Update: After this post appeared, Americans for Peace Now removed the article in which Eliana Blumberg endorsed BDS and criticized J Street; and J Street ran two articles (here and here) renouncing the pro-BDS stance, one of them by Blumberg.
Original post:
The liberal Zionist organization J Street is adamantly opposed to BDS, the nonviolent boycott campaign targeting Israel, and proudly declares that it is “Pro-Israel.” But one of its student leaders evidently disagrees with the organization on both counts.
Eliana Blumberg, a junior at Brown University who has been an official of “J Street U,” wrote that she supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), in an op-ed [Archive] about her generation’s critical views of Zionism published at the Americans for Peace Now site on August 30:
My father and I have very similar politics when it comes to Israel. But despite our shared criticism of the Israeli government, outrage about settler violence, and support of the BDS movement, if you asked us who comes to mind when we hear the term “Zionism,” our answers would be strikingly different..
Blumberg also said that the term “pro-Israel”– a key part of J Street’s slogan — is a lost cause.
There are those who insist that young progressive Jews must focus on “reclaiming” the term “Zionist” or even the term “pro-Israel” in order to show people that you can support Palestinians while being a Zionist, that being pro-Israel means being pro-democracy, not pro-apartheid. I think such efforts are futile.
Blumberg is no lightweight. In June she said that she was the New England president of J Street U, and a National Vice President of the organization.
In the op-ed she calls herself a J Street U leader, and writes that J Street’s stances are alienating the young.
I don’t identify as a Zionist, and neither do many of my fellow J Street U leaders, and by excluding us from institutional or organizational spaces, progressive groups are alienating their next generation of organizers and leaders.
J Street is proudly Zionist and it has supported legislation that characterizes BDS as antisemitic. The group states, “We believe in the Zionist ideal on which Israel was founded,” even as it seems to avoid the word Zionism in its messaging.
J Street exists to lobby official Washington; and the tensions between J Street’s message and idealistic young Jews’ beliefs are disrupting progressive Zionism. J Street has insisted that its student arm J Street U is “pro-Israel.” It prides itself on the numbers of students who come to its conferences and tries to ride the energy of the youth group IfNotNow– though IfNotNow acknowledges Israeli “apartheid,” and J Street disavows that language.
A summer intern at Americans for Peace Now, now studying public health and Middle East Studies, Blumberg wrote in her essay that the dispute over Zionism is generational. For her father, Zionism is “Israel bonds and the socialist experiment of the kibbutz, but when I think of Zionism, IDF violence and AIPAC come to mind.”
She said that J Street is desperate to cast the young as pro-Israel but it is alienating them.
In my experience, liberal Zionist groups like J Street desperately want their students to identify as Zionist and even as “Pro-Israel,” and as a result, many student leaders have questioned their involvement, wondering if they should leave the movement. Not only does this exclusion hurt the future of movements like J Street, it also hurts students who feel alienated, prevents effective political solidarity with other groups, and distracts from the desperate need for political action.
I wrote to Blumberg yesterday asking for an interview but she did not respond.
Blumberg said in a podcast about young Jews for Americans for Peace Now in June that she is an organizer with J Street for tactical reasons– as a halfway house to help young indoctrinated Jews abandon traditional lies about Israel.
I think that a lot of people who are in J Street U, that’s a way that we justify our involvement in an organization that a lot of us don’t necessarily align with, ideologically or politically. I know the joke that like everyone involved in J Street is to the left of J Street, as is a joke, but it’s definitely rooted in truth, especially on college campuses. But I think this idea that like in these four years if we can get six or seven people to learn about occupation and learn about the destruction that AIPAC causes on the American political system, and also how, you know, like the American Jewish community funds occupation, if we can get like six people to graduate and say, You know what, I’m not going to donate to AIPAC. I’m gonna break this tradition, quote, unquote, tradition of supporting these Jewish institutions. That’s enough, right.
She also said that arguments inside the Jewish community over words like “occupation” are “exhausting” and “infuriating,” and she appeared to fault J Street’s opposition to the word “apartheid.” Americans for Peace Now has been far more open to that description.
I think that that’s something that I get really frustrated with J Street is that it feels a lot like we are making compromises on things that we don’t need to be making compromises on like, I get that, you know, politically, politicians are not in a place where we can use certain language to talk about this stuff. Because just people won’t listen, or things won’t get done. But I think that what APN does really well, is they acknowledge that sometimes we do have to come out and say, you know, like, yeah, the Amnesty report was very controversial, but like, we need to focus on what’s going on in that report, and not the language that was used. And we shouldn’t get distracted by that. So I think that’s one example of why I like APN so much
Blumberg also said that she would not go on Birthright, the propaganda trip to Israel for young American Jews, because Palestinians can’t go to the country.
