These acrimonious charges not only underscore the longstanding frictions between Obama and Netanyahu, but also the extent to which Israeli-American relations have become the subject of what amounts to an intramural debate.

“We shouldn’t,” he said, “be treated this way.” According to Haaretz, he also mused that non-Orthodox and intermarried American Jews in the administration “have a hard time understanding the Israeli character.”

Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan to publicize his book, he explained that it is designed to help sound alarms about a nuclear deal with Iran, and he demanded that the Obama administration stop its “ad hominem” attacks on Netanyahu. And in Foreign Policy magazine, Oren piled on with an essay claiming that being abandoned by his Muslim father and stepfather explained a proclivity on Obama’s part to soft-pedal terrorism in an effort to be embraced by “their coreligionists.” The Anti-Defamation League warned that Oren’s lucubrations about Obama’s Muslim heritage resembled “conspiracy theories” and “amateur psychoanalysis.” Most recently, Oren himself triggered a controversy around his book’s release by accusing President Obama in a June Wall Street Journal op-ed of deliberately sabotaging relations with Israel, an accusation that Dan Shapiro, the American ambassador to Israel, asked Netanyahu to repudiate, only to be rebuffed by him. After his victory, he apologized for the first and grudgingly backtracked from the second statement. Next came Netanyahu’s demagogic warning on the eve of the recent Israeli election that Arab voters were flocking to the polls, along with his rejection of a two-state solution. After the maladroit Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (a protégé of the former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who himself dismissed the Palestinians as an “invented” people in 2011) arranged with Speaker John Boehner for Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress in March without informing the Obama administration, dozens of Democratic lawmakers decided to boycott the speech. Since then, tensions have only heightened. Oren reports in his remarkably frank new memoir, “Ally.” “The chastised representatives fell silent and finally acknowledged Netanyahu’s presence, but their near brawl demonstrated that Washington’s political schizophrenia also split American Jews” - or so the former Israeli ambassador to the United States and current Knesset member Michael B. But the calm was shattered as the Democrats and Republicans began shouting at each other and pounding the table until they were told to cool it.

After the two delegations quietly entered the dimly lit brocaded dining room, they sat down at a large elliptical table, the Democrats to Netanyahu’s left and the Republicans to his right. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in July 2010, he met with representatives of the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Republican Jewish Coalition at Blair House.

Ally by michael b oren