Beating. And it stood. It cant keep doing this. Somebodys going to take advantage, and i think theres a lot of people that want to take advantage of this time, and if we dont heal ourselves we will fall. Lincoln was right. It wont come from the outside. It will have to be national suicide, and i think the outside hitting us, when were so divided, national suicide. Host it is about islam. The name of glenn becks latest book. This is booktv on cspan2. Now on booktv, michael oren talks about his year at israels ambassador to the United States and shares his reflections on the arab spring and the israelipalestinian Peace Process. [inaudible conversations] hello everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you for your patience. Im suzanne call, the director of events and program at the store, and on behalf of our owners and staff id like to welcome you to politic and prose. Please turn off or sigh veins your cell phones and after the event we ask you leave your chair, and youre welcome to stay. We have another event later on this evening. And during our question and answer session if you could step up to the microphone, wed be grateful. Were recording this event and will be on our Youtube Channel and we have cspan here. We also ask that as a courtesy to your fellow audience members you come to microphone with a question not with a speech. Please pick up one of our july calendars, take a look at the great programming we have going on here, and also at our three locations where were now operating the book stores and Running Events at 14th and v and at tacoma. Today were joined by michael oren discussing his memoir ali the story of his personal and professional journey that spans to country asks their extraordinary and extraordinarily complicated relationships. He describes movingly his desire when he was 15 and living in new york and a member of a zionist movement, the handshake with ranin which said change the course of his life. He serve as israels ambassador to the United States from 2009 until 2013 and he writes candidly of the this experience and of his dealings with the Obama Administration, aspects of which have been generating headlines. Oren is considered a leading middle east scholar called one of the worlds ten most influential jews. He has written six books including two novels. please join me in welcoming michael oren. [applause] thank you everybody. She didnt mention the novels which i said before were very wellreviewed, sold dozens of copies. And youll find them in the pulp section of this book store. Well shalom. This is so good to be back. I was telling the owners, one of the great joys as ambassador was to escape the embassy and wander over to politics and prose. The island of repose for ambassadors for many years. Its delightful to be back here and the straining thing is im looking at the audience, half of you are in the book. Theres jack out there who i think i described as sage and saintly. Something like that. Was that okay . My friend from Junior High School is in the book. Major steve wide of the u. S. Marines in the book. Thats it. Basically youre all here. Thats great. Thats wonderful. And this is a book. Its called ally. Wrote it the year after i came back from serving in washington, which was a challenging enough considering i had to take 50 days off for the war between israel and hamas which i served as a sort of unofficial spokesman for the state of israel on International Tv and that was sufficiently challenging. And then i went into an election cycle because im also a member of knesset now. The real challenge was to find a title. You think thats trivial. And i had no idea what to call this and hen i was sitting with my wife one day and i said, i know its one word with two syllables. And then i said, got it. Its ally. She said, someone is going to say, the title of the back is ali. And then one will look at this and say you left off the s. They got it. She said they wont get that. No dont underestimate these people. Ally is one of most beautiful words in the the english lange. No negative connotations. One can be a partner in crime but never an ally in crime. You think its something very positive. And its true also in hebrew. The term for ally in hebrew son of a covenant, and a gorgeous term in hebrew, and recalls the special relationship between the jewish people and god. And israel and the United States have a very special relationship indeed. I cant think of any two countries of the world certainly this country and another foreign country that have such a multifacettedded and deep relationship. The relationship begins not in 1967 o. 1948. It begins in the 17th century when the first pure taps came to this puritans came to the country mitchell last book explored the roots. The first puritans who came to this country and began the idea of called. Thes the new jews and had a strong connection with the old jews and it was their duty to help the old jews get back and create a sovereign state in their sacred land and the land of israel, and you had americans like john adams, abraham lincoln, woodrow wilson, harry truman who would be considered a zionist today. More people going to a house of worship of one type of another in this country than any other industrialized country. On more than one occasion i would walk tough an office in capitol hill, the office of some congressman from west texas whose district was five times the says of the state of israel, probably didnt have a jewish wish in the constituent tim had his bible opened and pointed to a you know this and it would say, i believe that. How much aid to do you want for iron dome . So deep spiritual connection. 