–Rightwinger Shmuel Rosner attacks J Street in the Jerusalem Post, saying that it betrayed Israel by supporting Donna Edwards, the Maryland congresswoman, even after she criticized Israel over the Gaza slaughter.
–Leftwinger Richard Silverstein attacks J Street on his site, saying that it should have remained silent on the Toronto international film festival, rather than rallying behind the Tel Aviv theme of the festival.
So…. J Street is right where it wants to be.
Much as I agree with Silverstein, J Street is proving incredibly effective in the leadup to a conference next month that is designed to make the AIPAC policy conference look like the Soviet Union. As MJ Rosenberg pointed out to me, the old lobby never got the loving coverage that the new Israel lobby got in the New York Times Magazine today. This isn’t just an image game. J Street is making a play for the Jewish center. It is trying to drive a wedge in the Jewish community with a program that says, We love Israel but the occupation is a bad thing that will kill Israel. J Street seems to think that it can win 60 to 70 percent of the American Jewish community with that program; and thereby expose the religious conservatives and neocons who make up the backbone of AIPAC as a mere 30 or 35 percent of the Jewish community.
And as for the universalist Jewish left, who get a sick feeling when we hear J Street trumpeting "Jewish democracy" in Israel (for some reason we weren’t crazy about "white democracy" in the south, either), well– honey, we’re a fringe. I think we’re about 5 percent of the Jewish community, optimistically. Yes, we’re growing, but we’re a fringe. And politically, where else can we go now? We’re just like Obama’s progressive base watching Obama sell us out on the public option and Afghan war. We may have been essential to J Street’s rise, as the anti-Iraq left was to Obama’s nomination. But J Street doesn’t need us now.
J Street’s play is the Obama play. J Street thinks this is the last chance for the two-state solution. They want to build political capital for Obama in the American Jewish establishment so that he can put pressure on Israel over settlements, as he promised the Arab world in Cairo. This is the "great game" of foreign policy today–as the great game of the 19th century was imperialist chess. And The New York Times can aid that effort. Silverstein’s blog and this website are sitting in the bleachers.
Yes, we’re on the J Street side of the stadium. I’m going to bash J Street over its support for Israeli propaganda at Toronto, but on its central goal– getting a peace deal with Barack Obama, in the face of AIPAC–I’m for that. I think it’s a nice dream; and I’m going to do my part to support J Street in this larger political effort because it would be an improvement over what’s there now, and might pave the way for a struggle for democratic freedoms, in Tel Aviv and Cairo too.
I just don’t think that dream is realistic. Netanyahu continues to build settlements, Palestinians live in Warsaw ghetto-like conditions in Gaza and apartheid conditions in the West Bank. Those are the facts, which J Street doesn’t talk about. As Silverstein notes, the left’s achievement is a campaign of awareness inside the U.S. about Palestinian history and conditions–and the cruelty of the so-called peace process. "J Street is fighting a rear guard action in defense of the indefensible," says Silverstein. "The Israeli government must be confronted wherever in the world it attempts to advance its political agenda."
Because we’re progressives who know what’s going on, we’re not powerless. Even as J Street summons American Jews to hold on to the dream of a "Jewish democracy" in Israel by ending the occupation, but it knows that Jewish democracy isn’t a happy place for minorities. Skinheads in England are waving the Israeli flag! If the two-state solution fails and Jim Crow continues (the strong likelihood), J Street’s thinkers are going to come to us, not Avigdor Lieberman.
Another reason we’re relevant is the J Street letter in support of the Toronto film festival. It’s aimed at Jews. J Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami wants to " gather the names of 100 prominent Jewish Americans" to sign his letter. Is this any way to run a democracy? Hell no.
And J Street knows that, too. In Jim Traub’s NYT article, Ben-Ami bragged about all the intermarried kids on the organization’s staff. We universalists have a much wider horizon than Jewish life. We define community differently from J Street.
How long can the Jewish community contain this issue within its walls? How long can the Israel lobby, even the reconstructed Israel lobby, insist that our foreign policy is chiefly the business of American Jews? Not for long. I think J Street knows that too. It’s only a matter of time. The critique of the Israel lobby continues to reverberate within American public life, as even the Atlantic, which forced Walt and Mearsheimer to publish their criticism in England, now concedes. And when other politicized American groups are assertive about their stake in this issue, the lobby– by any name, call it AIPAC or J Street–loses power. Till then, I’m with J Street.
