The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Oren

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

From Joppa, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren talks about his book, "The Night Archer," shares experiences from his time in government, and has a bit to say about the current situation in America and around the globe.

Mattaxis show. You know, sometimes Eric pretends to be interested in his guest. But he's really just doing a crossword puzzle and rolling his eyes in what they say. He told me never to say that ever. But look, I made a mistake. Oh, I'm human in my way. Only I'm not. And now your host, Eric Mataxis. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Eric Mataxis show. I happen to be Eric Mataxis. That is a coincidence, but this is a show that's intentional. I speak to different people on the show. Spectacular. guests. For example, today, I have somebody I've wanted to get for a while. His name is Michael Oren. He's difficult to sum up. Why don't we start with his location? He is in Jaffa, Israel. Michael, welcome the program. Great to be with you, Eric. Hi. I don't know where to begin with you principally because you're a writer of fiction, short fiction. I want to talk to you about fiction, but I want to talk to you about Israel. How do you come to be an expert on Israel and the political situation?

Is it just because you're the Israeli, worthy Israeli ambassador to the United States of America? Is that it? No, my life at an early stage bifurcated. On one hand, I was a writer, fiction and nonfiction. And on the other, I was interested in diplomacy. I did four degrees in Middle East history and international affairs. and got involved in diplomacy and politics. I've been a member of the Knesset here, Israel's parliament.

I've been the deputy to the prime minister. And all the time I'm writing. Interesting enough, you can't publish when you're in government, but you can write. Isn't it bizarre? I mean, the idea that I'm speaking to the Israeli ambassador to the United States, of course, that's the main descriptor. So I should tell my audience, you are, in fact, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. presently in office, which is why.

you can't publish, I guess. No, no, I was, and I was the Deputy Ambassador. I can publish now. I have my new book here. But when I was a ambassador, by the way, I attended the prayer breakfast in Washington, and I heard you the first time, and I was so inspired by your personal story, and it has stayed with me since then. I think it was, Eric, was 2013, January?

It was 2012, and I'm sorry, that's right. You were in office until 13. That's correct. Forgive me. But it's, it is extraordinary to me that you served in that office. I want to talk to you about that. I want to talk to you about Israeli-American relations. And of course, yes, at that National Prayer Breakfast, I spoke about Bonhoeffer, who for me is the link between Jews and Gentiles, more importantly, actually, between Jews and Christians, forget Gentiles, between Jews and Christians. He is the link. So I'm so glad you were there that day.

Let's start just talking about where we are now in terms of current events with Israel. The president's ability to get the UAE to recognize Israel. I mean, if Trump weren't Trump, any other president, wouldn't this just be it? Wouldn't this be, you know, Nobel Prize, winning a Nobel Prize winning accomplishment? It seems to me, but put it in the context.

Well, Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Prize for making peace between Egypt and Israel. And then Bill Clinton, one came along, was going to get a Nobel Prize for the Oslo Accords. People have gotten Nobel Prizes for negotiating between Israel and the Arabs. It seems to me that everyone involved in this should get a Nobel Prize as well.

It's ironic, Eric. ironic, that the president who deserves in certain ways a significant amount of credit for this is Barack Obama. And let me explain because, you know, that president aspired to bring Jews and Arabs together through peace. He didn't succeed in bringing them together through peace. He brought them together through common opposition to his policies. I knew you'd like that. This is hilarious because, I mean, I knew this actually a little bit, but nobody's put it that way, that it's Barack Obama's failure that led, ironically, as you said, to this agreement with the UAE, and which well may lead to similar agreements with other Arab states.

But it was particularly the opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, Eric, which both we and the Sunni Arab states viewed as a strategic threat to us. That deal paved Iran's way to a nuclear weapon. It didn't actually do anything to take away Iran's nuclear infrastructure. It gave Iran tens of billions of dollars to spend on terror and missiles that could kill us. It did not in any way inhibit Iran's regional aspirations to conquer the entire Middle East. So it was a huge threat. And so Israel and Arab countries had to say, listen, if we're going to counter this threat, we're going to have to do it publicly.

