The official
announcement that Ron Dermer is to be appointed Israel’s new
ambassador to the United States is only a few hours old but the
brickbatsbeing prepared by the Jewish state’s critics are already
starting to fly in his direction. Dermer, a close aide to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, had long been rumored to be the successor to Michael
Oren when thatCOMMENTARY
contributor left his office this summer after four years in
Washington. But while Oren largely escaped much negative scrutiny during his
time as Israel’s most important foreign envoy, Dermer should expect to find
himself in the cross hairs of left-wing attacks even before he arrives in
his new office. As Haaretz’s
story on the appointment put it, Dermer is seen by the left
as the worst of all possible creatures: a “right-wing neo-con with close
ties to the Bush family.”
But
rather than seeking to pre-emptively sandbag Dermer in this fashion, the
Jewish left should understand that he is ideally suited to be Israel’s
ambassador to its superpower ally. Oren, a historian with a better grasp of
America’s attitudes toward Israel than virtually anyone else in the Jewish
state, was an outstanding diplomat. But Dermer brings to his job the one
element most necessary to ensure that misunderstandings between Washington
and Jerusalem are kept to a minimum in the coming years. As the person who
is as close to Netanyahu as anyone currently working in the prime minister’s
office, Dermer will be seen as a direct conduit to Israel’s leader thereby
enabling him to play a vital role the U.S.-Israel relationship as efforts to
stop Iran’s nuclear program come to a head and Secretary of State John
Kerry’s attempts to revive the peace process continue.
Like
Oren, Dermer is a native of the United States who immigrated to Israel as an
adult. He may be best known here for being the co-author of the
best-selling The
Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and
Terror with Natan Sharansky. The book, which puts
forward the position that democratic reform is the necessary prerequisite
for both peace in the Middle East and any hope for a better life for the
Muslim and Arab worlds, was famously embraced by President George W. Bush
who said it put into words exactly how he felt about the issue. While this
“neo-con” testament is, among other influences, blamed for America’s
unsuccessful attempts to bring democracy to the Middle East in the last
decade, the truth is, the book is actually quite prescient about the
failures of premature experiments in democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian
Authority and now in Egypt. Unlike those who fetishize elections as the sole
determinant of freedom, Dermer and Sharansky understood that there was more
to the concept than casting ballots in the absence of a culture that
fostered consensus about democratic values.
But
Dermer’s critics dislike more than this one excellent book. They see him as
having ties with Republicans that could offend the Obama administration. He
was widely, and wrongly, blamed for what many in the press claimed was
Netanyahu’s attempt to support Romney in the U.S. presidential election last
year. But the spat that erupted between the two countries last September
over Netanyahu’s plea that Obama establish “red lines” over the Iranian
nuclear threat was more the president’s doing than the prime minister’s.
Moreover, Dermer, an American with broad knowledge of the politics of both
countries knows, as Oren did, that the primary duty of his new job will be
to ensure that the alliance functions smoothly. Anyone who thinks he will be
picking fights with the administration, or that the White House and the
State Department won’t be smart enough to understand that having direct
access to someone with Netanyahu’s ear is in their best interests, knows
nothing about diplomacy or how Washington works.
But
it should be noted that Dermer’s reputation as a staunch and pugnacious
advocate for Israel will be a major asset for him and his country, not a
drawback. Dermer has shown over the past few years that he isn’t afraid to
speak up about the unfair treatment to which Israel has been subjected.
As his
famous rebuke in 2011 to the New
York Times—in
which he refused an offer to have Netanyahu write for its op-ed page because
it would have been a fig leaf of fairness after a deluge of critical pieces
about the Jewish state—showed, Dermer understands that staying quiet about
media bias or distorted views about the conflict doesn’t help. As his own
writing illustrates, clear-headed and bold advocacy that isn’t afraid to
speak truth to power serves Israel far better than apologetic efforts that
don’t address the real problems.
Dermer
won’t be as confrontational with Obama and Kerry as he was with
the New
York Times, but
that incident as well as his body of work shows that he understands Israel’s
problems in dealing with the world far better than the overwhelming majority
of those who work for his country’s Foreign Ministry. In contrast to many of
the charming and utterly ineffective persons who have represented Israel
abroad, Dermer gets it when it comes to dealing with attacks on his country
and the justice of his cause. His eloquent advocacy for Israel’s rights may
upset some who see it as always in the wrong, but it’s doubtful that
Netanyahu could have made a better choice for this important
position.
Jonathan
S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political
blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com. He can
be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/TobinCommentary.
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