Israel: ‘the greatest story of all’
FORMER Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren (pictured) delivered a highly engaging speech about his experiences, told in parallel with the recent history of the State of Israel, to a capacity crowd at the United Israel Appeal (UIA) General Division functions in Sydney and Melbourne.
Oren traced his own journey from growing up in a small town in New Jersey to making aliyah and joining the IDF, to finally realising his dream – inspired by a meeting with then envoy Yitzhak Rabin as a teenager – of becoming the Israeli Ambassador to the United States.
He said as a young boy he loved history, writing and stories. “I knew of no greater and more exciting story than our story. The story of the Jewish people. We are a people who have survived the most harrowing journeys,” he said.
“And yet, we are a people who in spite of all of that ordeal never once for a second forgot our connection to our ancestral homeland, we are a people who never for a second forgot our faith in our ideas.”
He recalled “how fortunate” he felt, as a 10-year-old, when he first knew of the existence of the State of Israel. “From that age on I knew that Israel was the most thrilling chapter in the most riveting story of all time, and I was darned if I was going to miss it,” he said.
Throughout the talk, he periodically returned to the day, when in 2009, he presented his credentials as Ambassador to President Barack Obama.
“Little did I know when waiting for that limo [to the White House] that the entire Middle East was about to unravel,” he said.
“Who could have imagined that Egypt would experience not one, but two violent revolutions … who could have imagined that a brutal civil war in Syria would threaten to spill across into the Golan Heights, and who would have thought that Iran would soon have enough enriched uranium to make four nuclear bombs?
“Had I known all of that in the summer of 2009 I would have had to ask myself ‘could Israel prevail?’ But Israel did indeed prevail.”
The evening’s other main speaker, Rona Ramon, recounted her tragic story of losing astronaut husband Ilan in the Columbia space shuttle disaster and then son Asaf in an Israel Air Force training accident. “My loved ones lived their dream,” she said.
“These days I’m head of the Ramon Foundation, putting the legacy and inspiration of those beautiful people, their values, into other kids, to let them know, to realise that they have a dream and we’re there to support them.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
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