Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel asked J Street’s leader about its position re AIPAC:
I challenged Jeremy Ben-Ami about J Street’s decision not to directly respond
to some of what was said at AIPAC’s recent annual meeting in order to
assert itself as a progressive counter to that organization.
“It is very important – and we’ve made clear from the get-go – that
this is not an anti-AIPAC effort,” Ben-Ami said. “Because there are a
lot of people who support AIPAC and who do it out of very goodhearted
reasons…. So, we are really consciously not anti-AIPAC. We are against
the fact that the debate on Israel has been hijacked by the right-wing
– that’s right-wing Christian Zionists, right-wing neoconservatives,
rightwingers who run major Jewish organizations, but it’s not all
AIPAC…. The truth is so much more complex and it actually doesn’t serve
anybody’s purpose to make this about AIPAC because it’s about the
policy – it’s about what’s best for Israel, it’s about what’s best for
the United States.”
In a piece about J-Street in the J-Post, Samuel Freedman also apologizes for AIPAC:
J Street proclaims that it offers a “new address,”
and that address is more an URL than a building. The question is who is
going to click. Criticizing AIPAC is easy; it demands nothing. Saying
you feel unrepresented by the Israel lobby is easy; it requires only
breath.
I think I understand this now. J Street’s prime objective isn’t to counteract AIPAC–say by speaking out about the settlements or dividing Jerusalem or the occupation. No, J Street truly does not trust American Jewry enough to take those stands (and you can understand, when 58 percent of American Jews are against dividing Jerusalem). AIPAC sets policy; and so, J Street’s primary objective is to lobby AIPAC. (I do think it’s having an effect.)
