This is good. J Street mans up and says the U.S. should not veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Yes there is a lot of stuff about We as American Jews commit ourselves to changing Israel’s diapers till the red heifer comes to Jerusalem, but there is some good language here, too. Is this the moment? Yesterday the 50 public leaders including Peter Beinart and Chas Freeman, today Hanan Ashrawi and J Street? Is it too late for the 2SS? J Street excerpts:
For over forty years and across eight Presidential administrations, the United States has made it crystal clear that Israel needs to stop building settlements over the Green Line. As President Obama put it in his June 2009 Cairo speech, “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop….
Our preferred outcome would be Israeli or American action that averts the need for such a Resolution. However, if the Resolution does come to a vote, we urge the Obama administration to work to craft language, particularly around Jerusalem, that it can support condemning settlement activity and promoting a two-state solution.
While we hope never to see the state of Israel publicly taken to task by the United Nations, we cannot support a U.S. veto of a Resolution that closely tracks long-standing American policy and that appropriately condemns Israeli settlement policy.
