Jeffrey Goldberg: How much damage has been done to Israel's relations with the United States?

Michael Oren: I think we’re going to have to be proactive in order to get ourselves to a better place. I’m not starry-eyed. I understand that there are structural differences between the U.S. and Israel. The United States is a big country, far from the Middle East, that isn’t threatened the way Israel is. And there are ideological differences as well. But we must work to get this to a better place.

Goldberg: How did you keep the relationship from falling apart when you were ambassador?

Oren: I understood that preserving bipartisan support for Israel was a paramount strategic interest for us. And there was no place I wouldn’t go in order to preserve that.

Goldberg: But what were the mechanics of doing it?

Oren: America is going through a period of deep polarization, and both parties were trying to use us as a wedge issue. Not just the Republicans. So I was always trying to balance this. But the much more serious challenge came from the right, not the left. That’s something I found out when I got to Washington.

Goldberg: A few years ago, we thought that J Street, the Jewish left, was going to drive the agenda. But now people to the right of AIPAC (the mainstream pro-Israel lobby) are doing much of the driving. How did that happen?

Oren: There’s a very simple answer to that. J Street’s power derived from the fact that it is an extension of the Obama administration. The Obama administration invited J Street into the room with other Jewish organizations and sent high-level officials to speak at their conventions. But the reservoir of support for J Street is not particularly large. The American Jewish community is 5 million people. What percentage of that number is actually involved in Jewish affairs? What percentage of those are involved with Israel, and what percentage of people involved with Israel wake up in the morning saying, ‘I care about Israel but I’m pained by Israel’s policies.’ That’s a very low percentage.

The right is growing much more rapidly, even as a percentage within the Jewish community. There’s a greater percentage that is more religious, more conservative. That disparity is going to grow in favor of the right in coming years.

Goldberg: If you had still been ambassador these past two months, do you think what happened would have happened, or would have happened in a way that didn’t infuriate the White House and the Democratic Party?

Oren: I’m not going to criticize Ron Dermer. I worked very closely with him. Every ambassador brings his own skill set, his own worldview, and his own relationship with the prime minister. Ron has been a close adviser to the prime minister for more than a decade. It’s a different relationship. I don’t want to criticize Ron for certain assumptions that didn’t pan out.