While President Obama has reiterated his support for a strong Israeli-American relationship, some have questioned his commitment to the Jewish state, especially as negotiations over a nuclear deal with Iran reach their final stages.
Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, who takes an in-depth look at the U.S.-Israeli relationship in his new book Ally, maintained on HuffPost Live last week that Obama "is pro-Israel."
"Anybody who says to me that the president is anti-Israel, I say emphatically, no, not at all. He doesn't like a certain type of Israel and he has said this himself," Oren told host Marc Lamont Hill. "He doesn't like the Israel of the Likud, the party I don't belong to but the party to which the prime minister does belong to and heads, the party of the settler movement."
Oren said Obama demonstrated his concern for Israel during the 2010 Mount Carmel forest fire, but created tensions with his stance on the Iranian nuclear deal, which Oren called an "existential issue" for his country. Despite the strain and Oren's past criticism of the Obama administration's policy toward his country, he remained positive about overall relations between both the U.S. and Israel.
"On issues of security, anybody in the Israeli military, in the intelligence community, will tell you that security relations between [Israel] and the United States are better now than probably any other time in the past," he said.
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren here. Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!
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