Why is it that gentiles are at a disadvantage at discussing the U.S.- Israel relationship?
Because under the default of all goys are by nature anti-semtic, they can’t get amywhere–why? Because the MSM holds close to its heart the same default. Why?
Because goys are indoctrinated from childhood to always default to a recognized bias aganst Jews. If you think about it, the question is raised, why just people of Christian heritage, regardless if they are now agnostic or atheist? I can’t wait for the answer.
I’m afraid that J Street is placing its faith on a very weak reed in Barack Obama. As he has disappointed on every other progressive issue, he will cave on the issues regarding Israel.
Yep, potsherd, I couldn’t agree more.
For me, the only interesting thing left about Obama is whether his failure as a progressive voice comes from his political ineptness or as a result of his own non-progressive values.
Let’s just say, imho, that I would characterize him as an inept non-progressive. I think that fits.
“Inept non-progressive”. Sounds about right to me. I think that’s why he had such appeal for the MSM and the powers-that-be. They knew that nothing of significance would change. All hail the status quo.
Indeed postherd,
It is the very fact that Obama is weak and that he will innvitably cave that Ricahrd Witty is placing so much faith in his plan. He knows nothign will come of it, but can always pretend that he in sincere in his desire for justice for the Palestinians.
I bet that’s axactly what J Street is counting on.
I also think it likely that he will, and I think that any chance for a two-state solution vanished a long time ago. However, neither Pres. Obama’s inability to follow through tactically (and we should give him credit for even trying; it’s a vast improvement, and his efforts are far from over) nor the present inviability of a two-state solution invalidate J-Street’s accomplishments. They’ll be around long after he is gone, and his successors will face the same security imperative requiring challenge of the Lobby, and a much less hostile political environment in which to maneuver.
Israel as a Jewish state is toast in the long-term, but a realignment of American Jewish political power away from radicals will greatly soften or eliminate the social damage to Jewish standing in post-colonial-Israel America. Greater contributions from American Jews isolating and defeating the radicals ‘from within’ the Lobby (defined as a heterogeneous collection of social and political organizations), i.e. a change in leadership, lessen the degree of combativeness necessary for the confrontation ‘from without’. American Jews deserve as soft as crash landing as possible from the end of political Zionism. Talk of its demise may sound presumptuous if one is thinking on 5 year time scale; I am thinking on a 50 year time scale.
Here is the deal. Israel will continue resisting the two state solution. They’ll continue to demand their right to be racist.
Eventually, the state will collapse. The question is whether the collapse will be similar to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Algeria…or Nazi Germany. Of course the nightmare scenario is a defiant mad-dog Israel launching nuclear weapons on the US and Europe. “If we can’t get what we want, we’ll bring you down too.” Since the US Congress is in the death grip of AIPAC, the outlook for the USA is not very good.
No question the emotional root is the Samson option. Personally, I think this will
bring the world a 3rd world war–within the next couple of years.
matter, thank you for that article by Joseph Massad. It is nothing short of brilliant. Highly recommended to all readers. Thanks again.
link to weekly.ahram.org.eg
I’m hopeful and supportive of J Street, but disappointed by its stance at TIFF. Perhaps it saw it as an opportunity to proselytze to progressive Jews by glomming on to the falsehood that there was a “boycott” that called into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv and Israel proper.
My problem with this is that J Street alienated 1,000 allies it had — the people who took a professional risk to put their names on John Greyson’s Toronto Declaration. Rabbi Hier has already sent out a clarion call to have the Jane Fonda and the rest of the Toronto 1000 to be ostracized in Hollywood like Mel Gibson was for stating to a Malibu cop that most of the wars in the world were agitated by Zionists. (Um, maybe it wasn’t excatly a proper forum, and maybe Mel wasn’t in the most cogent shape, but . . . after careful consideration of the facts surrounding the “Clean Break” neo-cons running the Bush Administration’s “Office of Special Plans,” didn’t he kinda sort-a have a point?)
I think one of the many fallacies that J Street reinforces is that the discussion of US policy regarding Israel is for Jewish Americans, that their opinions should matter more than other Americans in this instance. While we naturally hope that J Street undermines AIPAC’s extremism, i think many of place more hope in broader movements for peace and justice in the Middle East. Why not coverage of the current US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation conference now just concluding in Chicago?
Shmuel Rosner of the Jerusalem Post did not criticize J Street for supporting Edwards for her vote on the Gaza resolution. He wrote , “Helping Edwards get elected was an achievement. But what happens in the not-very-unlikely-case that Edwards says something on Israel that is way off? J Street’s achievement will become J Street’s embarrassment.”
