Wars for Western minds
IN THE WORDS of the 17th-century English diplomat Sir Henry Wotton, an ambassador is “an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”. What happens, though, when an ambassador is sent abroad from an honest country into a culture of lies? Michael Oren and Daniel Taub were, respectively, Israel’s ambassadors to the US and UK. Oren’s posting ended in 2013 and Taub’s this week.
Both were born and raised in the countries to which they were sent — an invaluable advantage, since both understood the people to whom they were talking. Taub was sent into a Britain whose political and cultural establishment was consumed by virulent and irrational hatred of Israel, while David Cameron (perhaps guided by Taub) became more supportive.
Oren was in the mirror-image situation: a country which was well-disposed towards Israel but where President Obama’s agenda of empowering the Arab and Muslim world translated into a vicious animus against the one country, Israel, that stood in his way. As he relates in his gripping memoir, Ally, Oren found himself trapped in a nightmare.
Aghast, he watched as the Obama administration subjected Israel to relentless, malevolent pressure to surrender its security to enemies who never ceased manoeuvring for its destruction. The rupture between the US and Israel caused him personal anguish. The two identities to which his psyche was attached came into hitherto unthinkable conflict with each other. He also felt such terror at what he saw as Obama’s facilitation of Iran’s genocide bomb and terrorist hegemony in the Middle East, that he published his book to alert America to what was being done in its name. By contrast, Daniel Taub understood the Israelphobia that had consumed Britain’s intelligentsia. He set out to disarm it by a commensurate display of high intelligence with the modest aim of softening the edges of the hatred.
He was helped by not having to face an enemy in Number 10. Indeed, the Prime Minister was so appalled by the eruption of anti-Jewish feeling over last year’s Gaza war that he made an impassioned defence of the Jewish community and its place in Britain.
In the face of implacable ignorance, brainwashing and bigotry, Taub left people charmed, cheered and better educated. He made British Jews feel better about themselves, giving attractive, rational arguments for feeling proud of Israel. He also understood the importance of wit and theatre. Unfurling the Israeli flag in Bradford after George Galloway declared it an Israel-free zone, Taub trumped that poisonous gesture and made the Jewish community smile.
In similar impish vein, at his leaving reception this week, Taub sported English morning dress and Israelistyle open sandals. This replicated the same droll combination used by one of his predecessors. It also illustrated a difference between Oren and Taub.
Oren’s anguish over the US/Israel rupture suggested that, although he has been an Israeli citizen since 1979, he remains in his heart an American. Beneath the joke, Taub’s pinstripes and sandals illustrated how comfortably he wears his cultural affiliations. You feel Taub merely came back for four years to the land of his birth. Posted to the US, Oren seemed to have gone back home.
Diplomacy in a time of baseless hatred turns into something rather different from smooth talking and creative obfuscation. It becomes a personal survival course, on a battlefield no less bloody for being in people’s heads. The enemy’s weapons are falsehoods, manipulation and deceit. Against these, Israel’s ambassador must become a fighter for truth, justice and reason in this desperate war for the western mind.
Diplomacy in a time of hatred is a survival course