J Street’s magical thinking

I spent the last two days watching the J Street conference and the liberal pro-Israel lobby group’s message was very consistent: We are a “movement” for reviving the two state solution so as to preserve Israel as the Jewish state, and our movement has political clout and it includes the entire Democratic Party from pro-Israel hacks like Nancy Pelosi to progressives like Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal and Bernie Sanders. Oh and we include the Israeli left as well as Israeli centrist war criminals like Tzipi Livni. But our movement does not include anti-Zionists who endorse boycotting Israel. You won’t hear Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib at our conference.

J Street stayed on message over two days. We will criticize Israel’s rightwing government over and over for actions across the Green Line in “deepening occupation and creeping annexation.” But you will not hear the word “apartheid” or International Criminal Court come out of our mouths at this conference. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas got to say “apartheid” in his address; but that was about it.

The three questions that arise are: What is J Street’s political impact versus its rivals, the rightwing Israel lobby? Can J Street revive the two-state solution under Biden? As a Jewish organization, what is the impact of J Street’s messaging on the progressive Jewish discussion of Israel, particularly on young Jews who are influenced by IfNotNow, Jewish Currents, Electronic Intifada and our website too?

1, J Street has been very successful in mainstream U.S. politics. It has gone from an outsider organization in the Democratic Party, maligned by the Israeli government, to having access to the entire Democratic leadership. We endorsed most of the Democratic majority in Congress, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami likes to say. It seems evident that J Street is able to harness major donors– the source of the Israel lobby’s influence.

The most significant expression of J Street’s clout is very good indeed: J Street is working to shore up Joe Biden’s political capital in the Jewish community so he can reenter the Iran deal. J Street has been great on the Iran deal, and that’s good for the world.

But when it comes to Palestinian conditions, J Street doesn’t want to do all that much besides wring its hands. The conference featured Palestinian speakers, including one young Palestinian saying her family feels unsafe from Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, and Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard showing disturbing videos of Israeli actions in the West Bank, including the stoning of a Palestinian by settlers. But J Street has no program for stopping such actions besides some jawboning. It supports Betty McCollum’s historic legislation that would prohibit American funds from going to house demolitions and child detention, but mostly it simply argues that what happened in the United States should happen in Israel: it’s time for a centrist to replace the rightwing government!

J Street can’t put real pressure on Israel because it reflects mainstream Jewish opinion/the-donor-class, which is conservative on Israel, reflexively supportive of a “Jewish state” reliant on U.S. aid. The “Jewish state” was a mantra of the conference; J Street is an unrelentingly unrepentantly Zionist organization and when you get right down to it, its mission is not all that different from the organization it wants to replace, AIPAC.

So J Street does a balancing act — seeking to reconcile the burgeoning progressive movement in the country with Zionism. It has so far succeeded in that magic act because the Democratic Party is still a Zionist party.

2, What effect will J Street have on its goal, a two-state solution? I think as much as it’s had in its 13 years of existence so far: none, they’ve just watched two states disappear. Israel doesn’t want a two-state solution, and hasn’t for 73 years. That’s not about to change, as the Israeli government goes further right wing all the time.

J Street speakers all but acknowledged the failure of the two-state solution. Sen. Chris Murphy said that the two-state solution may seem like a “fantasy” now; Sen. Elizabeth Warren said it was a “moral” imperative to pull for a two-state solution; J Street leaders kept saying, let’s at least preserve conditions so that the possibility of negotiations for a viable Palestinian state will not die. Though they also organized a panel on a confederated solution to the conflict that its leaders were quick to distance themselves from even as they said that a confederated solution is two states by another name.

I’d remind readers that there are now about 680,000 Jewish settlers who were ILLEGALLY implanted into occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in complete violation of international law, as Michael Sfard emphasized in his explainer to J Street. Their communities are integrated into Israel and almost all Jewish politicians support their legitimacy. I.e., the occupation is simply an extension of the Jewish settlement Israel undertook in the lands it seized following the original partition resolution of 1947, and that’s not going to end. When Jill Jacobs of T’ruah issued a prayer for the two-state solution, that seemed the most honest response. It’s magical thinking.

3, the Jewish discussion. Jeremy Ben-Ami says anti-Zionists are a fringe of the Jewish community, and other Zionist experts agree with him. Again, the Jewish community is very conservative on the question of supporting Israel, particularly the donor class.

That being said, J Street is plainly afraid of where progressives are going, in political life and Jewish life too; because Zionism is not an inspiring brand these days. J Street always showers IfNotNow and social justice Jews with respect. It strives to triangulate the progressive and the Zionist communities by describing support for Jewish nationalism as a progressive “movement”– though the American left clearly wants no part of ethnic nationalism in the United States. We don’t like white nationalists!

I continue to put my money on anti-Zionism in Jewish life, though I have been losing the bet year after year. One of these days, I predict, IfNotNow’s very communal young Jews will come out for BDS under the friendly/impatient pressure of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and where will that leave J Street, which calls BDS antisemitic?

Basically where it is now, as an access organization, seeking to replace AIPAC (which opposed the Iran deal and supported the Iraq war) inside the Democratic Party. One of the faces of the conference was moderator Halie Soifer of the Democratic Party’s Jewish organization, who keeps standing up for all the money the U.S. gives Israel, who says Israel critics are just a fringe in the party, and who says Trump shouldn’t have withdrawn troops from Syria. In a word, J Street will fall back on power politics, which Israel has depended on throughout its existence.