Editorial: Putting it in plain English

Issue of May 8, 2009 / 14 Iyar 5769

Someone who watched news coverage of Israel's military action in Gaza last year remarked on Israel's choice of a non-native English speaker, a relatively junior officer, to defend Israel's war aims and actions to the Western world. The young woman was one of many detailed to the care and feeding of the media and there was nothing remarkably wrong with her performance before the cameras. On the contrary, she more or less held her own under questioning by reporters and anchors, some of whom were impressively uninformed about the Middle East. Still, English was not her first language and she was not able to express herself as ably as a spokeswoman must in such a critical situation.

This was hardly unique. One consul general posted to New York in the '90s, a political appointee, spoke such terrible, painful-to-follow English that one all-news radio station more or less stopped inviting him on the air except when absolutely necessary. Hardly an ideal choice of representative for a country often misunderstood, criticized and sometimes vilified in the media.

On the flip side, those who remember the first Gulf War in 1990 recall how an American-educated Israeli named Benjamin Netanyahu shot to fame. In those early days of cable news Netanyahu was a regular on CNN, and on CBS, NBC and ABC, speaking to Americans and other Westerners in a language they could understand: their own. Netanyahu was a natural on camera; he could have anchored the news instead of commenting on it.

Netanyahu is prime minister again and, again, he has appointed an American-born English speaker to be his ambassador to Washington. Dore Gold, a Connecticut native, held that post between 1997 and 1999. This week it was announced that an American oleh (immigrant) named Michael Oren — born Michael Bornstein in upstate New York in 1955; raised in New Jersey — will be the next ambassador.

Oren was a paratrooper in the IDF, is a military historian and author considered the authority on the military and diplomatic history of the Middle East, and is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a research and educational institute in Jerusalem. As a reservist during the Gaza conflict he was a military spokesman, just like the young officer described above. Some consider him unsympathetic to Jewish communities in Yehuda and Shomron; others see him as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Also in his past: he also lost a sister-in-law to a suicide bomber in Gaza.

Oren's background and skills made him just the sort of spokesman Israel needed on TV during a war and, in our opinion, just what Israel needs in Washington now.

But the real question is this: with so many American-born and educated immigrants, and so many English-speaking children of immigrants, why does any Israeli who doesn't speak American English ever represent Israel in the American media? Not everyone is a Benjamin Netanyahu but there is no shortage of well-spoken Americans in Israel who would probably be only too happy to help. All Israel has to do is ask.