This piece first appeared on Counterpunch yesterday. But it deserves reposting:
J Street, America's premier liberal pro-Israel lobbying group, has just wrapped up its second conference in Washington. There have been sessions and panels on "building peace from the ground up," on "expanding the tent" and even some passionate condemnations of the Occupation. Amid so much good feeling it's almost possible to lose sight of one of J Street's fundamental missions: to promote and guarantee America's lavish and unconditional military aid to Israel.
This may seem like a harsh assessment of the lobbying group. After all, isn't J Street routinely attacked by neocon ultras and praised by American liberals? But hack through J Street's verbiage about "dialogue" and "conversation" and one finds this blandly phrased position statement: "American assistance to Israel, including maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge, is an important anchor for a peace process based on providing Israel with the confidence and assurance to move forward on a solution based on land for peace. J Street consistently advocates for robust US foreign aid to Israel." This last sentence is 99% of what one needs to know about J Street.
We Americans aren't used to talking about the one thing we are most directly responsible for in the Israel-Palestine conflict: our $3bn annual military aid package that goes almost exclusively to one of the two sides. A bit weirdly, debate about Israel/Palestine among Americans tends to leap immediately to the issue of a one-state versus a two-state solution. Or we presume to give the Palestinians tips and pointers about what degree of violence is morally acceptable, and where's the Palestinian Gandhi? Or we vow to redouble our efforts towards a "peace process" which doesn't always seem to exist.
The one thing we Americans are not very good at discussing, or even acknowledging, is our already vigorous role in the conflict. Before we continue to micromanage the Palestinians and (to a far lesser degree) the Israelis might we first examine, and scale back, our own outsized contributions to what can only be called a war process.
We Americans badly need to understand that we are not now, have never been a credible arbiter in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Our long record of doing things like shipping free-gratis cluster bombs to the IDF, expediting them when so requested for use on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure in 2006, has long disqualified us as "honest brokers". Rhetoric aside, such lopsided military aid packages are our policy.
This is not another argument against all foreign aid. There are places on the earth where America does indeed owe a blood debt: Ghana, Haiti, Nicaragua for instance, nations historically wronged by our slave trade or by long-term US military occupation. It is strange that J Street or any ostensibly liberal outfit could believe that Israel is deserving of more foreign aid than the three of these impoverished nations combined.
There is a standard response to this criticism of J Street. Their half-measures may be lame, it is conceded, but they are a "comfort zone" for young liberal activists inside the American Jewish community, a space where they can get their message out. I hope it does not seem callous to view ongoing ethnic cleansing, the collective punishment of 1.3 million Gazans, and significant American security interests to be orders of magnitude more important than the sensitivities of the college students who just attended J Street's conference.
It seems the true function of J Street is to set the acceptable outer limit to our national discourse on Israel/Palestine, and this is worrisome. For J Street has not been brave in its positions. It disapproved of the Goldstone Report; it discouraged a UN investigation into the IDF assault on the Gaza aid flotilla; it threatens to withhold its support from pols who meet with other, less Israel-centric lobbying groups--and that's just for starters. Of course it's super that J Street rallied behind congressional Representative Donna Edwards after she voted "present" on a resolution in support of the IDF's attacks on Gaza in 2009. But if she had voted against the measure, how would J Street have responded? More recently Edwards voted with the majority to give an extra $205 million in emergency military funding to Israel, with only four votes against. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 30s and Israel's constant flouting of international law regarding settlement construction, a gift of even more military aid seems bizarre. (J Street, predictably, welcomed the disbursement.)
True, J Street sometimes breaks with its neoconservative peers, as when it urged a US vote in favor of last month's UN Security Council condemnation of ongoing settler expansion in the West Bank. But sporadic compliance with minimal standards is not impressive compared to the clear-cut policy changes urged by other advocacy groups. With Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council for the National Interest, the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine and New Policy, the rubber meets the road when it comes to reorienting US policy without equivocation.
Some analysts optimistically see J Street as a sort of gateway drug that will lead its youngish adherents to eventually support a very different role for the United States in the conflict. But for now,J Street will continue to support dialogue, "expanding the tent", and $3 billion in cluster bombs, white phosphorous and other armaments from the US government to the IDF, no strings attached, year after year.
