Eli Cohen says findings reflect opinion of author alone, not his own assessment; anonymous diplomat blasts minister for 'throwing foreign service officials under the bus'
552 shares
On the afternoon of June 7, I was sitting down for a meeting at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv when my phone began to buzz and a message flashed on the screen.
“18 months after committee approval, Amira Oron finally okayed by government as Israel’s ambassador to Egypt,” it read.
“You just got a new ambassador today,” I said to the Egyptian diplomat I had been chatting with.
My host flashed a huge grin. “Everyone in Egypt knows Amira,” he said. “We’re delighted she’s coming. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
So had Oron. In 1991 as a cadet in Israel’s diplomatic corps, Oron told her friend Ditza Froim that she would be Israel’s first female ambassador to Cairo. It took 29 years, including a long delay following her initial nomination while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mulled installing Likud lawmaker Ayoub Kara in the post instead, but in 2020 the prediction came true.