TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Haviv Rettig Gur
July 29, 2015

…Conservative leaning, an Israeli patriot proud of his decades of service to his country, [Michael] Oren finds a great deal about Obama troubling – what he considers Obama’s stumbles and miscalculations in the Middle East, the president’s apparent agnosticism when it came to American exceptionalism, and his reliance on “ideology” and “worldview” in place of hard strategy. But what perhaps troubles Oren most, and was almost entirely missed by critics of his book, is his sense that Obama’s political success lies in his ability to make Americans feel good about what Oren increasingly came to see as America’s national decline….“I had no difficulty with Obama’s ties with Muslims or his offer to ‘extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,’” he remembers. “And as someone who thought of himself as a natural link between two countries, I could hardly criticize anybody who offered to bridge two cultures. Still, I thought it unusual for a president to address the adherents of a faith as if their views were monolithic. I wondered about the ramifications of reconciling with a Muslim world widely opposed to Israel’s existence, and whether Obama’s desire to dissolve ‘the lines of the tribe’ included my tribe, the Jews.” READ MORE