We can't do it behind the scenes. And so, yes, it was common opposition to that policy. The president administration also did something that no other administration has done. And I'm saying going back not to Obama, not to Clinton or Bush, but actually to Truman, back in the late 1940s, early 1950s, where this administration said, you know something, Israel doesn't have to give up any territory to make peace. It doesn't have to. And guess what? If the Palestinians leave the table, I am not going to reward them from the leave the table. I'm not going to give them an embassy.

I'm not going to give them money. I'm going to penalize them for leaving the table. Imagine that. And that is what has happened. That is what's enabled Israel and the other Arab states to take away the veto power from the Palestinians and to move forward bilaterally. And it's a stunning achievement. It really is a breakthrough. Well, you know, having been the ambassador from Israel,

It seems to me you know what you're talking about more than anyone practically on the planet. And it's important to us in this era of fake news, unfortunately, that we try to get this very, very important news out. I mean, this is a staggering thing. And you know and I know that the New York Times in particular, they have such a hostility to this president. They can't even report on what you would think they would feel obliged to. to celebrate. And it is the wedding with a double D, the wedding of the most innovative country in the world, which is this country, Israel, with one of the wealthiest countries in the world, which is the UAE.

And that's going to be transformative, not just for the Middle East, it's going to be transformative to the world. Just, you know, hold onto your hat and see what happens with this. Talk about that for a minute, because most people in my audience and I for sure know almost nothing about the UAE. What do you mean that this partnership will bear some kind of positive fruit? beyond not leading to war. Because this is, again, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, per capita,

perhaps the wealthiest country in the world. And it has a leadership that is looking to enter into different fields other than just oil wealth, particularly, you know, alternative energy, cybersecurity, water technology. They want to move away from that dependence on oil. And we're here to help. Israel is the world's leader in water technology. We account for 20% of the world's investment in cybersecurity. We are the world's leader in autonomous driving.

Those cars are going to drive themselves in 10 years. We're the leader. We're the world leader in 3D printing. I can go on and on. So we are here with the investment of the UAE. Can you imagine the type of transformations we can affect for the human condition? It seems historical to me. I guess I want to ask you, do you think that there was a particular animus against Israel by the previous administration? It struck me that that was the case, and that is the case among leftists, not all Democrats, but leftists. And it seems to me that I did see that in the previous administration. Well, I worked very close to that administration, and I had a very good relationship with many people, including the president and respect for that president on a personal level.

We had deep policy differences. We had deep policy differences on the Palestinian issue. That administration was utterly convinced that the core conflict of the Middle East, not between Shiites and Sunnis or Iranians and Arabs. No, no. The core conflict was the Arab-Israeli-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The core of that conflict was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. the core of that conflict was the settlement issues and Jerusalem issues. And if you solve the settlements, you solve Jerusalem, you solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem,

you have basically brought peace to the entire Middle East. Now, that sounds bizarre, doesn't it not? But literally, that was the doctrine of that administration. And that administration also believed that by interacting with Iran, giving it money, enabling it to have a nuclear program, Iran would become a responsible regional power. Let's leave it there. We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to Michael Oren. You won't go away. Hi there, folks. Welcome back. It's the Eric Mataxis show. I'm talking to the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. To be clear, Michael Oren now can say anything he likes because he's not

even the deputy ambassador. I was unclear on that. Michael Lauren, it's just great to have someone with your experience and knowledge, intimate knowledge, of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, especially under Barack Obama, who's able to talk openly about it. You were just saying when we went to the break that the Obama administration was convinced that making nice, nice with Iran would solve this problem. Trump called it the worst deal in history. How is it possible that one administration could be that far apart from another on something like this? It was purely ideological. I participated in many years of the highest level classified talks with our American counterparts about Iran. And Eric, we saw the same intelligence. We saw the same

photographs. We had the same interpretation of the Iran nuclear deal, but of the nuclear program, but we had profoundly different ideological takes on it, whereas we believe that the Iranian regime was a medieval jihadist regime, which existed to take over the Middle East, to destroy the Jewish state, to ultimately destroy America in the West, and though they may talk nice every once in a while, but that was their goal. The Obama administration believes that with quote-unquote mutual respect and a nuclear deal that Iran could be made, and here's another quote, into a responsible regional power. And we've seen how responsible it has become since 2015 by greatly enhancing its support for terror, from being involved in wars throughout the Middle East,

