Love of the Land: If This is Our Future

If This is Our Future

Daniel Gordis
danielgordis.org
07 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

Imagine this, if you can. A prestigious university in the United States, with deep roots in the American Jewish community, invites Israel’s ambassador to deliver its annual commencement address. But instead of expressing pride in the choice of speaker and in the country that he represents, the university’s students, many of them Jewish, protest. They don’t want to hear from the ambassador. (See this Facebook page.) He’s a “divisive” figure, the student newspaper argues, and the students deserved better.

Tragically, of course, there’s nothing hypothetical about the scenario. Brandeis University recently decided to award honorary degrees to Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Paul Simon, among others, at its May 23 commencement, and Ambassador Oren, an extraordinary orator among his many other qualities, was invited to deliver the commencement address.

But the days in which Jewish students on an American campus would have been thrilled to have the Israeli ambassador honored by their school are apparently long since gone. Brandeis’s student newspaper, The Justice (how’s that for irony?), deplored the choice, writing that “Mr. Oren is a divisive and inappropriate choice for keynote speaker at commencement, and we disapprove of the university’s decision to grant someone of his polarity on this campus that honor.”

The ambassador is a polarizing figure? Why is that? Because, the editorial continues, “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a hotly contested political issue, one that inspires students with serious positions on the topic to fervently defend and promote their views.”

This is where we are today. For many young American Jews, the only association they have with Israel is the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel is the country that oppresses Palestinians, and nothing more.

No longer is Israel the country that managed to forge a future for the Jewish people when it was left in tatters after the Holocaust. Israel is not, in their minds, the country that gave refuge to hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from North Africa when they had nowhere else to go, granting them all citizenship, in a policy dramatically different from the cynical decisions of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to turn their Palestinian refugees into pawns in what they (correctly) assumed would be a lengthy battle with Israel.

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Love of the Land: If This is Our Future

Love of the Land: J Street Arrives on Main Street

J Street Arrives on Main Street

Avi Davis
The Intermediate Zone
04 May '10

Last week, a full page advertisement appeared in seven major Jewish newspapers around the country. Placed by the self proclaimed Israeli advocacy institute J Street, it presented a letter from former leftist Meretz leader Yossi Sarid addressed to the Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel. Three weeks ago, Wiesel had published his own missive, in a number of major American newspapers, imploring President Barack Obama’s understanding of the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem and why another division of the city can never be contemplated.

“For Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims are able to build their homes anywhere in Jerusalem and that only under Israeli sovereignty has freedom of worship for all religions been assured in the city.”

Sarid counters that there is a tacit racism inherent in Israeli housing policy that allows Arab families to be evicted onto the street if it suits the occupying power. He also warns Wiesel, who is certainly no Jewish fundamentalist, to avoid placing too much emphasis on the Jewish people’s religious attachment to the city.

“ You, my dear friend, evoke the Jews’ biblical deed to Jerusalem, thereby imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues. As if our diplomatic quarrels weren’t enough, the worst of our enemies would be glad to dress this epic conflict in the garb of a holy war. We had better not join ranks with them, even if unintentionally.”

But Sarid goes much further than even this. In his admonition to Wiesel, he states baldly what no other Israeli leader has previously dared to plead:

“ Barack Obama appears well aware of his obligations to try to resolve the world’s ills, particularly ours here. Why then undercut him and tie his hands? On the contrary, let’s allow him to use his clout to save us from ourselves, to help both bruised and battered nations and free them from their prison. Then he can push both sides to divide the city into two capitals – to give Jewish areas to the Jews and Arab areas to the Arabs – and assign the Holy Basin to an agreed-on international authority.”

Here we have a frank admission – and condemnation – rolled into one.

