, is theold saying. And that's what happened on
October seventh, how much of thathas been dug into or is it still
you are on a war footing.We've got to take care of this before
we go back and evaluate what wentwrong for October seventh. Well, there's
been some investigations by the army intoparticular battles that have occurred there and the

(10:54):
way different units performed or underperformed duringthat horrendous day, But there hasn't been
a national investigation, a coming toterms, an introspection, if you will.
There has not been, and thereare going to be many many conclusions
there, part of which I knowbecause I was in government during that time.
The belief that Hamas could be paidoff with Katari money to be incentivised

(11:18):
not to attack us, The notionthat is really population, the people of
Israel unwilling to pay the price ofuprooting Hamas from Gaza, which was estimated
the time about five hundred soldier's deaths, and that was just a that was
a prohibitive cost. Many factors wentinto the assumption that Hamas wouldn't attack Israel,
and they were all wrong. Andit happens. You know, if

(11:41):
you're in in any government sort ofsystem, you realize that group think really
gets a hold of you. Andthat's what happened to Israel on October seventh,
certainly. And the question is,so where does the buck stop?
Now we all know that expression ofEnglish, it doesn't translate very well into
Hebrew. But the buck is gonnastop. And the question is, okay,
that's the buck's going to stop atthe Prime Minister, the Defense minister,

(12:03):
the chief of staff. Israel isunusual, certainly different than the United
States, because there's really leaders comeout and say usually the following words,
I take responsibility, and that isreally code for I failed. Give me
a chance to make it right.And after I make it right, I'm
going to resign right. And youget by saying that, you get a

(12:26):
lease on legitimacy. Everybody has saidthat, the Defense minister, the chief
of Staff, the head of militaryintelligence, the head of the most sad,
the head of our eternal security system. Everyone has said that except for
one person, and that is Benjamin. It' toon out. Well, you
know, at some point you won'thave the opportunity to stay in office.
If enough people say you gotta go, He's gonna go. I want to

(12:48):
shift gears just for a second beforewe run out of time to talk about.
Has the rise of these and I'vecalled them pro hamas protests, I
think that's what they are. Andthe anti Semitism that we've seen in the
United States and around the world.Has that been shocking or is that,
you know, one of those thingsthat you look at and go, of
course, of course this is happeningnow. Well, I grew I grew

(13:11):
up in a working class neighborhood,and I grew up as the only Jewish
kid in Sicilian neighborhood, so Iexperienced anti sempitism quite regularly. So it
wasn't it wasn't so much surprising tome as it was shocking. This degree
to which, you know, lateanti smptism was latent in American society and
also in European society. But thereare many factors at play here. I

(13:31):
mean, if you go to ninetypercent of these students who are protesting,
and about only half of them areactually students. The other half are paid
professionals, and you ask them,you know, do you hate Jews?
Do you have the anti Semitic tropesin your mind? And they'll say no,
no, some of my best friends. Many other things are at play
here. Most of all, there'sa sense of community. How wonderful it

(13:52):
is to wrap yourself in a cafeaand shout these slogans, the meaning of
which you have no idea. Butit's also a deep, and I think
a fighting hatred and disrespect for theUnited States of America. They're not just
burning Israeli flags out there, They'reburning American flags, and they despise not
just the United States, but thecivilization to which it belongs, which is
why I always say that that Israelin fighting in Gaza, whether it's fighting

(14:15):
in the galley, are fighting thehoodies, We're not just fighting for our
survival and our security. We arefighting for a civilization. And we have
some hundreds of thousands of young people, have families, have jobs, have
picked up a gun to go outand fight for their country. And that
is an extraordinary phenomenon but also anextraordinary asset for the United States of America
as an example of a democracy that'swilling to fight for itself. Can you

(14:41):
explain to my listeners, I've hadthe opportunity to go to Israel, and
I loved it, and I thinkevery American should go to Israel. It's
the cradle of civilization in so manyways. And once you go to old
Jerusalem and you see how everything isjust squished together in a tiny little space,
that gives you so much more perspectiveabout what we're talking about. But
I've actually had a conversation with peoplethat I care about love, and they

(15:01):
say things like, well, whydon't the Jews just move? Why don't
they just leave? Why don't theyjust come to the United States, emigrate
to somewhere else. Why don't theyjust go and hand it over to the
Muslims? Why why don't they,Michael Jee, why don't do because this
is our home? Because the majorityof Israelis are actually not from the West,

(15:22):
majority of they're from the Middle East. They were kicked out of their
homes, their parents and their grandparentswere kicked out of their homes by the
Arabs. Actually more Jews were kickedout by the Arabs than Powell Citty has
left Palestine, and so totally indigenous. This is our home. You dig
beneath the names of even Arab villagesand cities, here you'll find the Hebrew
names. You know, We've gota neighbor next door called Jordan, the

(15:45):
city of Jordan, the state ofJordan. What is Jordan? That comes
from the Hebrew word yado den,It's the river of Jordan. Den in
Hebrew means the thing that flows down. We've got an Arab country that has
a Hebrew name. So we arethe indigenou this population here. We were
here, you know, hundreds ofmaybe even thousands of years before anybody else.

(16:06):
So we are home and we're notgoing anywhere. Michael Lauren is going
to be a part of the SteamboatInstitute's most excellent Freedom Conference. Michael,
have you ever done this before?Have you come and gone to this event?
I have not, and I'm veryexcited about it. It is I'm
honored and very excited about it.It's really looking forward to this and I'm
thinking very carefully about what I wantto say. I won't give it away
just now, but I very muchappreciate this opportunity. You're gonna love it.

(16:30):
This is my favorite political nerdy wonkyevent all year long. It is
just outstanding. They bring in suchan amazing breadth of speakers that you are
just really gonna I hope you're reallygoing to enjoy yourself. And it's beautiful
where the event is so you willhave a wonderful time. I hope to
see you there. Ambassador Michael Oran, thank you for your time today.

(16:51):
I very much appreciate it. Thankyou Manned. Hopefully we'll see you soon
at the Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference.Thanks so much. Safe and sound, that's exactly