trying to kill us through terrorist proxies like Kizbollah and Hamas. It didn't work. When you talk about ideology, see, I mean, there are people who listen to this program from, you know, all parts of the political spectrum and faith spectrum. And I sincerely try to understand the other side. And what I seem to have concluded over time is that for some reason, liberals tend to be very naive about evil and they tend to think that everyone approaches the world the way we do. In other words, there's a kind of bono me among Americans, or at least until recently. And they don't seem to understand, you know, as Chamberlain didn't with Hitler, that there are genuinely wicked actors who will lie, who will do anything,

who don't share our modern liberal view of the world. That to me seems the tragic. That to me seems the tragic flaw. There are flaws on the conservative side, of course, but just to talk about the Obama administration, it really does seem that they had that kind of globalist, utopianist view of the world, and they put all their chips on the table with regard to Iran in that deal. It's a particularly also an American tendency. God was very nice to your country, Eric. You put you about 7,000 miles away from the Middle East and gave you some pretty good neighbors with oceans on either side. And you come into our region and everything looks very, very different from here. You go even to see a conservative American and remind him or her that the

Palestinians hold the world record for turning down a two-state solution of any people and turning down with violence. Going back to the 1930s, who remembers the 1930s? The British offered them a two-state solution in 1937. The UN offered them a two-state solution in 1947. They turned it down with violence. And to know that the Palestinians have been given more international aid than all of Europe under the Marshall Plan, and all that's been stolen by their own leaders.

The current leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, is now in the 15th year of a sixth term. So do Americans who support a two-state solution really want to create a state which is deeply corrupt and undemocratic? We don't have enough of those in the Middle East. So these are just sort of basic, irrefutable acts. How many people know them?

Well, I mean, I guess that's why I wanted to talk to you because I myself hardly know them. Again, the mainstream media has become increasingly allied with this kind of globalist worldview. It just doesn't seem to be able to call out corruption. It no longer talks about human rights and those kinds of things. We're dealing with that with Hong Kong and China. you know, you have genuine wickedness. We used to be able to see evil and to call it out and to go to war with it if necessary, however, whether an actual war or ideologically, we don't seem to be as ready to do that,

at least not on the left. And I think the Obama administration's attitude toward Iran kind of sums this up. I mean, it's bizarre. It does seem very ideological. It must have been frustrating for you. I mean, you can speak freely now, but how is it to talk to people like this knowing what's at stake? Well, you know, you see the white hair. Most of it was from those years in Washington. It was very frustrating. You know, some of the biggest frustrations, interestingly enough, was during the Arab Spring of 2011.

And here was a rare bipartisan moment in the United States where Democrats and Republicans got together and celebrated what they thought was going to be the outbreak of democracy, you know, in the Middle East. and Israeli intelligence officials were calling me and saying, are they crazy? Right. Do they understand what Middle Eastern cultures are, that women aren't going to have equal rights and children are on equal rights, and people with different sexual orientations are not going to have equal rights. And democracy is not just sticking a ballot in a box. And they're not going to have that either.

And it is not surprising to me or to us here that all these hopes of the Arab Spring were dashed and dashed very quickly because democracy developed in your country in the West over the course of 800 years, beginning with the Magna Carta. It didn't happen overnight. Didn't happen as a result of a protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo. And in getting Americans to understand that this is a profoundly different area with different cultural norms. And several years ago, I wrote a book called Power, Faith, and Fantasy, America in the Middle East, from 1776 to the present. One of the great, during the 1860s and 1870s, a lot of Americans came to the Middle East.

Ulysses Grant came, Tecumseus Sherman came to the Middle East. And they understood something that I think a lot of Americans have forgotten, which is, and I'm quoting them, this place is as alien as Jupiter to us. And unless we understand that they have a different culture, we will be fated to fail there. It was a very interesting observation. And it has stayed with me since writing that book. try to understand the Middle East as the Middle East and not just as Americans. Well, again, you know, it is fascinating to think when you even use the term Arab Spring,

I cringe that we use that term because at the time, even I knew this is a joke. This is a fundamental misunderstanding on the left and on the right of what ordered liberty is along the line. of American-style self-government ordered, liberty, and the kind of revolution, really a reformation that we had here is so dramatically different than what was going on over there. But the naivete of the Bushites, if I can call them that, and the naivete of the Obama administration, as you say, sort of shook hands.

