–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.
