A couple of news items relating to the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street over the past few weeks have shown that it's siding with the wrong people if it is honestly interested in a just and lasting solution to the situation in Israel/Palestine.
On one hand, you have Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, taking down Alan Dershowitz in a running debate on the Huffington Post. But actions speak louder than words, and J Street’s actions have aligned the group with right-wing apologists for Israel.
J Street allied itself with the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Israel’s consul general in San Francisco to successfully beat back the UC Berkeley resolution calling for divestment from companies that supply weapons to Israel for use in the occupied territories. J Street’s support of that effort was harshly criticized by some Israeli activists, who said the lobby group was “trying to gain political capital at the expense of dedicated peace activists.”
J Street is deeply concerned about preserving Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” character. But by supporting the likes of AIPAC in opposing the efforts of boycott, divestment and sanctions activists, it's actually making the two-state solution obsolete. If Israel doesn’t suffer any consequences for its colonization—something that AIPAC and the rest of the Israel lobby have been very successful at ensuring—then it is on a path to “national suicide,” as John Mearsheimer put it. What’s J Street going to say when nobody can deny that Israel is an apartheid state? Will it continue to ally itself with AIPAC, or will it be on the side of justice?
In a April 25th interview with Haaretz (h/t to Richard Silverstein), Ben-Ami expressed “deep respect for AIPAC and what they’ve accomplished. It’s hard not to be impressed over what they have done over many decades to establish such a deep US-Israel relationship.” Take that in. Is Ben-Ami really saying that he has deep respect for AIPAC muzzling open debate in the United States about Israel, ensuring that billions of dollars keep flowing to Israel with no strings attached, even when war crimes are committed?
After being left out in the cold by the Netanyahu government, it seems like J Street is being brought in. Its officials met with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren recently, and are now being recruited by the Netanyahu administration for the “front against Iran,” according to an Israeli media report that Didi Remez posted.
All of these news items cut to the core of J Street’s problem: how can you be “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” at a time when supporting Israel means supporting colonization, racism, and war crimes?
How will history view J Street 20 years from now? The group has to choose between being AIPAC-lite, in effect a supporter of apartheid, or a group dedicated to justice. I urge the organization to pick justice.
J Street put it plain, on which side they are. Just look into Wikipedia:
“During its first conference, Ben-Ami said that “[t]he party and the viewpoint that we’re closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima.”
So J Street aligns itself with Tzipi Livni, who is proud, that Israeli forces commited in last years Gaza massacre “real hooliganism”.
Questions left? One more quote from wikipedia:
“The initial support of J Street came from multi-billionaire George Soros, who for a brief time was associated with the organization. Soros pulled out before the initial launch, so as not to negatively affect the group.”
If you don’t know Soros, just google George Soros and “colored revolutions”. Its very close to US state financed regime change politics worldwide.
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Thanks, Bandolero. I didn’t realize that Soros started J Street. Puts a whole different cast on it.
Don’t get gullible and conspiratorial about Soros.
J Street is a popular movement.
Ohhhh – well then everything is just peachy.
J Street is still commited to an ethno centric state.
“J Street is still commited to an ethno centric state.”
Yup. It is like a “kinder, gentler face” on the same thing. It makes me think of brand Obama, there’s a lot of similarities.
The main reason they want a 2 state solution as far as I can tell is to actually make a Jewish state permanently possible, because they fear a Pal majority in the what Mearsheimer calls the “full blown Apartheid state”, which would, in his analysis, destroy any possibility of it in the long run.
One shoots and cheers while the other shoots and cries, two sides of the same coin, while Palestinians are robbed and die.
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Alex,
Sometime in your life you will realize that detemination doesn’t require over-simplification.
“Which side are you on?” has been played in hundreds of thousands of life or death issues over centuries.
Its the wrong question.
Do you think that J Street is affecting anything in any positive way? I say yes, strongly and objectively.
then,
Do you think that you are affecting anything in any positive way? I say yes, but not nearly as strongly as you could if you dropped the condemnation of those that aren’t in your small tent.
“Its the wrong question.”
Not wrong, just inconvenient for you to answer.
Its always the wrong question to a humanist.
Noone and no situation fits politically correct cookie categories.
Of course, Witty is not a universal humanist at all; he has freely admitted, as has eee, that his own children, and his extended ethnic family, take ultimate priority over those of The Other. He has called on all of us to agree with him such is reality. Neither Witty nor EEE Kant. They are both Zionists. They are both spiritual polygomists.
Please tell your children and your wife that in the event of a catastrophe, they can wait in line for your help.
Don’t be a hypocrite “citizen”.
I care more for the welfare of those that I am close to, and even indirectly so. But, I do care for others.