And then we saw what we saw. But I'm amazed that conservatives, this is my big thing, really, which I got from Oz Guinness, but the Golden Triangle of Freedom, this idea that virtue and faith are central to self-government, it seems to me that the Bush gang forgot about that. They forgot that if you don't have a culture of virtue, a culture that respects the larger ordered liberty and the institutions, you can't just snap your face. and people stick their finger, stick a finger in purple ink, and voila, we're all Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

It's so, so true. I've just had a conversation with a dear friend in the United States who go on a name, but a very prominent journalist who was saying, listen, you know, Harvard's gone, New York Times has gone, we should make a new Harvard or New New York Times. And I said, I think this is putting the cart before the horse, because before you build new institutions, you have to have ideas. Those institutions have to stand for things. They have to stand for values. And you have to decide, first of all, what are these values that these institutions are going to instill an inculcate? And that is what is missing today. But I will say

something actually in favor of the neocons of the Bush era and the diplomacy of engagement during the Obama era, and that there was something in it that was quite beautiful. And what I mean by beautiful, there was faith in the human spirit. There was faith in the human aspirations for liberty and freedom. There was belief in the United States as an exceptional country that existed not just for its own liberty, but for the freedom of the world. And that was a very beautiful thing. Oh, no, no. Listen, we're going to go to break.

But on that, you're, boy, you've hit the nail on the head. That part of it was beautiful, not understanding how that was. works was tragic. We'll be right back to continue the conversation. Folks, I'm talking to Michael Oren. Don't go away. Hey folks, I'm talking to Michael Oren. I don't want to forget. He's not just the former Israeli ambassador to the United States. He's the author of fiction. As you know, that's close to my heart. He has a new book out called The Night Archer and other stories. We are going to get into that because I love the short story. I love fiction. But before we do, I want to ask you again, Michael, to talk further about, you said when I heard George Bush's second inaugural,

George W. Bush's second inaugural, I was surprised that people like Peggy Noonan and others kind of swatted it down as naive. I didn't understand where they were coming from. I do now, but at the time I saw what you were saying was that there was a faith in the so-called human spirit. There was something beautiful in this. And this is what I've written about in my book, if you can keep it, is that America is the nation for others, that we have a divine mission to spread our means to wealth, our means to freedom, to try to get the whole world to participate with us in this glorious experiment in ordered self-government and liberty. And when we lose sight of that, we're no longer America. So that was the upside to me.

of what the Bush and the neocons saw. But what they didn't see, as we're discussing, is that it's not so easy. You don't simply kill Hitler or Saddam Hussein, and then suddenly, voila, you know, everybody is a minute man from our revolution. It's much more complicated, and we've seen tragic failure and loss of blood and treasure as a result of that miscalculation. it's hardwired into the American idea.

It goes back to pilgrim times. It goes back to Puritan times. It's the city on the hill. And the city out of the hill illuminated not just New England. It was designed to brighten the entire world. And again, it was a beautiful vision. But there's also a world out there which is very different than New England. And it has different values than the Puritans.

And that is what American foreign policy, certainly in the last, in this century has smacked up against, as you said, often with a loss, a great amount of blood and treasure. What's extraordinary about this country, if I may, is that Israel is one of the maybe five or six countries in the world that's never known a second of non-democratic governance. And we're also the only country on that list was never known a second of peace, which is amazing. And I have been a participant in that democratic process, and it is deep and it is robust. And I think, you know, that our two democracies have a great deal to learn from one another. Well, look, it was Lincoln who called America the almost chosen people. And I think

people misunderstand that when you are chosen by God, if you are chosen by God, to the extent that you're chosen by God, it is a burden because you're chosen for others. In other words, you're not chosen so that it's you and yourself. You are chosen specifically as a messenger as an ambassador of an idea of a faith. Obviously, the Jews were chosen to be the ambassadors of the God of the Bible to all of the other nations. And for that, have paid a horrific price through the millennia. It seems to me that to the extent that a nation is chosen, it is a great burden. And so I really do think that that's part of the reason we have such a special relationship with Israel, we in the United States. I want to ask you about your own story because I know that you are

a U.S. citizen and an Israeli citizen. Tell us, if you don't mind, where you grew up and how this all happened. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. My parents, now 95 and 92, married for 72 years, live in the same house I grew up in. I was American upbringing, you know, football, baseball, all that. But my father was a veteran of World War II. He and his brother landed on Normandy, fought in the war. At points, you know, came in contact with the Holocaust. They actually took pictures.

