Culture

Deconstructing J Street’s statement on the latest Israeli land grab

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

J Street had trouble finding its voice during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza. When finally found, its voice was on the one hand and on the other. A bit like Tikkun circa 1987 – without the moral outrage and the politics of meaning.

Now after some internal infighting and desertions, J Street is back, ostensibly seizing the moment with Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land on the West Bank. Yes, back it is, but to where is the important question.

Most Jews of Conscience dismiss J Street out of hand and for good reason. It’s obvious that they’re living up to the street they take their name from. They’re lobbyists for the Jewish center. They want an Israel they can be proud of or at least one that isn’t landing on the front page of The Hague’s burgeoning war crimes’ calendar.

Nonetheless, it’s important to take J Street to task for they actually say and don’t say. Politics should be about principle but mostly it’s a series of disguises and deceptions. J Street is right up there with the best of them there, including their archenemy, AIPAC. In fact, J Street and AIPAC may be closer than they think. At least the statement J Street released yesterday makes that point.

J Street’s statement deserves scrutiny – and comment. Below is their nine paragraph statement with my commentary interspersed:

J Street condemns as provocative, damaging and extremely destructive to Israel and to hopes of peace a decision by the Israeli government to seize almost 1,000 acres of land in the occupied West Bank to build a massive new settlement.

Strong statement right out of the box. Though Israel-centric – no mention of Palestinians – the terminology used – “seize,” “occupied West Bank,” and “massive new settlement” – strike a defiant tone.

The decision, both in its timing and intrinsic nature, could hardly be more negative and harmful. This has been described as the largest grab of Palestinian land for the purpose of building settlements in 30 years. It demeans and weakens Israel’s peace partner, the Palestinian Authority; it defies the will of Israel’s most important ally and friend, the United States, and it flies in the face of a broad international consensus.

Again the language is off and running. Though “timing” is well-worn in the Israel-Palestine peace dance, “intrinsic nature” is more to the point. “Largest land grab” certainly defines Israel as expansionist. So far, so good. But then when the occupation rubber hits the apartheid road, J Street slows down. “Israel’s peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority comes into play and J Street simply assumes that the PA speaks and is good for the Palestinian people. If that’s J Street’s issue. Or is it simply that the PA dances to Israel’s tune?

In the second paragraph, Palestinians – for Palestine – have yet to appear in their own right. If, in fact, they have their own right. Now it’s on to the United States which J Street views as the only honest broker in town. J Street admonishes Israel for pissing off its “most important ally and friend, a charge that is hardly remarkable, but then jumps off the Jewish community bandwagon and mentions Israel defiance of the “broad international consensus.”

Going global is a dangerous thing for liberal Jews nowadays, let alone for Jewish lobbies, so credit where credit is due. However, J Street’s appeal is to the two-state international consensus. They’re not talking about another international consensus – to try Israel for war crimes in The Hague.

Most of all, it casts serious doubt on the Israeli government’s sincerity in claiming to favor a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Netanyahu says he is in favor of peace based on a two-state solution, yet almost all of the government’s actions and words point to the opposite conclusion.

The statement becomes weaker as it moves on to Israel’s “sincerity.” J Street appeals to Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous utterance favoring a two-state solution, something that no one believes Netanyahu meant even as he spoke it. Unmentioned is his more honest rejection of a Palestinian state during the Gaza war. “Almost all” of Israel’s actions belie a search for a two state solution. Indeed they do J Street. Because there isn’t any commitment, let alone interest in any such solution.

This decision is also a test of US seriousness in Mideast peace-making. The United States has protested settlement announcement after settlement announcement for decades – yet its opinion has been disregarded by successive Israeli governments to the point that US credibility has been called into question. How can the world expect US leadership in dealing with hostile actors across the Middle East when even its closest friend in the region flagrantly ignores its policies? It is time for the Administration to make clear to Israel that it means what it says and that US opposition to settlements is not just symbolic but real.

