Michael Oren v. Michael Oren on Israel-US relations

Suffering from a bit of dis-Oren-tation regarding the view of the U.S. from Israel.  From Friday's Jerusalem Post:

In a 90-minute conversation he conducted this week with the editorial board of The Jerusalem Post, one of the key messages Oren the diplomat tried to get across was that relations with the US are not as bad as most people like to think.



True, there was a huge dustup during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit here in March; the US acquiesced in signing off on a UN NPT document that singled out Israel in May; and Washington in June wasn’t as robust in its support of Israel at the UN during the Gaza flotilla episode as some would have liked. But, Oren insisted, the sky over the US-Israeli relationship is not falling.


In fact, he said, running against the grain of conventional wisdom, the Obama administration was “as good if not better” on Israel than “many previous administrations,” and Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, often portrayed in the Israeli media as the “bad guy” on Israel issues in the White House, was actually “a great asset.”



“There are disagreements, I’m not going to be Pollyannaish,” the personable and animated Oren said. “But there are two qualifiers you have to attach. One, we have had disagreements with other administrations in the past, and the litmus test with the relationship is not whether there are disagreements, but how you approach the disagreements.”

Now, today's hot tip in Haaretz (via Laura Rozen):