Chase Madar is a civil rights lawyer in New York and a contributor to Le Monde diplomatique, the London Review of Books and PULSEmedia.org.
Because so long as he gets his PlayStation 9 or his iPhone 12, the average American can’t be bothered with his own government’s actions.
There is no longer cultural capital in the US. The next generation of Americans will need the help of educated foreigners to maintain whatever is left of this country.
That the cost of living has gone up in recent decades while income has remained the same, certainly doesn’t help the average Joe when the time comes to go to college and get a decent education.
It’s a vicious cycle in which indoctrination keeps the ignorant blissfully distracted, unable to see their own demise.
There is no longer cultural capital in the US. The next generation of Americans will need the help of educated foreigners to maintain whatever is left of this country.
mommy daddy i wanna move to cairo!
“It is strange that J Street or any ostensibly liberal outfit could believe that Israel is deserving of more foreign aid than the three of these impoverished nations combined.”
So, Chase, please point out where J Street ever said that aid to Israel is more important than aid to impoverished nations.
“I hope it does not seem callous to view ongoing ethnic cleansing, the collective punishment of 1.3 million Gazans, and significant American security interests to be orders of magnitude more important than the sensitivities of the college students who just attended J Street’s conference.”
No Chase, it just seems like grandstanding and self-righteousness.
So, Chase, please point out where J Street ever said that aid to Israel is more important than aid to impoverished nations.
supporting israel’s aid implies as much. unless one is advocating we end or cut wayyyyyyyyyy back or start quadrupling the amount we give other countries one has to acknowledge support for israel’s ‘entitlements’ IS more important than aid to impoverished nations.
“supporting israel’s aid implies as much.”
So, if you support health benefits for unionized teachers, it means that you don’t support health care for children? That’s the logic of your statement.
I advocate increasing foreign aid to impoverished countries, with the caveat that we can ensure that the money will be spent wisely, and not go into some dictator’s pocket.
“I advocate increasing foreign aid to impoverished countries, with the caveat that we can ensure that the money will be spent wisely, and not go into some dictator’s pocket.”
Would you condition aid to Israel on it not going directly or indirectly to the occupation of Palestine or to the murder of Palestinians?
I though you said you were against the foreign aid package Hophmi? You’re either for it or against it, yet you argue just to argue? I know you like to bloviate about Jewish history to us ‘haters’ (grrrr, we’re so mean) but I belive you should just agree here that it time to stop the aid package.
Isn’t it the correct thing to do?
“More recently Edwards voted with the majority to give an extra $205 million in emergency military funding to Israel, with only four votes against.”
Essentially, Madar is arguing in favor of a political strategy that encourages organizations to side with only four members of Congress against all the rest. This is of course, precisely the strategy followed by SUSTAIN and the US Campaign for years no, with zero results and no traction. Worse; it doesn’t even get much attention.
Why would this be a better option for an organization so successful at changing the tone within the Jewish community? Or able to make it appear that there is a big split underway against AIPAC? Or even successfully get more than 2000 folks to a conference committed to ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza?
This is an attack by the radical purists on the pragmatic movers and shakers. You can’t even get Barbara Lee of Donna Edwards to work with that bunch. They represent the ‘Green Party’ faction of Palestinian solidarity work, with as much record of success as Ralph Nader.
More to the heart of the matter: Madar shows that he really doesn’t know these J Street people. They are not the cynical, Israeli armaments loving Kissingers described above. They are serious about wanting democracy, human rights and independence for Palestinians, as evidenced by such moments as the enthusiastic applause for Mona E.
Yes, I am happy that J Street gives JVP and other voices a forum to speak at their convention but then I get emails from J Street like this.
“Join us in calling on our representatives to sign this critical letter, led by Representatives Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Anna Eshoo (CA-14), urging President Obama to support active American promotion of a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as robust foreign aid to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”
Has J Street bothered to read the Palestine Papers? We’ve all seen the man behind the curtain now but J Street still wants us to believe in the Wizard of Oz. One doesn’t have to be a radical purist to oppose $3bn in annual military aid to Israel and the smaller amounts given to the PA. This aid is a corrupting influence on both Israel, the PA and the US and only enables the occupation to continue.
