As Israel’s ambassador Ron Dermer is about to leave his Washington posting after seven years, he recaps the challenges and triumphs of a transformative term

Photos: Eli Greengart, APImages, GPO

Even measured against the crises that defined the Netanyahu-Obama relationship until then, it was a confrontation like nothing that Washington had seen.

Tension between then-president Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu had been building for months over the emergent Iran Deal when the news broke: Bibi would confront the US president in his own backyard, with a protocol-defying speech to a joint session of Congress to sound the alarm.

As the March 2015 event approached, the administration pointedly noted that Obama wouldn’t be watching. White House sources spoke of an unprecedented interference in American politics, and the media kept a ticker of Democrats planning to boycott the joint session amid talk of an embarrassingly empty plenum.

But it was a full House that a taut-faced Bibi addressed, and as he began, the deep voice started to work its magic. “We’re an ancient people,” he intoned, turning to history. “Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther, of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish People some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot.

“Today,” he continued, “the Jewish People face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.”

Then, jabbing the air for emphasis, came the Churchillian peroration. “Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand!” he declared, and the hall erupted in a standing ovation.

Prominent among the Israeli delegation that night was someone who knew the contents of the speech as well as Netanyahu himself. With an American English and a close relationship with the Israeli prime minister that had earned him the moniker “Bibi’s Brain,” Ambassador Ron Dermer had helped write the address — and five years later, he’s convinced that it was a turning point.

“Without that speech, I doubt that we’d have the peace deals with the Arab states today,” he tells Mishpacha in a lengthy exit interview shortly before his term in Washington ends.

Delivered via Zoom from the embassy’s “Golda Room” — against the background of an Andy Warhol painting of the late Israeli leader (if it’s an original, he tells me, it’s probably worth more than the entire embassy) — the distance does nothing to dampen the bombshell nature of that statement.

“What I didn’t anticipate at the time was the impact it was going to have on the Arab states,” he explains, “because they saw it almost as Israel’s declaration of independence from America. Up to that point, Israel had been perceived as a vassal of America, and why deal with the vassal when you can deal with America?”

But when Bibi took the podium against Obama’s wishes, that perception changed. “If the prime minister of Israel is willing to stand up for what he believes in, then we can be an independent force to rely on. And I can tell you as a fact that the speech dramatically accelerated contacts beneath the surface between Israel and many Arab states.”

The slew of peace accords negotiated in the twilight of his term means that Dermer takes home more trophies than many of his storied predecessors. But it’s not just peace deals that set him apart: He reminisces about his tenure as a visibly Orthodox ambassador to a White House that seemed a hub of heimish activity.

“Well, I missed that iconic Minchah on the White House lawn when the Abraham Accords were signed,” he laughs.

There’s awareness of the tradeoffs those agreements extracted — notably, giving up the opportunity to apply Israeli sovereignty to ancient Jewish heartlands. And hanging over our interview is the shadow of one of the politicians who boycotted that controversial speech to Congress.

Coming full circle, then–vice president Joe Biden — who as titular head of the Senate would have sat behind Netanyahu — is now president-elect. As Dermer packs his bags in Washington with a feeling of déjà vu, it remains to be seen whether Bibi and Biden will yet clash again over the Palestinians and Iran as they did in the Obama years.