1948, summer comes to being a democratic start. Part of the ever shortening list of Democratic State inside the world. Part of a very select list of countries that have never known a second of nondemocratic governance, up there with new zealand, canada, australia the United States. Never a second of nondemocratic governments and never known a second of peace. So you have spiritual ties, shared Democratic Values you. Didnt have a Strategic Alliance. Thats relatively new. That began after the sixday war. Another speech i gave here on the sixday war book. Im selling all my other books. And the sixday war, israel fights the war with french weaponry and only in the seventh day of the war when more than poll so imakers said theirs theirs little superpower that just defeated several soviet armed forces and we should be alied bit the country the thus was born the u. S. Israeli Strategic Alliance which is Weapons Development and intelligence sharing joint maneuvers, special forces, anything you can name, its out there. Cyber defense is very big. Very large. The United States gives israel roughly 4 billion every year in military aid. 75 asker of that aid is spent in the United States and creates tens of thousands of jobs here. And so that is another part of the symbiotic relationship between israel and the United States and moricely, israel has become a technological super power, punching way above it weight some 200 american hightech firms have their r d centers in israel. Apple, for example. Happen never has an r d center outside the state of california. Today apple has three major r d centers in israel. Another link, another stage in the connections between these two countries. If you look around the world think about how many countries fall into this category, spiritual tie with the United States have a shared democratic system with the United States, has never been interrupted that has a Strategic Alliance, and a very strong hightech economic connection. So its a totally unique alliance. You would be hard pressed to find another example. And yet even though israel and the United States are in many ways ultimate allies for one another, there are divides. And there are some deep divides and theyre divides that go back to 67 and some to 1948. Settlements started after 67 but the question of jerusalem goes back to 1948. Can you hear me back there . Goes back to 1948. So we have been divided over what has become known more recent years as the Peace Process. Deep division sometimes. We have been divided over u. S. Arm saleses to arab countries. The book talks about the three motor important letter tuesday the u. S. Israel alliance, they are qme. Qualitative military edge. The United States has made an historic commitment to israel to ensure that israel can defend itself by itself against any adversary. Every once in a while the its will sell several tens of billions of dollars to the arabs which creates jobs in the United States but its an issue for us. And most recently, most pointedly, most painfully, the United States and israel are divide over the pending deal with the Iranian Nuclear program. That is perhaps the deepest divide at all. And sometimes these divides can threaten to actually render the fabric of this extraordinary alliance. Thats what we have seen most recently. Now, this part of the biography wasnt you hear that i grew up in this country. I grew up in new jersey. That immediately [applause] thank you. At am booming i say i spend more time defending the state of new jersey than the state of israel. A perfectly good state. I in a way a typical american kid. Dyslexic learning disabled. Incoordinateded. Clumsy unpopular in school. Typical american kid. Was the only jew wish kid in my neighborhood. Got beat up all the time by antisemitic bullies. A true joy. I had dreams. I had a lot of dreams itch. Ad to be a writer, which was funny because i couldnt spell. I wanted to be i wanted to be an israeli. I know this will sound coming out of nowhere. I was very proud american mitchell father was a veteran of world war ii. Still going strong, my dad. Land on normandy, and raised me with all the Great American values and the book opens up with me trying to read the lincolns inaugural address to my kids at the Lincoln Memorial and not being able to finish it because i start ceiling. Im very sentimental about the country. But those ideals contribute to my other great love. I love the state of israel. As far back as i can remember, i wanted to live in israel, which was also funny because i got kicked out of hebrew school, and i if you read my bar mitzvah i couldnt read the thing. And why . I had this deep sense of history, of jewish history that i was alive at a unique moment in that history where the jewish people had a sovereign proud, independent state and i was going to be damned if i would muss the opportunity to live in the state by staying in new jersey, and for a very early age, 10 11 years ol dvded to live there and i forced myself on to the representatives the Kibbutz Movement so they would take me many years below the minimum age and be the youngest volunteer. And so i started going back and forth to israel. I wanted to be a soldier. That was another dream. [laughter] i met the girl my dreams. She is over here sally who didnt actually go to the junior prom because she was too cool for the junior prom. She was busy playing frisbee with jerry garcia. You dont go to the prom if you are playing frisbee with jerry garcia and we lived out this dream that i had one more dream and that dream goes back and i think you mentioned this at the time when i was a kid