Mr. Weiss, you were either mistaken. Or you are a liar. Which is it?
wj – why the nastiness and namecalling? It’s clear that Rosner’s remarks were critical of J Street’s endorsement of Edwards as likely to embarrass the organization.
I’m sorry for giving Mister Weiss a choice between admitting his mistake and accepting the sobriquet synonymous with disingenuousness. It is clear that Rosner feels that J street’s endorsement of Edwards is likely to embarrass J street. But Mister Weiss, a journalist, did not say this in his lead paragraph. Reread the first paragraph and then reread what Rosner wrote. They are not at all the same. When a journalist gets something wrong in his first paragraph he oughta admit it, n’est pas?
wj,
You’ve already proven that you can jump the gun when you implied that another poster was likely making things up when he cited the 1 to 5 disadvantage in Israeli government educational for non-Jewish Arab children, when it was clearly proven to be an accurate description according to knowledgeable Israeli sources. So why do you insist on using the same accusatory tone in this instance when you have little other than your own opinion to back it up?
Rosner not only wrote the words you cited. At the start of his quote from Traub, he described J Street’s fundraising for Edwards this way:
I would consider calling something “troubling” as qualifying as a criticism. Perhaps you don’t, but it does seem very reckless to insist that Phil is lying just because you disagree with his interpretation of what a criticism is.
“educational” should read “educational funding” in my above post.
I will quote Mister Weiss: Rightwinger Shmuel Rosner attacks J Street in the Jerusalem Post, saying that it betrayed Israel by supporting Donna Edwards, even after she criticized Israel over the Gaza slaughter.
Now I will quote Mister Rosner’s opening sentence: Traub also recounts the one very troubling but important achievement of J street’s.
If you feel that this is accurate journalism then I apologize to you. I do not consider this accurate journalism. I consider it loose with the facts. Mr. Weiss is not a liar, he is just loose with the facts.
Rosner also says: “If James Traub (the writer) didn’t find anyone who’d agree to do such thing, it only means that he wasn’t making enough effort. I can find people who will happily criticize J Street on the record, day and night, shine or rain. “
This clearly implies that Rosner shares the critical attitude towards J Street, and would be happy to publish more of it.
I apologize for my inaccuracy of claiming that Rosner’s piece was not critical of J street. It was. But clearly the charge of “betrayal” is a very harsh one. Read the comments here some time and see if Jews or Zionists are not often accused of being traitors. The commenters don’t say, “This is very troubling.” They say, “The Jews are traitors.” Betrayal and traitors come from the same root, I believe. Rosner found J street’s support for Edwards troubling. He did not call it betrayal. There is a difference. You know that and I know that and Mister Weiss knows that. That’s why I call it shoddy journalism.
The commenters on Rosner’s article certainly called JStreet traitors.
Two Jewish groups argue over the direction U.S. foreign policy should take. And the Palestinians continue to burn.
I wonder what the Palestinian friend you spoke to a while back thinks of J-Street.
Doesn’t J-Street realize that the U.S. foreign aid to Israel it supports goes directly to destroying the remaining Palestinian culture?
J-Street supporters, please contact J-Street and ask them how they reconcile continued support of U.S. aid to Israel with their alleged interest in the welfare of the Palestinian people. . I have tried, and they don’t answer me. Maybe if you’re a paying supporter, they’ll give you an answer.
Dan, this is a really good question. I have also asked J-Street this question and they ignore me. I wonder what Phil and Adam have to say about it? I don’t think they’ve
even asked the question. In this omission, they are in bed with cut Dick Witty.
Citizen, I wrote J-Street two letters (the other being about the condescending, dismissive tone they took towards the Palestinians in one of the petitions they asked me to sign) – neither one was answered.
That J-Street is the more “respectable” answer to AIPAC is a clear indication of moral bankruptcy. If this is the road that Jewish progressives have to go down in order to eventually come around, then so be it. I understand that universalists are only a very small percentage of all Jews, so I guess a gradual change in course is the optimal way to change attitudes going forward. And I hope that universalists such as Phil and Adam (I don’t know if Adam has ever described himself as a universalist) will continue to put pressure on “progressives” who think that J-Street is the be all and end all of Jewish humanistic tendencies.
But I can’t in good conscience be involved with J-Street.
RE: “Silverstein’s blog and this website are sitting in the bleachers.”
