Michael B. Oren was appointed Ambassador of Israel to the United States on June 25, 2009.

A graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities, Ambassador Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow at Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown in the United States.

Ambassador Oren has written extensively for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books — “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” — were both New York Times bestsellers, also winning the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year prize, a National Council of the Humanities Award, as well as the National Jewish Book Award.

Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold-medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009.

He also acted as an Israeli emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations, and as the government’s director of inter-religious affairs. In addition, he has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs.

Ambassador Oren is married to Sally, and they have three children, Yoav, Lia and Noam.

Contact Information

Embassy of Israel
3514 International Drive NW
Washington, DC 20008

Phone: (202) 364-5500
Fax: (202) 364-5607

Website:http://www.israelemb.org/
Email: info@washington.mfa.gov.il