[E]ven though my ancestors came to America before world war two and you know, have have never really had any specific connection with the State of Israel, that I have more right to go than a Palestinian whose grandparents were born there, that really upsets me. And so I think that for that reason, I decided that it’s not, it’s not gonna happen.
What a clear-eyed young leader for the American Jewish community! I look forward to many more eloquent articles and comments from Blumberg in years to come.
J-Street shows that it is not sincere about pro human rights when it claims to be “pro two states”. It’s no different than the 1960s slogan “separate but equal”. It’s bunk. Furthermore, that ship has looooong sailed.
Time for a reality check and some sincerity.
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Israel is worried about a possible Clash with Washington over the Iran Nuclear Deal (juancole.com)
“Israel is worried about a possible Clash with Washington over the Iran Nuclear Deal” Middle East Monitor, by Adnan Abu AmerMIDDLE EAST MONITOR 09/01/2022
“As the countdown begins for the signing of a nuclear agreement between Iran & world powers, a number of disputes have surfaced between Israel & the US about the deal. There is also criticism within Israel of the government’s political & military approach towards the agreement. The occupation state appears to be opposing the whole world, which has more or less united to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomatic means, while Israel foolishly sticks to the punishment approach.
“In a step devoid of political wisdom, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to prevent the signing of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal agreed by the administration of then US President Barack Obama. Netanyahu arrived in Washington on the eve of the signing ceremony & delivered a speech in the US Congress against the deal behind Obama’s back. Obama did not hesitate to describe him as ungrateful. In the end, Netanyahu returned empty handed while the agreement was signed.
“The strange thing is that current Prime Minister Yair Lapid is now following in Netanyahu’s footsteps. His National Security Adviser, Eyal Kholta, has arrived in Washington for talks at the White House during which he will hear the details of the agreement before expressing Israel’s opposition. It is true that he will be briefed on the details closely, but he will not get what he wants. US President Joe Biden is determined to give Israel a second chance, which it will be a mistake to miss. Mossad spy chief David Barnea has also criticised the agreement, which is being seen as direct criticism of the Biden administration.
“Meanwhile, more Israelis are calling for a different policy on the Iran nuclear issue. Automatic opposition to any agreement, coupled with angry rhetoric & an attack on Iran, may earn Brownie points within certain sections of the Israeli electorate, but it brings Tehran closer to deciding to arm itself with nuclear weapons, because it will be the one to decide whether there will be a renewable agreement with the global powers regarding the nuclear file.(cont’d)
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“Many Israelis believe the new agreement to be less useful than what was on the table earlier. The fact is that Israel can’t expect anything better. Iran has made great progress in the production of centrifuges, & is able to enrich uranium faster than before. Israeli policy has played an important part in reaching this bleak situation. It began with Netanyahu’s direct attack on Obama, & he continued to push Trump to withdraw from the agreement — which he did in 2018 — even though Iran had fulfilled its part of the terms.
“Israelis are afraid of reproducing Netanyahu’s opposition to the nuclear agreement to the point of starting a crisis with Biden, which could cost Israel a lot. The current agreement, even if Israel sees it as bad, is better than no agreement at all, because Israel’s current policy is pushing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv needs to think seriously about a change of policy.
“A nuclear Iran is apparently a serious threat to Israel, because it will open the regional nuclear arms race even wider. This will require an examination of every step that Iran takes when looking at other conflict zones. Israelis recall that the late Mossad chief Meir Dagan said, “Forcefully preventing Iran’s bomb cannot be achieved by Israel alone; it requires international preparation.”
“All of this confirms that Israel is facing a complex situation, which has prompted its military & security leaders to ask the politicians & government to coordinate their activities with other countries, notably the US, as well as with their regional partners. The idea must be to create checks & balances against Iranian interests in various places, & to stop believing blindly that the only solution is Israel’s military power. Such a belief means, in short, bringing Iran closer to having nuclear weapons.
“Israelis are now talking about the conflicting interests of the US & Israel in the nuclear agreement to be signed. This requires the latter to find a way to act without necessarily causing a clash between Lapid & Biden. Netanyahu clashed with Obama, causing relations to deteriorate dramatically…”
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