Weak on what Israel really wants, J Street turns toward the US home front. J Street is strong here – at least in a certain way. The US opposes what it allows to happen and J Street calls it like it is – again up to a certain point. The clinching sentence is curious: “How can the world expect US leadership in dealing with hostile actors across the Middle East when even its closest friend in the region flagrantly ignores its policies?” We’re back to the idea that Israel lives in a “bad neighborhood” but for J Street the impact of defying the US is to place US foreign policy in a bad and weakened light.

J Street seems to think that Israel’s defiance makes it more difficult for the US to have its way in righting the unsettled and violent Middle East. J Street calls upon the American government to discipline Israel so it can get on to the more troubling issues. As we know that list is long and getting longer.

J Street urges the United States government to undertake a thorough review of its policy toward Israeli settlements and to announce the steps it will take if Israel goes forward with this decision. As a first step, it should declare now that it is the view of the United States that settlements are not merely “unhelpful” or “illegitimate” but illegal under international law as laid out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

We’re coming closer to the end here. J Street is about to strike its hardest blow but note that there’s still no Palestinian presence or hope here other than a compliant Palestinian Authority that is good for Israel. That the American government should take the side of the Palestinians and act on their behalf – that is, put Palestinians first – is absent. However, J Street again moves into the international arena, demanding that the American government join the international consensus that the settlements are “illegal under international law as laid out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.” This again is new ground for anyone purporting to lobby on behalf of American Jews – and dangerous ground, too.

J Street’s wager is that the part of the international consensus they support – a two-state solution – won’t collapse under Israel’s intransigence. But here’s another caveat, one that appears even as J Street goes global. Does J Street actually support the international consensus definition of two states – Israel within the 1967 borders and Palestine being all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem? I don’t think anyone believes they do, including those who wrote and approved this statement. So does “illegal” in terms of the settlements mean until they are legitimated by the Palestinian Authority?

It may be true that the land being expropriated from five Palestinian villages lies within one of the settlement blocs that are likely to be retained by Israel in any prospective peace deal. But until there is such an agreement, this kind of land grab can only be seen as a blatant unilateral move to create new facts on the ground.

That J Street doesn’t really believe in the international two-state solution becomes evident here. The expropriated Palestinian land – again still no Palestinians as subjects acting on their own behalf – will no doubt be ceded to Israel in any “prospective peace deal.” The bottom line – J Street is extremely upset that Israel’s move was “unilateral” and before the “agreement” that legalized the land expropriation. The bottom line – J Street is quite happy to accept the land that should be Israel’s within the proper framework.

It is particularly unfortunate coming on the heels of last week’s Gaza cease-fire which seemed to offer a new start for diplomacy in tackling the conflict. One would have thought following that war, that Israel would do everything possible to strengthen PA leaders and their pursuit of diplomacy and non-violence. Instead, this move undermines President Abbas and reinforces his opponents, including Hamas, whose abhorrent use of violence shows exactly why now is the time to empower moderate Palestinian leadership.

Now J Street is onto Gaza – sort of. The recent ceasefire is mentioned but nothing about Israel’s reason for the invasion, if there was one. Nor is there any mention of Israel’s behavior in the war. Though not direct, J Street places blame for the war on Hamas. J Street does this by admonishing Israel for not strengthening the hand of Mahmoud Abbas and the PA, who “pursue diplomacy and non-violence.” Rather, playing one party against the other, Israel has strengthened Hamas – “whose abhorrent use of violence” defines the Palestinians who resist – Israeli expansionism, the PA’s compliance and the US’s (dis)honest brokering?

Bringing in Hamas now adds to J Street’s understanding of Palestinian actors, on the one side, the compliant ally of Israel and, on the other, the violent resistor to Israel’s natural right. The people of Gaza who were murdered are left to fend for themselves. If they exist, they exist in J Street’s shadow Palestinian world that functions only for or against Israel.