My uncle took a entire photograph album of one of the death camps. And I lived in a tough neighborhood. I used to get beat up every day for being Jewish. I was the only Jewish kid in the neighborhood. When I come home all bloody, my father would show me those pictures and said, you see that, you see those bodies. That's why we need a strong state of Israel. I grew up during the period of the six-day war

when we thought Israel was going to be destroyed and we got up on the seventh day and Israel was victorious. So, you know, I was damned if I was going to be in New Jersey. I wanted to get a part of the most exciting chapter in Jewish history, certainly in the last 2,000 years. And I've never regretted. It wasn't easy.

I went into the military, served in the paratrooper, several wars. Now, you remind me of my friend Mark Helprin. and you must know him. Oh, I have his book literally behind me on the shelf, right? If you can see where it was refiner's fire right there. Oh, my gosh. But, I mean, it kind of strange parallels between the two of you.

Big influence. Yeah, well, listen, I adore his writing, and now I adore him as a person and as a friend. But so when did you move to Israel? So I started coming here when I was a kid working on a farm. I like to think I'd like to think I'm a better writer than I was a farmer. I tried. I was rode on horses and sort of rasseled up cows on the Golan Heights.

The only problem we had was minefields. And but after I finished being a farmer, I went to the school. I studied Middle Eastern history. Got my PhD at Princeton and then came back. I was involved in academia. I've been a visiting professor at your alma mater. for twice, actually. In what?

In what? In Middle Eastern history. Yeah. Two courses, yeah, one was the history of America in the Middle East and the military history of the Middle East, which I love that course. And actually, we're going to go to another break here. Folks, I'm talking to Michael Oren, O-R-E-N. The book is The Knight Archer and other stories.

This is the Eric Metaxus show. Don't go away. Make like the worlds your pudding but like the brand. Hi folks. These uncertain times can cause uncertain gut slowdown. Worrying fear can wreak havoc on our digestion, making it hard to feel optimum. Bloading, less energy, and occasional constipation can slow you down in your daily activity. Try life change tea to get the tea.com.

Life change tea can help get things moving so you can get that boost of energy you need. Life Change T helps protect and defend your health from intruders. It's a weird time right now with all the uncertainty, so gear up and defend your health. Where do you go to purchase? Log on to gettetatcom. That's get the tetea.com. The specials are on the front page and we have numerous supplements to help combat intruders. It's time to take charge of our health and to feel better in life.

It's time to live. Again, get thetie.com. That's get thetie.com. com. Get the t.com. It is so worth it. Get the T-T-E-A.com. Folks, I got some embarrassing news to share with you, but you know what? This is just the kind of a show where I don't care. I'm willing to lay my heart, you know, on the line. Here's the issue. Mike Lindell with my pillow. You may, you may notice that I have a bobble hell of him near me. He's here to remind all of us that when you go to my, MyPillow.com. You get whopping discounts if you use the code Eric. Now, there are a lot of people who haven't done that and we have your names here. And Chris Heim's Ann Albin pointed out to me that there's like three pages of you whose first name is Eric. You, yourself, I mean, that's humiliating for me

that even though your name is Eric, you're still not willing to use the code Eric. I mean, if you don't want to use it because it's my name, use it because it's your name. name. The point is that I see who you are, and I just feel humiliated by this. Please go to mypillar.com. It's okay, Mike. It's going to be okay. Go to mypillar.com.

