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Israel support is a threat to the American Jewish community — Ben-Ami warns

J Street CEO announces major pivot in advocacy for restricting U.S. aid to Israel over its human rights abuses.

The American Jewish establishment’s support for Israel as it violates Palestinian human rights is undermining “Jewish values” and causing “large swaths” of Jews to abandon the community, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the CEO of the liberal Zionist group J Street, warned in a speech to that organization on Saturday night (video here).

Ben-Ami announced a major pivot in his group’s advocacy: for restricting U.S. aid to Israel over its human rights abuses, and away from emphasizing the two-state solution.

Maybe it’s time for some serious oversight and accountability for how our aid to Israel is actually being used.

He likened Palestine to Ukraine under Russian invasion and said we have to ensure that in our “tax dollars aren’t being used to abet settlement construction, home demolitions or other actions that deepen occupation.”

He said such accountability is key to the survival of the U.S. Jewish community:

We believe our community for its own sake even more than for Israel’s sake must root its identity in a commitment not to a flag or a piece of land but to a set of principles and values. My friends, if we don’t do this, we will see large swaths of our community walk away. Not only will they walk away from engagement with Israel– that’s already happening. They’ll walk away from the Jewish community itself.”

Ben-Ami said blind support for Israel by AIPAC and other old-line Jewish organizations poses a “fundamental crisis” for Jewish life in America because it contradicts traditional liberal Jewish values.

AIPAC has already responded: J Street stands against Israel, it says; and Secretary of State Tony Blinken is committed to unrestricted aid to Israel.

The new Israeli government gave Ben-Ami the opening. Israel’s next government “seems likely to take more actions that run counter to the values that American Jews teach our children are the essence of Jewish identity,” Ben-Ami said, including support for civil rights, the labor movement, women’s movement, and LGBTQ freedoms.

“How can we explain to our children and our grandchildren let alone to ourselves that these values are the core of the Jewish identity, but the state of the Jewish people is denying another people their rights and equality and undercutting the rule of international law. This is a fundamental crisis that looms over our community in the coming years. Those in the establishment of our community who insist that Jewish America must stand united and unquestioningly loyal to Israel no matter what are doing a deep, deep, disservice to the health of the Jewish community.

Ben-Ami’s pivot follows the path of other Israel supporters. 12 years ago Peter Beinart, then a liberal Zionist, said that the organized community’s support for Israel had generated a crisis in Jewish life. The young leftwing Jewish group IfNotNow rose against the Israeli slaughter of 2014 and has forcefully decried Israeli apartheid and AIPAC since that time. Outspoken journalists Jeffrey Goldberg and Tom Friedman have seemed to abandon their pro-Israel assignment as Israel stays on its rightwing course.

Ben-Ami’s comments resonate with statements by Tony Klug and Sylvain Cypel that Israeli human rights violations now undermine Jewish life in the west, because the requirement to support Israel is giving Jews a bad name. They are supporting a “thug nation,” in Cypel’s words.

I have long pushed J Street to acknowledge that Israel is practicing apartheid and the destruction of Palestinian rights and humanity are violations of international law. Ben-Ami came close to those points when he said “the state of the Jewish people is denying another people their rights and equality and undercutting the rules of international law,” and imposing “collective punishment on Palestinians, enforcing two systems of law on neighbors based on their ethnicity.” 

But Ben-Ami remains a fervent Zionist (who approves Jabotinsky, and invoked his parents who fought for Israel, including his father in the terrorist militia, Irgun). He did not endorse the Palestinian call for BDS, or boycotts against Israel for its human rights abuses. J Street has crushed support for BDS within its university branch. And while saluting Israel’s “security” needs, Ben-Ami never acknowledged the 200 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this year let alone the repeated slaughter of Palestinians inside Gaza.

J Street began as a two-state organization 15 years ago. But at that time the American president supported two states and so did his secretary of state — George Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Ben-Ami still wants a two-state solution to preserve the Jewish state, but acknowledged that the possibility of two states is “slim” in the context of an undemocratic “one state reality,” in which Israel seeks “to cement permanent and undemocratic control of millions of Palestinians.”

Many liberal Zionists are now “throwing up their hands in despair, wondering if it’s time to walk away,” he said.

But he vowed to lead a fight inside the organized American Jewish community over who represents the “majority” of the American Jewish community. When AIPAC endorses Trumpist election-deniers like Jim Jordan and Scott Perry because they are pro-Israel– “they do not represent us, this is not the political voice of the American Jewish community,” Ben-Ami said.

Our political support will not go to those who do not stand up for justice, who do not stand up for diplomacy do not stand up for democracy here in Israel and globally.

This is an important speech, as it signals open warfare inside the Israel lobby and the wider Jewish community. A large segment of the young Jewish community is anti-Zionist, unacknowledged in Ben-Ami’s speech; and they will also have a say about Who represents us.

h/t James North.

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“I have long pushed J Street to acknowledge that Israel is practicing apartheid and the destruction of Palestinian rights and humanity are violations of international law.”

