In a profile of Israel’s new Ambassador to DC, Ron Dermer, JTA’s Ron Kampeas points to the mistrust the Obama administration has developed against Prime Minister Netanyahu, that has already entrenched towards the supposed-to-be the government’s mediator in Washington.

“Among the White House’s inner circle —Denis McDonough, Ben Rhodes— Dermer is a red flag,” Barak Ravid, Haaretz’s political correspondent told Politico, referring respectively to the White House chief of staff and deputy national security adviser. “They see him as the guy who incited Congress and Jewish organizations against Obama.”

“It’s a reputation that Dermer’s defenders say is unfair—it does not take into account missteps by Obama and his team, and understates Netanyahu’s determinative role in shaping relations with Washington. But it is a reputation that continues to dog Dermer nonetheless,” writes Kampeas. “When I asked about him, a Democratic source on the Hill who is close to Jewish groups blamed Dermer for distributing talking points on Iran, critical of the White House, to Republican members of Congress. Asked for evidence, the source said, “Who else?” In July, when Dermer’s appointment was announced, a former Obama administration official told my news agency, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that within the administration, Dermer was “seen as extremely political and as someone who has repeatedly gone to the press with negative stories.””

One reason, Kampeas points to the WH’s immediate mistrust of Dermer, is that Ron at the age of 23 took a job with GOP pollster Frank Luntz and helped design Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” — the Republican platform the GOP rode to victory and a House majority in 1994 for the first time in decades.

Dermer is also suspect to punishement by the WH for, allegedly, intervening in the 2012 Presidential elections in favor of Mitt Romney. “Obama administration officials were appalled to learn from a Tablet Magazine profile of Dan Senor, a top adviser to Mitt Romney, that the GOP presidential candidate’s 2012 trip to Israel was not only organized by Senor and Dermer—during Senor’s trip to Israel for his niece’s bat mitzvah—but that Dermer helped keep it quiet, in part to keep the Obama campaign from organizing its own last-minute stopover,” writes Kampeas.

But overall, it is the intimate relationship with Prime minister Netanyahu what the Obama administration fears the most of.

His predecessor  Michael Oren says he believes that Dermer can and will overcome the suspicion that he was an architect of the Netanyahu-Obama tensions. “I understand that was the perception of him, but the reality is going to be different, because it has to be,” Oren told Kampeas. “He’s going to understand that to be an effective ambassador, he has to be scrupulously bipartisan.”

Kampeas notes, “at a [Nov. 20,2013] off-the-record meeting with pro-Israel lawmakers, Dermer showed signs that he is softening his elbows. “There is a sense of unease among some members, even pro-Israel members, with how Israel has inserted itself into this [Iran] debate,” according to a Democratic staffer who attended the meeting. “There’s something strange about a country lobbying Congress.”

Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA) pressed Dermer, ‘Was it a good idea for Israel to get between Congress and the Obama administration on the potential for a sanctions-for-nuclear rollback deal then brewing with the Iranians in Geneva?’ “There was an awkward silence, and Dermer answered in classic diplomatese—by not answering.,” writes Kampeas. “He reaffirmed the importance of the special relationship and moved on. Within minutes, however, he seized an opportunity to make clear that he was not interested in spurring the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives to confront the president, when Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) began to talk up his bill authorizing military action against Iran. Dermer told Franks he would not address any specific legislation, and went on to emphasize that the U.S.-Israel relationship was not in crisis, whatever disagreements the countries might have over Iran.”

“Democrats in the room were impressed, particularly because Dermer emphatically said that the Obama administration did not mislead Israel about the course of its backchannel talks with Iran, despite what some news outlets have reported” he wrote of the meeting.

“There was some concern that he wouldn’t be like Michael Oren and talk about the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said a staffer present at the meeting. “But after that meeting, the impression was: He said exactly the right thing.”

As a matter of fact, this reporter was the first to report of Dermer’s successful audition long before his appointment was announced. At a closed meeting of U.S. Jewish leaders in New York with Dermer in April, first reported by Haaretz, Mr. Dermer already impressed those in the room and the mainstream media with his diplomatic approach.

My video released of the event didn’t go well with some of Dermer’s friends. Nonetheless, it managed to help Mr. Dermer successfully pass his audition in smoothly being nominated as Israel’s new Ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador Dermer is expected to present his credentials to President Barack Obama today, in the Oval Office.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)