Use the code, Eric. You're going to get whopping savings and really high-quality products. Did I mention that? Thank you. Folks, welcome back to Sierra Dachachish. I'm talking to Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States of America, and currently

the author of the Knight Archer and other stories. Michael, at some point, did you change your last name? I'm unclear on that. It's very common in Israel to Hebraecize your name, to symbolize and emphasize that we've come home to our ancestral homeland after two millennia and the diaspora. So almost all the Israelis you know,

whether Benjamin Netanyahu or David Ben-Gurian or Golda Meyer, that wasn't their original names. And they've taken names that evolved. their original names. My family's original name was Warnstein and Ornstein, so I became Orrin, which means pine tree in Hebrew. It's sort of like Jones and Smith in this country. People say to me, why did you take a more original name? And it might get my children, grandchildren have that name now too, and I'm very proud of it. Well, you, so yeah, you were here in the Ivy League and when did you, when did you then move full time to be?

in the 1970s, when Israel was a very different country, very poor country, and it was sort of a backwater, no high tech, it was agricultural mostly. And the television had just been introduced here. And people didn't have cars, didn't have his phones. And I have watched this country go through the profoundest transformation. It's hardly recognizable. Israel today is generally regarded as probably the seventh or eighth most powerful country in the world with only 10 million people. in it because we have the world's leaders in innovation, because we have a citizen's army, which, believe it or not, is more than twice as large as the British and French armies combined.

Isn't that amazing? And the world-class universities, good water that you drink out of the faucet in the Middle East, and all that. So, and a democracy. So to be part of this has been one of the great privileges of my life. Do you suppose that a part of the hatred of Israel that we see in parts of the Arab world is pure jealousy? I mean, it's hard really to make sense of that kind of visceral hatred. They say it. You don't have to guess about it.

We have, you know, every once in a while we're treated to, you know, an op-ed or a speech by a leader that says, you know, this can't be. There's 300 million of us and 10 million of them. And why do they have all this and we've got nothing? they've got nothing. I mean, right now, the entire Arab world has no manufactured exports. Zero. Actually lags behind South, sub-Saharan Africa. Now, hopefully with this peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, we're going to change that.

And we're going to bring the Arab world, certainly in terms of technology and finances and production into the 21st century. Well, I mean, again, you see similar ideological wines in the United States. You've got those who are wedded to kind of a victimhood mentality who want to blame whoever's on the other side as the oppressor. But I think more and more now you have people thinking that, no, no, no, that's not working for us. It hasn't worked for 50 or 60 years. Maybe that's a lie. maybe if we adopt this way of going about things, we can partake in that wealth. I certainly hope that's what's happening in the Arab world, starting with the UAE.

Let's talk about your fiction. When did you start wanting to write fiction? That's not a typical thing. Very few people write fiction. What led you to that? It started when I was 12 years old. And I didn't want to write fiction. Fiction sort of, I guess, wanted me to write it.

I came home from school one day and I had this strange feeling. I sat down and what came out was a poem. It was called Who Cries for the Soul of the Pigeon, a rather tragic poem for 12-year-old. And I sat down and wrote an entire collection of poems that I tried to get published when I was 813. And from poems, I went on to plays, to movie scripts. And I also have a novel coming out this year, so I write novels. But I love the short story form. The short story form for me is like the haiku of writing, you know.

So a novelist, and I know you write in different forms as well, I imagine you write children's stories, and writing children's stories requires tremendous discipline, probably more discipline that takes to write adult stories. True? Oh, there's no question. There's no question that short fiction is harder than long fiction, and writing for children is harder than writing for adults. There's no question about it. Who was it some famous writer, you know, who I think wrote a short story and somebody asked, what does it mean? and that's the point. You can't boil it down to what does it mean. You read it and that's what it means. It's something else entirely. Entirely. I was going to talk to you about one story if I can,

a story called Metaxus. If you get a chance to read it. Are you kidding? Well, metaxis. It's actually my favorite story. I'm referring to the concept that's in Plato's symposium that is introduced where Plato is discussing the dual nature of human beings,

that we are both by nature, and we have a human nature, a mortal nature. And the story is set on the American frontier in 1841. I had to study the language of the dispatches of the U.S. Army for 1841 to get this right. This is where I become an historian. But it's about an encounter between an American major who has, in a background, both his father was a preacher, he has a background in church faith, in Christian faith,

but he also has a background in Greek learning and knows there's a symposium very well. And this major encounters in the mountains of the American frontier of the 1840s, encounters a monster who is part man and part not man. And he refers back all the time to metaxis, the concept of the duality of human nature. And so going back to you talking about, I want the story to be entertaining story. I want it to be a riveting story,

but I also wanted to say something about the human condition. Now, I think I've not heard that my surname refers to Plato's idea. I guess there's a Greek word metaxi, which means in between. And I think, and that's probably, so it's a different route. My surname comes from the root silk or silk merchant or silk, you know, silker. But how wild that there's a story in your book with that name. I really almost can't believe it. I'm, you know, a little stunned here.