And, that makes the possibility of reconciliation and health, rather than your contorted math.
So, you’re now saying that you care equally for the welfare of Israelis, and Americans. Interesting.
And Zionism proves itself to be a deeply racist, deeply tribalistic, and thoroughly atavistic ideology.
Is that why you can’t fathom why a gay white art student in the Midwest actually cares about Palestinians? (Or Hondurans, or Haitians, or Sudanese for that matter.) You can’t fathom how somebody would be willing to sacrifice their own greed and self-interest for the sake of humanity as a whole?
Obviously, I was not referring to Citizen there in that second paragraph. :) I’m confident he can speak for himself.
I think you should care for Palestinians. And, if you want to call yourself a universal humanist, care for Israelis as well.
Zionism is many different things. In all cases, it is a transformation of a victim psychology to at least a participant psychology. I am so grateful for that transition.
For Zionism to be mature, it needs to evolve (not devolve) to good self-determination.
But, that is an evolution, a growth, not an elimination.
I could have sworn that Zionism was the internalization of permanent victim-hood as in:
Jews can not live with anyone else because the entire world hates Jews. Jews can only trust other Jews.
What evidence is there that Zionism is evolving? Settlement expansion continues at an incredible rate — during the Oslo process, between 1990 and 2000, the number of Israeli colonists on Palestinian land doubled — and multiple times in the last few years alone, the Israeli military has violated the sovereignty its neighbors on multiple occassions, culminating on horrendous systematic attacks urban civilian populations in 2006 an 2008.
Witty? You do not get to hold a gun to the Palestinian state’s head and say, “Well, you’re not doing what I say. Obviously you don’t care about the safety and security of the hostage.”
Settlement expansion has slowed to near zero.
You don’t read?
Define “near zero” and link some actual articles to back that up.
Speaking of reading….
link to guardian.co.uk
link to presstv.ir
Read Haaretz. They describe the settlement expansions as on hold, not being done.
Still licensed yes, but not being done, even when they are planned and obviously the settlers and expansionists desire that they proceed.
You back up your assertions as well, Chaos, if that is an important consideration of making an assertion to your mind.
So Israel only promises that it will build more settlements at a later date.
Thanks for the clarification, Witty. Oh, hey, and the link! You’re a first-class academic, you are.
RW, this isn’t particularly relevant here but I just had to comment that the capacity you have to keep firing back on this site – for YEARS – convincing absolutely NOBODY of ANYTHING is simply breathtaking.
Whether you realize it or not, you are enslaven to an ideology.
You obviously have intelligence and knowledge yet you seem to push the plight of the Palestinians to the same place I push the plight of say, battery chickens.
The ideology that I am “enslaven” to is that Jewish people are a people, and deserve to self-govern, and to do so in a humane way that adopts equal rights within its borders, is a good neighbor to those states that are willing to be good neighbors to it.
You want to call that “enslaved” go ahead.
The problem, Witty, is that you refuse to extend that consideration to other peoples. Namely, the Palestinians, although from your general attitude here I perceive an intense disdain from you of non-Jews in general and “weak” or “traitorous” Jews to some palpable extent.
We’ve seen you do nothing accept pay lip service to the ideals of democracy, social justice and civil rights, and then turn around and attack the very foundations of such when they obstruct the path of the Zionist enterprise.
You are, rhetorically speaking, the equivalent of an IDF bulldozer, trying to knock over, trample or bury anything (or anyone) that gets in your way.
“Read Haaretz. They describe the settlement expansions as on hold, not being done.”
On hold is meaningless because it clearly implies that they are being postponed until it is politically easier to do do. It’s much like prolonging an attack on Gaza until say the US Presidential elections, when ghe world’s attention has been diverted sufficiently to carry out a ceasefire violation.
Its hard to know what it implies.
It could imply that the intention (with confirming pressure from Obama) is that the settlement expansion is permanently stopped and that Netanyahu is keeping his internal political paths open to apply that.
Or, it could mean that Netanyahu still seeks expansion, that he hasn’t been converted to the reasoning that a continuing expanding Israel is not viable.
Or, it could mean that Obama has successfully and agilely contained Netanyahu’s ambitions.
And again you highlight your rampant racism. The Palestinians honor a cease fire and you label it “hudna” and accuse them of merely amping up for a strike on the Israelis. And for the sake of this crime that was never committed, you frame the atrocity that was Operation Cast Lead as “self defense.”
You’re no different than the Zionists that crowded around George W. Bush, urging for war in Iraq. It’s not about defense, is it? What it’s really about is proving that “Jews” have control.
You’re a sad man, Witty. It’s too bad you’ll never understand why people like Phil Weiss and Shmuel and Avi and Finkelstein and Chomsky and Medea Benjamin and Anna Baltzer aren’t afraid of us non-Jews.
