U.S. Ambassador to Israel Blasts Michael Oren Book as ‘Imaginary’

Former envoy Michael Oren’s accusation that President Barack Obama abandoned Israel is “an imaginary account” of Israel-U.S. relations, the U.S. ambassador to Israel said.
Read: Michael Oren’s Wrongheaded Blame Game
Dan Shapiro was responding to an Op-Ed written by Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, that appeared Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. Oren wrote that Obama abandoned the principle of keeping disagreements between the two countries private and of “no surprises” between them, which Oren called the “two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.”
“I disagree with what [Oren] wrote,” Shapiro said in an interview in Hebrew with Army Radio on Wednesday morning. “He was an ambassador in the past, but he is now a politician and an author who wants to sell books. Sometimes an ambassador has a limited point of view into ongoing efforts. What he wrote does not reflect the truth.”
Oren, now an Israeli lawmaker with the center-right Kulanu party, has just released a book about his time in Washington, D.C., as an envoy from 2009 to 2013.
In the interview, Shapiro described the relationship between Netanyahu and Obama as “effective, and serving the interests of both countries, and even more than that – close.”
Shapiro said a meeting between Netanyahu and Obama at the White House is “is not so far away,” responding to a report the previous day in the Hebrew media, denied by both the Obama administration and the Prime Minister’s Office, that Obama had already extended an invitation to Netanyahu.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Israeli army fires deputy commander after finding ‘operational errors’ in killing of 15 Gazans
-
News Pope Francis, who advanced church’s relationships with Jews, dies at 88
-
Fast Forward ‘F–k Israel’ message displayed at Coachella music festival and streamed to millions
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.