Want to know what it felt like at J Street? Here’s one of the best moments I witnessed at the conference. (For the whole panel it’s from, watch it here.) My video begins with a beautiful question from a J Street conferee who says in some distress what so many people in J Street’s rank and file say in the wake of Gaza, that if J Street is getting behind a Jewish state without respect for the Palestinian minority, it can count her out because the soul of her existence is being a minority whose rights are honored in the U.S. "I know that this creates all kinds of conflicts with the narrative we’ve been raised on," she says wonderfully, but won’t Israel have to become secular to become a real democracy, and have peace?
As she’s speaking, you can see Doug Smith, a Christian activist who attended the conference, a gray haired guy two rows in front of her, nodding. And right in front of her on the right you can see Antony Loewenstein, the Australian anti-Zionist journo. Slender, darkhaired, in a dark blue shirt, with an orange lanyard round his neck.
Jonathan Chait of the New Republic responds to the woman and says, Look, you’re "a very small part" of the Jewish community, and this just demonstrates what I criticized J Street for: your base is to the left of the centrist message of the leadership– a true observation, by the way. And if the rank and file don’t take the message from the leadership, you folks will mean nothing, J Street will shrivel up and die. Chait then threatens the J Street rank and file with a peculiar power-politics blackmail. He says with the usual vagueness that he was talking with a Democratic political consultant the other day who told him that he likes what J Street stands for, but if J Street gave a candidate money, he would have to tell his candidate to give the money back because of "the mixed messages about Israel." Chait asserts that the consultant said that "once you’re in that position (the woman, questioning the religious character of the state), you’re out of the conversation."
And of course: You have no "mainstream role in American politics." I.e., keep Iraq-war-supporter Jonathan Chait in the forefront of the discourse!
Blogger Matt Yglesias then responds that if Israel isn’t a democracy, he’s going to choose democracy over Judaism. (I think he’s a little behind the curve: Judge Goldstone describes "persecution," and he’s right.)
J.J. Goldberg of the Forward ends the conversation wisely. He corrects Chait. The woman is not a tiny minority of the Jewish community. Watch it to see his exact statement, but actually a lot of Jews share her discomfort, he says, and they are bringing Jewish values to the conversation about Israel. Then J.J. talks about community– "what is a legitimate Jewish community." While there are hints of excommunication in what he says, he seems to allow that the woman is part of the "Jewish community" but she may not be part of the political community, the "lobby," because she doesn’t believe in Israel as a Jewish state.
Note the frankly religious characterization of the Israel lobby, from someone who diminished it when Walt and Mearsheimer came along.
A couple other highlights. As I move the camera around the room, you’ll see the blogger Spencer Ackerman on the right, clearly identified, and at 4:40 or so you’ll see the coeditor of this site Adam Horowitz (on the left side, near the front, red hair), who has written here that there is a disjunction between the J Street social movement and its political activities.
