Notes From the Lampert Library
The dictionary tells us that an ally is “a person who associates or cooperates with another” (dictionary.com) or a sovereign or state associated with another by treaty or league. (Merriam-Webster) It is derived from a Latin word that means to bind and is related to the word alloy.
In his recent book, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, Jersey guy Michael Oren – he 
grew up in West Orange – tests that definition and the special relationship implied in the related word alloy. Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, is now an elected member of the Knesset.
Ally has been prominently featured in the book press in recent weeks. Here are some highly abridged excerpts from reviews and opinion pieces.
New York Times: Oren seems stuck in a time warp…Oren concludes by saying that Israel should not take America for granted and that he wants to help restore ties between the two. If so, he has a funny way of going about it. Ally does not strengthen the alliance but could further erode it.
Washington Post: The value of the book is that it reflects a view genuinely held by many Israelis: that the Obama administration, naively seeking to repair U.S. ties to the Muslim world and failing to appreciate Israel’s value to the United States, broke with decades of U.S. policy toward the region by systematically siding with the Palestinians and seeking a reconciliation with Iran. The problem with the book is that Oren’s main argument is a caricature…that will probably contribute to the deterioration of the very relationship the author purports to cherish.
Kirkus: Throughout, the author proves a genuine, ardent advocate for the well-being of his beleaguered homeland and its ongoing alliance with the land of his birth. Even before its publication, Oren’s book has been attacked, based on culls of provocative pieces. Readers would do well to attend to the entire text of this fluent, important political memoir.
Haaretz: Ally is a profoundly un-Zionist book. The memoir…presents an Israel seeking only to survive crises that …it had no part in creating. …what bothered me most about Ally is in fact three things at once. It is a cri de cœur, a warning that Israelis cannot count on Obama to protect them… Ally is also…a “through-the-looking-glass” phantasmagoria in which a wide-eyed Oren describes a bestiary of inside-the-beltway types. Finally, Ally is a Zionist coming-of-age story …Ally is, in the end, a dispiriting book. It posits an Israel that has little power over its own destiny, struggling unsuccessfully to maintain the status quo. It describes an Israel with leaders of little imagination, who are deeply suspicious of criticism from within or without. Oren’s Israel too closely resembles a well-armed shtetl, at the mercy of a touchy and unpredictable potentate, surrounded by a threatening and inhospitable world.
Wall Street Journal: I found the account to be a useful recap of the journey I and other admirers of America in the region have traveled—from optimism about a fresh approach on the part of a new kind of president, to concern that the Americans are misplaying their cards, to a suspicion that the Americans don’t know what the cards are, to the realization that they are playing Go Fish at the poker table.
Moment Magazine: Michael Oren wants American Jews to lay off criticizing their homeland and support Israel’s right to defend itself and to exist as a Jewish state. It is, he writes, “time that American Jews see Israel not as a Hollywood or Hebrew school fantasy but…as a real country made…of humans caught in inhuman circumstances.” It’s an angry and heartfelt plea. But in the end, his is a cold, ungenerous and occasionally venomous book. Oren says he rushed it to print in part to raise an alarm about the impending nuclear deal with Iran before it’s too late. That’s his privilege, and I don’t question his sincerity. But Ally would have been a more effective book if Oren had taken the time to consider the impact of his take-no-prisoners approach. “From one another,” he concludes majestically, “we must expect open minds and compassionate hearts, patience and a willingness to listen.” Exactly so.
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Thanks for your excellent recap of a range of reviews. I will now not even consider wasting my money on it.