Michael Oren

Michael Oren served as Israel's Ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, a period that included the most sustained diplomatic turbulence in the U.S.-Israel relationship since the Carter administration — encompassing the settlement freeze dispute with the Obama administration, the confrontation over Vice President Biden's 2010 Israel visit, and the critical early years of Iran sanctions coordination. Born May 27, 1955, in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Oren immigrated to Israel as a young man, served in the IDF (including in the 1982 Lebanon War and the 1991 Gulf War as an IDF liaison officer), and earned his PhD in history from Princeton University before becoming one of the most respected historians of modern Israel and America's relationship with the Middle East.

His scholarly books — "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" (2002), which became a New York Times bestseller and is considered the definitive English-language account of the Six Day War, and "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present" (2007) — gave him intellectual credentials that distinguished his ambassadorship from those of political appointees. He came to Washington not as a politician or businessman seeking a prestigious post but as a historian with deep knowledge of the bilateral relationship's two-century arc. His memoir of the ambassadorship, "Ally" (2015), provides a detailed and sometimes critical account of the Obama-Netanyahu relationship and was itself a significant document in the diplomatic history of the period.

Post-ambassadorship, Oren served as a member of the Knesset and as Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office before returning to writing and commentary. He has been a prolific presence in American media since October 7, explaining Israeli military doctrine, the history of Hamas, and the strategic stakes of the conflict to American audiences. At Rank 75, Oren is the scholar-diplomat whose combination of academic depth, combat service, and direct ambassadorial experience makes him the most credentialed individual explainer of the U.S.-Israel alliance to American audiences.