MY COMMENT: In one sense yes, but as a practical matter not quite so! They help to define and document the ‘left’ and thereby lend credibility to J Street’s claim of being ‘centrist’.
Very good post, Phil. I like the combination of idealism and pragmatism, the way you hold onto your universalist human values while at the same time recognizing the political realities.
To my own surprise, I’m sorta curious to see what probably silly criticism Richard W will make, but he doesn’t seem to be the first one here.
ot — but has anybody looked at the trailer to “Lebanon”, the Israeli take on the attack on Lebanon. Link via Drudge. Supposedly garnering awards in some film festival.
I say “supposedly” for even without Hebrew it’s clearly a piece of sentimental dreck. Having watched it, a sense of relief came over me. If this is best the gonif “State” can come up with in the “war for hearts and minds”, the Righteous have nothing to fear.
I’ll tell you, as a member of what you call the “Jewish universalist left,” I face internal conflicts all the time when thinking about J Street’s particular brand of pragmatic ambiguity. But one must be fair, as I believe perhaps you are not, and acknowledge that J Street does not openly endorse an ethnocratic Israel. Insofar as it inveighs on Israel’s internal character at all, it merely advocates for “democracy” and the continued existence of a “Jewish home.” It eschews the phrase “Jewish state” just as it conspicuously avoids any further elaboration on what it might mean to be “pro-Israel, pro-peace.” The “pro-Israel” designation is an empty shell, left for J Street’s (unspoken) target audience of American Jews to fill with whatever content might appease their conscience.
Nor can they be said to reject universal inclusive values in favor of an insular conception of “Jewish community.” J Street doesn’t operate on that plane of discourse and to depict it that way is a misrepresentation. You might note that Rivlin and Ben-Ami went trolling for Jewish signatures “as individuals,” not as representatives of J Street. There is a reason they made that point explicit, and it’s because J Street simply doesn’t traffic in cultural representation. Again, it presents an open-ended political message that different types of people–universalists and Jewish chauvinists alike–can equally embrace. I think it would be a mistake to confuse their strategy of ambiguity with some kind of crude pandering.
They want to build a broad coalition. You can’t do that without a broad message.
Matt,
I’m not convinced that J Street merely advocates for “democracy.” Nor do I believe trolling for Jewish signatures “as individuals” creates a credible chinese wall from J Street, especially since Rivlin and Ben-Ami organized the letter out of J Street’s offices and signatures were to be sent to Isaac Luria, J Street Campaigns Director.
The open letter found the criticism of TIFF “short-sighted and shameful.” Telling someone they are acting shamefully is not an ambiguous, broad message in my opinion.
The open letter states that the two-state solution “… is the only way to secure Israel as a Jewish democracy and provide the Palestinians with a state of their own.”
I wrote Ben-Ami to ask what he, or J Street, or anyone else means by a “Jewish democracy”. I am confident that if this term had to be defined, neither Jews nor Israelis would be able to reach a consensus, just as Israelis have never been able to agree on a constitution.
Similar to a French democracy.
Oh, please, Richard, enough with the hasbara cr*p. An ISRAELI democracy would be similar to a French democracy. “Jew” is not the equivalent of “French” especially when a “Jewish state” has citizens who are not Jewish. All French citizens are French. All Israeli citizens are not Jewish, and those who are not Jewish are reminded of their inferior status on a daily basis.
One way to interpret J Street might be as an Americanized, generally ethnocentric Jewish interest that is attempting to reform the management of the larger ethnocentric Jewish enterprise into “Zionism with a human face” (along the lines of the Soviet Communist attempted reform and re-branding), or a “Kinder, gentler Zionism” along the lines of the Neocon/Bushcons’ attempted re-branding of the GOP.
I don’t consider Jewish attempts to preserve their culture as inherently ethnocentric, nor unreasonable. Weiss himself seems to be attempting to preserve or re-ignite his personal interpretation of Jewish political and social culture.
The problem with organized Jewish power is that it is just that — a culture that protects its own ethnocentric interests. It often confuses itself (as do its witless gentile collaborators) with a “great power” and possibly the basis and/or brain trust of a great civilization.
I think the Jewish Neocons, for example, were attempting to re-invent America and its far-flung satellites as a great civilization in its own right (not of a piece with Christian-centric Western civilization) that was/is, by its history, nature, and outlook philo-Semitic. (Satellite instead of contiguous territory being in a pattern with the long tradition of far-flung international Jewish networks.) And wherever American civilization conquered, Jews were to be accorded the highest respect, accommodation, and status.