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Love of the Land: J Street Arrives on Main Street

Love of the Land: JCall: the European Echo to JStreet

JCall: the European Echo to JStreet

The incisive and undaunted Nidra Poller provides a roadmap to J Street's French offspring, JCall:


Nidra Poller
J Street Jive
03 May '10

May 2, Paris

What follows is the kernel, the beginning, or the false start of an article that will be developed in the coming days. But I wanted it to exist right now in its imperfect state. The creation of a JStreet look alike in Europe might be a ho-hum ripple in a long saga, but it comes as a last straw at a time when the noose is tightening around our necks. This JCall, one more frivolous example of how much we love Israel but just give the Palestinians what they want, whatever they want, is going to be presented to the EU Parliament on May 3rd and meanwhile back at the UN, Ahmadinejad will present his plan for nuclear disarmament… of Israel. With the blessings of Barack Hussein Obama. The JCall Appeal, at a time like this, is so infuriating, that it immediately provoked a vigorous response here in France. A genuine intellectual debate is underway, and I take it upon myself to report it with the fullness it deserves. We are good at this kind of debate in France.

The debate goes to the heart of a conflict that has been brewing in our societies, communities, and families in the first decade of the 21st century. I cannot approach it with any pretense to distance and objectivity. It is the dilemma that occupies my thoughts from morning to night. How do I reconcile my respect for freedom of thought and expression with my conviction that this kind of thinking—call it leftist, progressive, peace nowish—is so harmful that I must combat it? In a fair fight! That’s what I’ll try to explain.

JCall: the European echo to JStreet / Part 1

Let me begin with a prediction before I even explain the tune that JCall is calling: it won’t get anywhere. It’s no JStreet because it has no Obama in the wings, no AIPAC to snipe at, no Soros or Saudi money, and because European Jews are too close to the bone to heed this call.

Friday, April 30, Strasbourg. David Pariente, age 41 and wearing a kippa, was brutally attacked in the center of town at 12:30 in the afternoon as he got off the tramway in a square aptly named “l’Homme de Fer” [Iron man]. A vivid account of the incident by Maylis a 16 year-old lycée student is reported in the local paper--Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace: The victim was attacked by “ …two men in djellaba. One hit him in the back with an iron bar and knocked him down. Then he gave him a terrible kick in the face. I saw his head flung back.” Maylis called for an ambulance, the assailants ran off. One was caught shortly afterward, the other was arrested at his home where police found the iron bar—actually part of a weight lifting apparatus--and the knife. One of the aggressors is allegedly deranged. He said he attacked a Jew because a Jewish doctor sent him to a mental hospital.

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Love of the Land: JCall: the European Echo to JStreet

Love of the Land: J Street Can No Longer Claim to be Pro-Israel

J Street Can No Longer Claim to be Pro-Israel

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
21 April '10

J Street has gone over to the dark side. It claims to be "a pro-Israel, pro peace lobby." It has now become neither. Its Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has joined the off key chorus of those who falsely claim that Israel, by refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, is placing the lives of American soldiers at risk.

This claim was first attributed to Vice President Joe Biden and to General David Petraeus. It was quickly denied by them but continued to have a life of its own in the anti-Israel media. It was picked up by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, Pat Buchanan and others on the hard right and hard left who share a common disdain for the Jewish state. It is the most dangerous argument ever put forward by Israel bashers. It is also totally false.

It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it seeks to reduce support for Israel among Americans who, quite understandably and correctly, care deeply about American soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has always understood this and that's why it is one of the few American allies who has never asked the United States to put its troops in harm's way in defense of Israeli citizens. If Americans were to believe the falsehood that Israel were to blame for American deaths caused by Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the Jewish state would suffer considerably.

It is also dangerous because its implication is that Israel must cease to exist: the basic complaint that Muslim extremists have against Israel is not what the Jewish state does, but what it is: a secular, non-Muslim, democracy that promotes equal rights for women, gays, Christians and others. Regardless of what Israel does or doesn't do, its very existence will be anathema to Muslim extremists. So if Israel's actions were in fact a cause of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan--which they are not--then the only logical solution would be Israel's disappearance. This might be acceptable to the Walts, Mearsheimers and Buchanans of the world, but it is surely not acceptable to Israel or anyone who claims to be pro-Israel.

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Love of the Land: J Street Can No Longer Claim to be Pro-Israel

Love of the Land: [Democracy innaction] What the J Street NYT Ad doesn't say

[Democracy innaction] What the J Street NYT Ad doesn't say

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
22 March '10

Here is the score:

Last year Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a major policy speach in which he spoke of a two state solution. And instead of putting him to the test as to what he meant by this the Arabs decided that there was no rush to enter negotiations.