You’ll forever be driven by the terror of the monster that isn’t actually under your bed at all.
“The ideology that I am “enslaven” to is that Jewish people are a people,”
What do you mean by “a people”? How does this affect the status of Australian Jews? Are they Australians like the rest of us, or something different?
“and deserve to self-govern, ”
Australian Jews have to vote like the rest of us (voting is compulsory in Australia), so they self-govern in the same way that I and other Australians self-govern. Or do they “deserve” some extra self-government?
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There is also the following from the current Forward.
link to forward.com
J Street’s national office distanced itself and its collegiate arm from Sherer’s article. J Street’s director of policy and strategy, Hadar Susskind, said in a statement that his group was “pleased that the Ambassador has accepted this invitation.
From Seth’s reference source:
“Jeremy Sherer, president of the Brandeis chapter of J Street U, the collegiate arm of the dovish Israel lobbying group J Street, offered a different criticism. In an opinion article in The Justice, Sherer wrote that while he personally disagreed with the politics of the current Israeli government, his bigger concern was that the choice of Oren would alienate graduating seniors who are not Jewish and who may be made to feel like outsiders on their last day at the university.”
Yeah, imagine that, non-jewish American students feeling as if they are strangers in their own land.
Citizen,
You need a nap. Are you going to tell me that American Jews feel comfortable in Notre Dame? And that white Americans feel comfortable in black universities?
So now the Israeli is in the business of dictating to American Jews how they should feel around their fellow “goyim” Americans?
The cesspit of ignorance strikes again.
link to campusministry.nd.edu
Consider the following, remembering that Jewish Americans constitute slightly less than 3% of the total US population:
Hillel’s Guide to Jewish Life on Campus (available at Hillel.org) provides information for colleges and universities around the world. The College Finder: Choose the School That’s Right for You! by Steven Antonoff, provides hundred of interesting college lists, including a list of private, and a list of public, colleges with the highest percentages of Jewish Students. Reform Judaism Magazine published a Top 60 List of Jewish Students on Campus, using estimated population statistics provided by Hillel.
These colleges and universities have large percentages of Jewish students:
Jewish Student Percentage Above 90%
Yeshiva University (NYC)
Jewish Student Percentage Above 60%
Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts)
Jewish Student Percentage Above 40%
Barnard College (New York)
Jewish Student Percentage Above 30%
Emory University (Georgia)
Pratt Institute (New York)
University of Harford (Connecticut)
George Washington University (D.C.)
Tufts University (Massachusetts)
University of Pennsylvania
Harvard University
Jewish Student Percentage Above 25%
Oberlin College (Ohio)
Washington University (Missouri)
Tulane (Louisiana)
Brown University (Rhode Island)
Columbia University (New York)
CUNY (Brooklyn & Queens, New York)
SUNY (Binghamton & Albany, New York)
Jewish Student Percentage Above 20%
Northwestern (Illinois)
Yale (Connecticut)
Long Island University (New York)
Cornell University (New York)
New York University (New York)
Syracuse University (New York)
University of Denver (Colorado)
University of Rochester (New York)
University of California at Santa Cruz
Jewish Student Percentage Above 15%
University of Maryland (College Park)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Rutgers (New Jersey)
McGill (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
University of Florida
So who needs to take a nap? You don’t live in the USA, eee, do you?
If so, you’d have a better grasp of the comfort level here of Jewish American students.
PS, eee, you might also take a gander at the rate of intermarriage here in the good old USA. It’s a tad different in your wonderful country, Israel.
Oh, eee, already has and he has already made a prognistication about the eradication of impure “assimilated” Jews. You can read it here, Citizen.
Thanks, Chaos, I will repeat what eee has to say here; it should be instructive about how eee, our Israeli beneficiary of US tax dollars (98% not Jewish), views the USA:
“As for the Jews splitting up, that won’t happen. The liberal Jews in the diaspora will be assimilated in a few generations. If you are married, you are most likely married to a non-Jew and your children will marry non-Jews (just because there are so many more non-jews than jews). Since you are non-religious and hate Israel, how will your kids be even connected to the Jewish people? If you don’t view the Jews as a nation, then you can only be a Jews if you practice the religion. Since you don’t practice the Jewish religion, why will your kids be Jewish? They won’t.
So no split. Your kind of Jews will just slowly disappear.”
Notice how eee assumes all US Jewish Americans hate Israel, and apparently with no relation to Israeli’s acts or USA values.
AIPAC has been so closely aligned with the right wing Israeli political parties that they (AIPAC) have only a small following among American Jews. So J-street was formed in order to try to capture support among those American Jews who can’t stomach AIPAC.