I think the Obama administration and the Democrats’ foreign policy and disproportionately Jewish makeup at the highest levels of power betray an attraction to this organized Jewish agenda and conceit, and J Street and groups like it are trying to essentially retrofit Zionism into something more P.R. sophisticated that will be easier for subjugated peoples (including Americans) to accept as a colonial governorship and elite.
Chris, are you saying that J Street is trying to continue the conceit of Jews=Humanists now that many years of Israeli activity has found out
Israel is less than the ideals fought for by the USA goy grunts in WW2?
I’m not saying there are no authentically humanist or liberal Jews, because clearly there are. I’m saying elements of organized Jewry have cultivated and exaggerated the humanist reputation to bolster their own moral authority in order to exploit it for cynical power-solidifying purposes; and this is an established pattern going back (at least) to supposedly humanist Soviet Communist Jews who organized into post-revolutionary, self-promoting ethnocentric networks and cliques, (or never left their pre-revolutionary ones), and used their power to extract a vicious tribalist revenge.
link to palestinethinktank.com
Looking at the comments on Rosner’s piece at the JPost, and a hateful lot they are, I noticed one person claiming that JStreet’s members were traitors.
This is interesting. Traitors to whom, or what? To Israel? But JStreet is an American organization. The commenter seems to be implying that American Jews must be more loyal to Israel than the US, or they are traitors. When others imply that American Jews have dual loyalties, this is called anti-Semitism.
Or perhaps the commenter means traitors to the Jews. But this is essentially the same thing, insisting that US Jews must be more loyal to “the Jews” than their own nation.
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In my view J Street is merely a device used to stop the almost inevitable backlash against AIPAC. It is taking in hand, similar to Chris said of “gentler” appearance. I say this because it is impossible to establish any position from the “lack thereof.” Silence is not a good arbiter of ones position. If a group is going to distance itself even from the mild form of criticism displayed in the Declaration it is suspect indeed.
Dan makes a good point on the indiscriminate financial support of Israel, of which he has never received a reply. I think that siding with J Street is just a desperate attempt to find something of value that will effectively challenge AIPAC. The neocon support of Israel is not merely represented in 35% of the Jewish community, it is a reciprocal tool that has been groadly used to influence all of ME policy. Just like the lobby is not merely a minority of the Jewish community, but has a much larger base as Walt and Mearsheimer amply make clear in their book The Israel Lobby. J Street’s position just obliges it to “compromise” more and more with time, till at its core it becomes indistinguishable from the old AIPAC with merely a new face.
J Street agrees with Obama’s stance to AIPAC that going through the back room channels got us nowhere during Shrub’s eight years; to me, that’s a start–public disagreement with
Israel by POTUS serves to inform more Americans, e.g., of the very critical presence
of the settlements and their continued expansion as a major problem for the USA’s long term security, and it puts more pressure on die hards who just keep kicking the can down the road–until one
day it will explode in our face like the planes who hit the twin towers.
Obama, AIPAC, and J-Street all appear to agree not to even threaten to lower the USA’s very disproportional funding of
Israel or the matrix of companion sweetheart deals Israel enjoys unlike any
other foreign state.
The Traub article Phil references above as to The Lobby and J-Street is worthy of a second read in light of
all the comments made above because it suggest both lobbies actually are fighting
the same fight, that is, what is the best way to secure the security of Israel; it seems
to me the security of the USA is not their issue, but merely a tool:
link to nytimes.com
Exactly. J Street is almost precisely a response to the last chapter of Mearsheimer-Walt, so Jews can say “lobby what lobby, there are Jews on all sides of the issue.”
J Street vs. AIPAC; it’s the Council of Concerned Citizens vs. the Klan. Same racist goals, different outfits.
No matter how noble you pretend J Street is, it will never rise above being a front group for a nation of racists, thieves and killers.
Phil,
I’m glad that in summary you are with J Street.
If you scan your historical editorial selections though, you’ll find that your public and often insulting opposition far exceeds your summary of support.
If you were presenting your views fully and candidly, one would expect that the proportion of supportive comments would be in the 80% range, rather than the other way around.
Dick Witty, please explain your comment. Thanks in advance; we regular readers of Phil’s blog will appreciate it. Try not to be too abstract, that is, address the details
of any philosophy and agenda you put forth. Look at this exercise as akin to the Obamacare agenda–don’t be like Obama. Address the devil in in the details.
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