They did this because the Obama team, encouraged by folks like J Street, were so busy salivating over the possiblity of deposing Netayahu and enjoying the sheer pleasure of trying to screw him against the wall that actually engaging in negotiations was of secondary or even tertiary importance. So we had demands on Israel as preconditions for talks that we never had before.

J Street plunks down money for an ad in The New York Times (see below)

They warn that "time is running out". But they don't call on the parties to cut to the chase and enter direct talks.

In fact, J Street doesn't want negotiations at all.

They want an American imposed "solution,"

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Love of the Land: [Democracy innaction] What the J Street NYT Ad doesn't say

Love of the Land: Will J Street Protest Anti-Zionists at the Nation and on the Streets of New York?

Will J Street Protest Anti-Zionists at the Nation and on the Streets of New York?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
09 March '10

Were there any lingering doubts about the toxic nature of the American Left’s allergy to Israel, the Nation removes them today. Its website branded the head of the Israeli Defense Forces a “war criminal” that righteous New Yorkers should picket.

The event that got the Nation’s knickers in a twist is a fundraising dinner to be held at the Waldorf Astoria for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a nonprofit group that provides aid to soldiers. The keynote speaker is Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff of the IDF and the man who led Israel’s forces last year in its counterattack against terrorist fire on southern Israel. In Europe, Israelis like Ashkenazi have been subjected to harassment and bogus legal action, an outrageous situation that hard-core leftists here would like to emulate.

Indeed, what they want is to end the international isolation of the Hamas regime in Gaza and, instead, impose a blockade on Israel. But the irony of the Nation and its übersecular followers fronting for the Islamist murderers of Hamas is lost on the magazine.

The main point here is that the flagship American publication of the Left has no compunction about attempting to delegitimize the right of Jews to self-defense against terror, or about promoting an event that is part of the vicious International Israeli Apartheid Week libel fest.

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Love of the Land: Will J Street Protest Anti-Zionists at the Nation and on the Streets of New York?

Love of the Land: Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind

Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind

Fresnozionism.org
04 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Today a friend directed my attention to an op-ed in the Boston Globe, “The New American Jew on Israel” by Jesse Singal. Singal asks why Jewish college students are less supportive of Israel than in the past, in the context of a talk at Harvard’s Hillel house by J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami. He does not discuss the question of J Street’s lack of legitimacy as a pro-Israel organization, its funding from sources that are anything but pro-Israel, or its recent embarrassment when Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren refused to attend its convention because he found J Street’s policies to be damaging to Israeli interests.

But according to Singal, its position meshes closely with that of many students. Here’s one horrifying example:

…when asked about the prospect of Iran destroying Israel, Harvard Divinity School student Kenan Jaffe, 26, said he thought it was “unlikely.’’

“I also don’t think it’s directly related to the Palestinian question,’’ he said, “and it is only to the extent that if Israel comes to a final status solution with the Palestinians, Iran will have nothing to say about Israel and no reason to make threats against it.’’

Whether or not the Iranian regime will succeed in its oft-stated goal of bringing about an end to the Jewish state by means of its Lebanese and Palestinian proxies or even directly is certainly moot — it won’t happen if Israel has anything to say about it — but the idea that a ’solution’ of the argument with the Palestinian Arabs, if such were possible, would end the Iranian threat is ludicrous. Iran’s quarrel with Israel has to do with its desire to push out Western influence from the region, its desire to dominate the conservative Sunni states (and their oil), and to unify the Mideast under a Shiite caliphate. There’s clearly no room for a Jewish political entity in this picture.

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Love of the Land: Age isn’t paranoid, Youth is blind

Love of the Land: Those bleeding-heart journalists

Those bleeding-heart journalists

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem
03 March '10

In recent weeks, our media has indulged its penchant for masochism, depicting every incident in the most self-deprecating manner. This is exemplified in a column by Bradley Burston on the current homepage of the English edition of Haaretz. Titled “I envy the people who hate Israel,” he relates to real and imaginary blunders committed by our political leaders, and concludes with the breathtaking comment that “my father did not flee the Soviet Union just so that his son could one day have the chance to live in a place just like it.”