You and Israeli soldiers, Phil. “The Soldiers Opinion” was made earlier this year by (among others) Shay Hazkani, an Israeli professor.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21343876/

https://today.umd.edu/new-documentary-captures-the-soldiers-opinion

“In one scene, Sinai Peter, who served in the army between 1971–74, cries as he reads one of his letters from the time contemplating the dehumanizing ways he saw Israeli soldiers treat Arabs they encountered. He admits in the letter that he’d considered fleeing, or worse—ending his own life.”

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221205-israel-afraid-to-reveal-looted-palestinian-documents-fearing-debunked-zionist-myths/

Interview with Hazkani:

“Judging by the documents I collected for my latest book, the claims about an Arab plan to ‘throw the Jews into the sea’ are actually rooted in official Zionist propaganda,” he explained. “This propaganda began during the [Nakba], perhaps to encourage Jewish fighters to leave as few Palestinians as possible in the areas that would become part of Israel.” A comparison of Arab and Jewish propaganda issued in 1948 revealed that the propaganda of the Israeli army and its precursor, the Haganah, was much more violent.

Part 2 of my continued comment.

  • “…our community…must root its identity not in commitment to a flag or a piece of land, but to a set of principles and values.” [That was always the common thread that bound religious and secular Jews together—it’s the root of Jewish identity!” What you should have said was that we should return (or recommit) to those principles and values.]
  • “…if the two-state solution isn’t on the agenda for the foreseeable future, what is there for J Street to do. [“Foreseeable future?” The two-state solution is DEAD.]
  • “If we had leadership in Israel that wanted to negotiate an end to the conflict…. If we had a Palestinian leadership strong enough to lead their people toward compromise…. If we had an American leadership interested in playing a critical and leading role – this would all be easier.” [What’s going on in Israel is not a conflict, and human rights are non-negotiable. How dare you ask the Palestinian leadership to compromise in securing their rights!]
  • “…we are mired in permanent occupation and the undemocratic and unjust one-state reality…” [“Permanent occupation?” Where did that idea come from? Is that your euphemistic term for Apartheid?]
  • So here’s what J Street has to do now: Push for American policy that is unwavering in opposition to occupation, to settlement expansion and to Israeli policies that undermine American interests and values.” . [That’s number 1 on the list? How about opposing Apartheid, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity, and the Continuing Palestinian Holocaust known as the Nakba?]
  • “Press our community’s leadership to demonstrate that the values we preach apply not just to everyone else but also to the state that is the national homeland of our people.” ·[Did you catch that word “national” in this sentence? It’s the way to hide J Street’s continuing commitment to a Jewish State and not a state for all its people—a state where equal people would have equal rights.”]

It is too ad Tony Blinken and the Biden Administration disagree with the J Street leader. I guess money is more important than a moral foreign policy for President Biden.

A speech of historic dimensions. Ben-Ami has challenged Israel and Palestine, and supporters, to rethink the moment…. extend their their humanity.

How could anyone fall for Ben Ami’s classic “bait and switch”?

Here’s Part 1 of this comment

Bottom line: Ben Ami’s 100% doubletalk really says, “I’m keeping my job as long as I can. I like the money, I like the DC office and all that goes with it. I may be out of ideas, but as long as I’ve got words and know how to use double-talk, I’m stickin’ around. (And, by the way, if you like what I said, please send a donation.]

Just few examples:

  • “We believe the United States must unequivocally oppose any efforts by Israel to deepen its control over occupied territory and the Palestinians who live there and to take the land and resources permanently for itself.” [WTF! Two States? And, if you’re not proposing to lobby for the occupied territory to be returned to Jordan, what exactly do you have in mind?]
  • “Let me be clear: We do not question Israel’s right to or need for security.” [“Israel’s right…for security”? How about the security of all people—Jew and Gentile—living in the Holy Land? Why can’t Ben Ami acknowledge that the non-Jews have been living without such security and no protection of their human rights for 75 years!]
  • “The most powerful institutions in our community have embraced the idea for decades that American Jews should support any politician who supports Israel, right or wrong.” [Maybe the answer is no one—maybe the answer is that the American Jewish community, like every other community, is not (as anti-Semites would have you believe) monolithic and homogenous. There are multiple voices because there are multiple Jewish communities—each one formed around one or more specific reasons or points-of-view.]
  • “They say nothing else matters. It turns out they’ll even endorse candidates willing to overturn the results of a free and fair election.” [You mean there’s been a dual loyalty problem? Geez Jeremy, with those Israeli flags on every bima, who would have guessed!]
  • “It is ingrained in us that the Jewish people should not treat others as we would not want to be treated ourselves.” [Even though the editors forgot to put a question mark at the end of that interrogative sentence, there IS an answer. “Jewish people who is deny another people their rights and equality and undercutting the rules of international law” are called Zionists! BUT, it’s a fact that one cannot be a Jew and a Zionist at the same time, so those people have given up their Jewishness when they switched to Zionism.]   

To be continued…See