and i had the opportunity to come to washington d. C. And shake the hand of the ambassador to the israili United States. He grew up in a jewish america. There was no greater hero and when i met him i realized how i could resolve the two great loves of my life, my love for this country and my love for the country of israel. I said that when i grow up i want to be israels ambassador. I had that dream so im living out the dreams of someday dreams i had nightmarish qualities. As a paratrooper in participated in several wars. My elder son was wounded in battle. Sally lost her sister in a Suicide Attack in israel. I had to work for its awkward being in a few months later i was present at his funeral. There were tough part of the dream but there was joy. We raised a family and we made a life and in 2009 i realized an ultimate dream and the newlyelected Prime Minister of israel Benjamin Netanyahu named me israels ambassador to the United States. And i came into office at a time of just almost unprecedented challenges on so may different friends. Think back to 2000 what was going on in this country. This country was in the depths of the worst financial crisis since the great depression. There was deep Political Polarization almost a logjam in congress. There was war trauma and exhaustion and two difficult wars in the middle east. And for israel especially the entire middle east was about to change. The entire middle east was about to unravel. Egypt was going to undergo two violent resolutions. See it syria and egypt were essentially going to cease to exist in the middle of this the jordanians the iranians are building a Nuclear Weapon. They would soon get 19,000 katyushas digging underground secret fortifies facilities. All that was going to happen in a very short period of time in 2009 and the Peace Process meanwhile is dead in the water. I came into office right after palestinian Prime Minister then offered a full peace plan. Mahmoud abass walked away and when i came into office he wasnt willing to sit down and negotiate with us so this was an ideal situation to take over the u. S. Israel relationship and all of a sudden not only am i charged with maintaining an alliance but i have an immense gap that divides that i am supposed to bridge. Its precisely at this juncture and i can think of a few more faithful junctures in history where you have two leaders that are exceedingly mismatched. How should i say this and diplomatically. You had Benjamin Netanyahu and the newlyelected 44th president of the United States barack obama so netanyahu has a great resume. He was a commander in israels delta force. He went to m. I. T. And harvard and became an and served as the secondincommand at the embassy across the street. He was israels ambassador to the u. N. He was a Central Finance mr. And foreign minister. He was a Prime Minister and an author and that is his resume. Although politically he wasnt particularly revered around the world. He wasnt respected in his own cutter with a rambunctious democracy and Young Americans salute to rank. Israelis dont salute to anybody and contrast it to obama. Obama didnt have the experience of sirte military experience and legislative experience Foreign Policy experience but obama some icon certainly in this country and throughout much of the world. So you have complete opposites these two men but not only their resumes and their popularity is word desperate desperate they have different worldviews. Very different worldviews views. Netanyahu pays Political Correctness and never uses the word paradigm. For some reason he doesnt like the word paradigm sort of like the antirock hero. When he is reelected he hangs a large portrait of Winston Churchill over his right shoulder in his office so churchill will always be looking over his right shoulder because he reveres churchill. Barack obama comes into office. He is sort of the embodiment of peace. He is a rock star and one of his first acts of office is to take a bus bust of Winston Churchill and remove it from the oval office or you have two people with very different, very different worldviews. Be on that there is policy. There is policy and i will make the case very strongly in the book that the Obama Administration is part of its worldview was to change some of the essential components of the relationship in the alliance certainly as it existed since the mid1980s since the midreagan years and the two pillars of the relationship as i knew if i was coming into office across the street were no surprises and no daylight. What does that mean . No surprises me is that america is going to make a statement on the middle east and on issues that impact israels vital interest in security that does it israel have a chance to see the advance copy and submit comments about it . Eclectic example would be george bushs roadmap of 2002 and the drafts that were given to Prime Minister sharon and he had a chance to say how much he didnt like it and submitted reservations. This was not supposed to surprise the United States either. No daylight meant we could have different i met and the difference is already settlements in jerusalem but we should keep those differences behind closed doors because if we have our differences publicly our enemies are going to conclude that there is distance and daylight between us and they will ask anyway that between us and will be bad for both countries. It will be damaging for both our interests. As a matter policy the president distinguish himself from previous president s and from his own worldview decided not to maintain these principles. We have examples of it. I accompanied Netanyahu Netanyahu