I would submit that the publication of such wacky remarks in a purportedly serious Israeli paper highlights the need for soul searching by our bleeding-heart editors.

Burston’s principal example of malfeasance was “our apparent violation of the basic conventions of all civilized states in the Dubai murder.” It is unlikely that the true facts concerning the assassination of the vicious Hamas killer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh will ever be revealed. The information disclosed by the Dubai police smacks of disinformation. It sounds somewhat bizarre for the Mossad to risk 27 agents and then send some of them on to Iran.

Initially, Israeli media reports of the assassination were exuberant. However, when it transpired that foreign passports belonging to Israeli dual nationals had been used, the euphoria evaporated and commentators who had portrayed Mossad chief Meir Dagan as “superman” began calling for his head.

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Love of the Land: Those bleeding-heart journalists

Love of the Land: J Street Silent on Israel Apartheid Week. Surprised?

J Street Silent on Israel Apartheid Week. Surprised?

Use This Bookmark to Keep Your Place in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

Parrhesia
J Street Jive
25 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

Rush down to your local college. It's that time of year again! Israel Apartheid Week. And it's the sixth annual! Every major American Jewish organization has put out a statement condemning Israel Apartheid Week - except one. Guess. That's right - Jeremy Ben Enemy & Co. - the ad nauseam, self-branded "Pro Israel" lobbyists. Now if silence is assent, we can only conclude that Jeremy and his patrons, chief among whom is George Soros, heartily approve this obscenity hurled at Israel and Jews. Even the often feckless ADL has declared:

"Past IAW events have featured extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, including accusations of Israeli racism and apartheid; calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel and Israeli institutions; and allegations that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people. IAW events have taken place on college campus and at churches, community centers and elsewhere."

The American Jewish Committee, CAMERA, The David Project, Stand with Us have all condemned the thinly-disguised Jew-hatred in the form of BDS advocacy (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). In its self-aggrandizing description, the group even refuses to identify Jerusalem by name - it is called Al Quds.

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Love of the Land: J Street Silent on Israel Apartheid Week. Surprised?

Love of the Land: On being pro-Israel

On being pro-Israel

Fresnozionism.org
23 February '10

Somewhere in the discussion about what it means to be pro-Israel (in the context of J Street, the New Israel Fund [NIF], etc.) I heard the following:

Being pro-Israel doesn’t mean supporting Israel no matter what it does

I get it. I understand where they’re coming from.

Suppose my neighbor is arrested and charged with stealing a car. Would I support him? Would I bail him out of jail? Well, that would depend on my judgment of his character and his motives. Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. I’d try to be fair; after all, he has the same rights as anyone else. This is the attitude of the ‘progressive’ Jew toward Israel.

Now suppose someone is arrested and charged as above. Only this time it’s my son. Everything changes. Would I support him no matter what he does? Of course not, but I would try much harder to understand him. I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I would listen to his story. I would give his explanations at least as much credence as those of his accusers, maybe more. This is the attitude of the Zionist Jew.

Zionists among the Jewish people gave birth to the modern state of Israel, sacrificed for it and supported it in its childhood. The Zionist feels differently about Israel than he does about, say, Japan. The best analogy is to say that he feels a family relationship.

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Love of the Land: On being pro-Israel

Love of the Land: Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
22 February '10

Today’s Jerusalem Post carries an Op-Ed column by officials from J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

They defend the recent letter they sponsored with 54 Members of Congress to President Barack Obama which “express[ed] concern for Israel's security, for the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, and for the urgency of reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But that was not the reason for the letter. Read the letter here. The Members themselves state, “We write to you [Obama] with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern.

