During the 2008 US Presidential campaign, the historian Michael Oren accepted an assignment from a security affairs journal to research and write about candidate Barack Obama’s views on Middle East issues, including those related to Israel. ‘My findings,’ he writes in his recently published memoir of his four years as that country’s US Ambassador, ‘helped ensure that the future president would rarely surprise me.’

Fulfilling a lifetime dream, in 2009 Oren took on the assignment of representing his adopted country in the country where he was raised and educated. He tells his very personal story in Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.

Oren’s memoir was released in late June to a chorus of criticism that followed a series of slightly provocative opinion pieces by the author to promote the book. The controversy they stimulated is both misleading and unfortunate; misleading because the book itself is written in an analytical, not to mention diplomatic voice; and unfortunate because, far from seeking controversy, it makes an honest effort to report on, and make sense of, the developments, including misperceptions and mutual suspicions, that have strained the US-Israeli relationship over the past six years.

The most vociferous reaction has come from the Obama administration, clearly unhappy with Oren’s take on the points of friction that emerged between two longtime allies over issues ranging from the peace process with the Palestinians and the Gaza blockade to the nuclear negotiations with Iran. But in each case, Oren is careful not to paint with too broad a stroke his criticism of the US President. Indeed, he takes great pains to refute the argument, often voiced by Obama’s detractors in Congress and conservative media, that he is ‘anti-Israel.’

Read the review in full at Fathom Journal.