Right. And he gets to the name because the Indian word, the Native American word for this monster, sounds a lot like metaxis. This is too much. How do we get a copy of this book? Okay, so that is really so insane. I can't believe it. So you seem to be a fabulous if I don't get to use that word very often. Very few people write, you know, in the way that Marquez did, Garbio-Marquez or others, where you're willing to come. kind of meld our reality with another reality. You know what? We're going to go to a break. We will be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Michael Oren,

who has a book called The Night Archer and other stories. And of course, one of those stories has my name as the title, very strange. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, final segment in this hour with Michael Oren. You now know him, not just as the former Israeli ambassador to United Nations, but as the author of a short story with the title, Metaxus, what's not to love? I ask you.

Listen, it's so funny. The book is The Knight Archer and other stories. I can't wait to read it, Michael. You just mentioned this one story, which reminds me in some ways of Marquez. He wrote along those lines. Who are your inspirations as a fiction writer? Well, Philip Roth, Tim O'Brien, Elizabeth Straff. who, really people who write short stories,

I think what I set out to do in my collection was to not get bogged down in one genre. These 50 stories, each one is very, very different. And some of them may be, sound like magical realism, but some of them are very real set in history. And to me, short story writing is freedom. I can be anywhere, be anything, anytime I want to be.

And, you know, it's like that kid who left New Jersey for the great, you know, wild west of the Middle East, it's freedom. Well, I guess I've always been a fan of range, and I would say maybe that's because that's the one thing that I know I have is range. I'm very eclectic and confusing probably. When you're writing this way, I know that an agent or anybody in publishing would say, no, no, no, don't do that.

You need to focus. You need to be known for something. Oh, no. If you have a day job, if you're an ambassador or a teacher or something, you don't need to worry about that so much. And I think a lot of people would also say, look, short stories, you can't write short stories anymore because it's Saturday evening post. And all of those places that would pay for short fiction don't exist. So it's no longer something you can make money doing. And so you're obviously not in this for the money.

I'm not in for the money, but you know something? I've got a wonderful wife here who tells me, you know, once upon a time they said that a children's book that was 600 pages long about magicians wouldn't sell either, right? Yeah. So you never know. It could change. Tomorrow, the world could go crazy about short stories, especially in the age of Corona, where, you know, there's only so much Netflix you can watch, right? They're going to run out of things to stream. So the perfect thing for Corona is to sit with a book where you can read a story in an entire story.

story in a matter of minutes. Most, none of my stories are more than, say, two, three, four pages long. Actually, the Patax's story is the longest story of the book at about eight pages. And, I mean, honestly, that's so hilarious. Look, I am in violent agreement with you. I have to say that I'm always kicking against the market and market forces because time tells, wisdom leads you to know that if you follow them, you know, what do they say, he who marries the zeitgeist will soon be a widower.

You know, whatever they say you can't do tomorrow, it could be the hot thing, and everybody will try to copy it. You mentioned the book, you know, the first Harry Potter book. People told me the same thing about the Bonhoffer book. It's 600 pages long. It's about a German theologian. No way will that sell. And I thought, well, I...

It was number one of the year of times list, I remember. All I can do is do what I think I'm supposed to do, and it's in God's hands, frankly. And so you've obviously done that. that with this book. But I do think you're right. People are looking for something short to read. It's one of the reasons I love fairy tales, you know, reading Grimm's fairy tales or reading Hans Christian Anderson. There's just something wonderful about having something packaged that tightly. And, you know, for, I don't know, I remember your story from the, from the prayer breakfast. I think you were sort of an ADHD kid. You were. Yeah, before they had medicine.

With ADHD, these are great, short stories are great. I think you're right. Listen, we're going to keep you for part of another hour. So, folks, you can go to our YouTube channel, the Eric Mattaxas show on YouTube in case your broadcast outlet doesn't carry our two. Michael, thank you for this hour, and we'll continue.