The policy differences between AIPAC and J-street are not terribly important, in my opinion. I won’t say that there aren’t any policy differences at all, just the differences are those of emphasis, and not differences of principle.
I just look at their website, and found this gem: “This week, a delegation of J Street Education Fund leaders are visiting Israel, the West Bank and Jordan on a trip aimed at providing a more complex and nuanced understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ”
For most people in the world, it’s pretty simple: Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. For J street, it’s “complex and nuanced.”
Note that the J street delegations are meeting with official Israelis, with Jewish settlers, and Fatah on the West Bank, with the Jordanian monarch, but they are not meeting with Hamas. Somehow a visit to Gaza was not included in the J street tour. And of course the difficult name “Goldstone” is nowhere to be found.
That says it all.
“For J street, it’s “complex and nuanced.” “
Yes, this is J-Speak
Jeremy Ben-Ami has been getting particularly irritating lately with his self-congratulatory remarks about how “nuanced” J Street’s positions are.
He’s describing accurately.
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Just to briefly pause, for a break, here is a side note on another great issue for the American people besides Israel, perhaps any light it sheds on Obama’s
shallow stance on Goldman Sachs might also shed some light on his equally shallow stance on Israel:
link to counterpunch.org
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I think they are more than ineffectual, they’re a hinderance. They’re role is to narrow the debate to the “acceptable” defined by the usual suspects. This is sort of OT.but illustrative of the Liberal Zionist mindset in rgards to Gil Scott Heron’s cancelation: link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
Their role. Godammit >;<
If one favors a one state solution, then those who favor a two state solution all look the same. But for those of us who favor a two state solution there is a big difference between AIPAC who backs whoever is in power in Israel and J Street who backs a two state solution. Currently with Obama in the White House backing a two state solution, J Street’s role is clear: giving Obama cover to push for a two state solution despite Netanyahu’s opposition.
This may be so, WJ, but J Street provides as much cover as those little paper parasols you get in a rum drink with a maraschino cherry on a plastic sword.
WJ,
The number of proposed states has nothing to do with it. Increasingly, JStreet has been defending Israel and deflecting criticism of Israel in much the same way that AIPAC does. That is disappointing for those who expected better, and dishonest on the part of J Street leaders who promised something different. I’m really not quite sure what Obama would like to push for or the sort of cover he might get from J Street. I have a sneaking feeling that if it turns out to be anything significant (even of the 2s variety), J Street will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with AIPAC, to block it.
I think the handwriting is on the wall, and that Israel is nothing but an full fledged apartheid state, and in this era it is doomed – I am not alone:
“The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners” with Professor John J. Mearsheimer
“The story I will tell is straightforward. Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.”
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link to haaretz.com
3,000 European Jewish intellectuals urge end to Israeli settlements
A new leftist European Jewish group, JCall, has written a letter to be delivered Sunday to the European Parliament calling for a cessation of what it calls systematic support for Israeli government decisions.
JCall, which describes itself as “the European J Street” and is to be officially launched Sunday with the presentation of the letter, has raised a storm with its call to stop construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.
EuroJ does what USJ should have been doing all along.
Ben-Ami, take notes.
I like how Yossi Sarid says: link to haaretz.com
“3,000 European Jewish intellectuals urge end to Israeli settlements ”
Many in the US do too. Sadly, the Israelis are only too happy with settlements.
I just wonder why Witty is calling this to our attention?
As an example of the impotent appeals to Israel’s good nature, appeals which have no teeth, involve no sanctions or boycotts, appeals which Witty finds aceptable, appealing in their impotence?
All I know is that if those were 3,000 European Muslim signatures, Witty would be labeling it as a “violent” and “fascistic” attempt to subvert “Jewish self-determination.”
J-Street. Gumming their way to justice since 2009. I find anything with Bernard Levi’s imprimatur sort of suspect.
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The letter seems to beg for the question “Or 3,000 Jewish European Intellectuals will do, what, exactly?”
Here we go through that old round-a-bout while Jewish intellectuals bare their souls and tell us about the anguish it causes them when they discover Israel doesn’t give a shit what they think, and responds only to colonial exigencies, as perceived by Zionists. That takes a goodly number of years, and is repeatable by generation.
Kind of sad, isn’t it? And not to be crude, but it strikes me that with this ineffectual display put on, cheered by Zionist fanboys like Witty, the whole lot of them are perfectly happy to bend over and take it when Israel decides the “traitors to the race” need to get back in line again.
It’s just a show for the benefit of non-Zionists, isn’t it? “Oh well, we tried.” As if, Christ-like, they can martyr themselves before the Zionist pharisees and carry all of the sins of Zionism away with them, leaving it a “jewel.”