We urge the Israeli government to reverse this decision, to announce a settlement freeze and its readiness to return to negotiations for a final settlement based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps.

We’re almost at the end and J Street is running out of steam. Its initial outrage over Israel’s unilateral expropriation of West Bank land – note again the absence of Palestinians – is Palestine still empty except for Jewish Israelis? – has been diluted. J Street knows the land will eventually go to Israel so why move the chess piece before everyone is on board?

J Street returns to its demand to stop settlement expansion – for now. What is the final two-state settlement J Street encourages? The 1967 borders with “agreed land swaps.” This is diplomatic lobby language for just about everything Israel has taken will be Israel’s with a few minor adjustments.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni have already noted how much harm this decision will cause to the US-Israel relationship. Other responsible members of the ruling coalition should join them in working to reverse this decision and to move urgently to seek a two-state solution.

J Street’s final paragraph sounds like a debater who has stretched her argument to the limit or has run out of time and has to finish too quickly. If Lapid and Livni are J Street’s hope, that tells us all we need to know about what J Street wants and how low it’s willing to go to get there. The glossed over Gaza war is already in the past. A non-issue, at least for J Street.

Beating a dead horse, since everyone knows that J Street has no muscle and, if it did, it would flex it Israel’s way, all the way? Perhaps. But Israel’s Gaza war signals the end of any Jewish center as the second Palestinian uprising exposed Jewish progressives for what they were, Jewish establishment wannabes.

Without a liberal or progressive center, Jews of Conscience are on their own. But that doesn’t mean the way forward is cleared of obstacles. Rather, the venom directed at the Jewish establishment during the Gaza war will increasingly have nowhere to land. The liberal and progressive center is bankrupt.

The question remains: How do Jews of Conscience seize the moment when only naked Jewish power remains?

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Yep, said power is naked for all to see, but for some reason the great majority of Americans don’t see it.

J-Street “as” AIPAC-lite is a familiar accusation (“meme” ?) and seems mostly accurate.

Everyone has principles, but some are universalistic and some are not. J-Street cannot shrug off the need to comply with an Israeli-centric (and Israel approving) principle.

Count me out, not in my name, etc., etc.

BTW, the USA and EU manage (sometimes) to say that the settlements are all illegal, and it says so right in UNSC 465 (1980), but they wring their hands and say (or imply) that there is nothing they can do about this now 47-year-old illegality. Meanwhile, sanctions are applied to Iran. that’s something they can “do” iof Iran is the miscreant (as they propound), but not if Israel is.

Ho-hum. J-Street fis right into washington as-it-is, and that may have something to do with J-Street aping AUIPAC as a rule.

J Street has no money so it has to toe the line.

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Great piece, Marc. Direct and straight from the heart.

I realize there’s a place for everything but I resonate much better with this style than when you sound more “theological”.

There’s plenty of room for theology “in the trenches,” even though the sound of it is different.

I am more incline to “two states”, but here we can agree, even with J Street: settlements are illegal acts of oppression. On this narrow grounds, J Street falls short in two ways.

First, the prescriptive part of the statements is to implore US government to be “serious” in an unspecified way, and Israeli government to “reconsider”. Good luck with both. Israeli zest for demolitions and settlement expansion is at fever pitch, inflamed by war fever, and the population and a major part of Knesset is gripped by the regret that the recent “war” killed too few and destroyed too little. US Congress just passed unanimous resolutions supporting Israel, and not symbolically but with cash. Adding a statement from Administration would be like a dash of salt added to a desert cake, it makes it taste better.

As an actor in US politics, J Street should concentrate on American political actions. Israel will do what it can get away with. It is moral responsibility of American Congress to frame it. As long as there is green light there, the government of Israel will go ahead with more killings, more destruction, more oppression. I would condemn (or “deplore acts”) Congress and the Administration for their enabling actions, INCLUDING supplying weapons and funds for weapons in the midst of one-sided carnage.