The problem with J Street is that with the exception of the recent UN vote, their political lobbying efforts are not substantially different from AIPAC.
J Street wrote: “J Street consistently advocates for robust US foreign aid to Israel.”
And Chase Madar wrote: “This [] sentence is 99% of what one needs to know about J Street.”
And the other 1% is my belief that if it hadn’t appeared that Israel was hurting itself by doing what it is doing J Street would never have been formed. Just as if, for whatever reason, it suddenly appeared that Israel would suffer no future harm whatsoever by continuing doing what it has been doing, or by forcibly expelling the Palestinians from the occupied territories, or by forcibly expelling its own arab citizens from Israel proper, or indeed by doing just about anything whatsoever, that J Street would disappear in a flash, with its leaders and core supporters being happy as clams.
J Street is essentially a Likud op in the same way that Dennis Ross and nearly the entire Israeli left is a Likud op — they are trying to provide a fig leaf of respectability for a political movement that is now pretty much on the same page as apartheid South Africa. They have been much more interested in trying to burnish the image of Israel and the Israel lobby than in effecting real change.
Actually, I’ve come to the near certainty that Dennis Ross is a deliberate and witting Likud *mole*, and has been all along, from the inception of his career as a minder and controller of American Mideast policy. He has falsely pretended to support the Mideast peace process while doing everything in his power to undermine and sabotage it. Any opposing views out there on this?
Would someone here please explain how we can justify foreign aid of any kind during an era in which Americans are going to have suffer punishing cuts in basic social services all across the board? Please: I would love hear and examine the arguments for that position. I am betting that they won’t fly.
sean,
the US provides half of the food that the uN uses to feed the Gazans.
We provided aid to the Haitians and to the Pakistanis who were flooded out.
Some aid isn’t hard to justify.
fuster,
The question is whether it will be possible to justify most foreign aid (extreme emergencies excepted) when our own social services and infrastructure are crumbling and when most Americans are suffering a radical drop in quality of life. Will Americans go along with that kind of regime, even with the full force of the Israel lobby being applied to prop it up? I doubt it.
It is difficult for beggars to be high-minded philanthropists.
sean, ask many zionists and they will say Israel is at the brink of extinction and they need this money for their survival.
This money is the golden calf (while Moses is absent).
It’s Israel’s security buffer to prevent another holocaust. But it’s likely just extra padding for the blunder of locating the Jewish state in Palestine.
J Street is kind of like the subservient woman to her husband, AIPAC. He gets the lions share, while she apologises for his aggressions.
She is loyal to him but hopes there are other ways of achieving the means.
I would interpret J Street more charitably, they want to be politically effective, and from what I could find, they want to concentrate on what polls well. American who read short statements written by Israeli Embassy and PA Mission opposed settlements 70 to 30%. A simple message may have good traction if it can be somehow conveyed to the wide public.
And the truth is that Israel would actually gain from loosing aid. Number one, part of the military aid is offset by military aid to Egypt. So it is not 3 billion but more like 2 or less. Second, with American aid they also import the least efficient spending practices in the world. Third, they can maintain their “qualitative military edge” without aid. Fourth, my impression is that IDF is actually loosing its edge, and in large part by doing everything and more. (Just look at the logistic and technological underpinning of operations like starving Gaza, cutting the orchards, demolishing farmers’ water system, catalogue children that may be potential stone throwers, and even planning of assassinations. )
And it exposes what a fraud J Street really is. J Street is making the lame argument that more weapons and more money will inspire Israel to make peace, when in fact, it is that very confidence in it’s military superiority that has led Israeli leaders to believe they don’t need to.
The occupation is not about security, otherwise Israel would not be allowing settlers to migrate to the occupied territories.
J Street (like much of pro-Israel left) is a good cop in a good cop/bad cop routine. Isn’t this obvious? They make it possible for the Israel lobby to say, look, we’re not so bad, we have a progressive side, while the Likud/Greater Israel juggernaut rolls merrily along without any effective opposition.