Love of the Land: Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Love of the Land: Defending the Gaza 54

Defending the Gaza 54

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 February '10

J Street and Peace Now rush to the pages of the Jerusalem Post to defend the letter sent by 54 Democratic congressmen (one subsequently fell off the Israel-bashing bandwagon) calling on the lifting of the Gaza blockade. It’s what we have come to expect from those who find Israel’s reasoned self-defense measures to be gross violations of human rights. It is also deeply misleading. As others have noted:

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern. More than 90 percent of the letter deals with the “collective punishment of the Palestinian residents” of Gaza and easing their plight. This accusation of Israel’s “collection punishment” helps explain why J Street failed to condemn the Goldstone Report. This is not a letter from “pro-Israel” sources, but from “pro-Gaza” sources. And in the case of Hamas-occupied Gaza, the two are mutually exclusive.

There always seem to be those — the Gaza-letter brigade and their boosters at J Street, most prominently — who offer themselves as true friends of Israel, knowing better than the Israelis what sacrifices are to be taken. Lift the blockade, they say from the cozy confines of New York, waving off the notion that more Israeli children will die from the bombs smuggled among the “construction supplies” they seek to allow into Gaza.

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Love of the Land: Defending the Gaza 54

Love of the Land: Ha'aretz's J Street Promotions, Continued

Ha'aretz's J Street Promotions, Continued

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
22 February '10

You got to give them points for consistency. Ha'aretz has systematically ignored substantive criticism of J Street's policies, methods and funding, and so it comes as no surprise that the paper ignores the latest development in the reported snub of a J Street delegation by deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon.

It's not that the paper has ignored the controversy. To the contrary. Coverage includes two news articles (see here and here) and at least one Op-Ed condemning the alleged snub, which appeared today.

While the paper which has paid the matter substantial coverage until now, it nevertheless ignores the fact, that as reported in the Jerusalem Post today, the Foreign Ministry claims that J Street has lied about the whole affair. The Post reports:

The American “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group J Street made “untrue assertions” about an alleged boycott of the congressional delegation it recently brought to Israel, and about Israel allegedly apologizing to the group for the slight, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“[Deputy Foreign Minister Danny] Ayalon did not prevent the delegation from meeting with senior Israeli officials,” as claimed by J Street last week, said Barukh Binah, Foreign Ministry deputy director-general and head of its North America Division.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Ha'aretz's J Street Promotions, Continued

Love of the Land: What makes J street the enemy and is it the enemy?

What makes J street the enemy and is it the enemy?

Ami Isseroff
Israel News
19 February '10

The J Street lobby has managed to generate a lot of publicity for itself. Most of those who praise it however, are anti-Israel and most of those who are critical are pro-Israel. That suggests that J Street may be the enemy. J Street's Jeremy Ben Ami told Haa'aretz:

A part of the Jewish community in the United States and some people here are intolerant of people who disagree with them or criticize them.

"And that intolerance immediately flips to 'you are anti-Israel - you're a Muslim lover or you're Muslim,'" ... "These are things that they call me, and this is what some of them call the president. It has to change both in the politics here and in the right wing of the American Jewish community."

Ben-Ami's rant sounds a bit like "Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism." That's true. But some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and J Street is not only engaged in criticism of Israel.

Criticism of Israel is not what makes J Street the enemy. Signing a letter calling on President Obama to loosen the Israeli blockade of the genocidal Hamas organization might make J Street the enemy.

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Love of the Land: What makes J street the enemy and is it the enemy?#

Love of the Land: On not saying you’re sorry

On not saying you’re sorry

Fresnozionism.org
18 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

Everyone seems to want Israel to apologize, or ‘clarify’, or in some way abase itself today.

In connection with the Dubai assassination, the Dubai police chief has called for the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, to be arrested. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband has called the use of British passports in the operation an “outrage”, and called in the Israeli ambassador to discuss the incident.

If the Mossad did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, then good for them — nobody deserved it more than Mabhouh. Hamas admitted that Mabhouh was responsible for the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, has helped plan Hamas terrorism for years, and was recently involved in bringing Iranian weapons to Gaza. Israel doesn’t need to apologize; in fact the Mossad should expand its activities and kill more Hamas leaders.

Israel is at war and doesn’t need to apologize for shooting back.

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Love of the Land: On not saying you’re sorry

Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 February '10

Solomonia has the details on the latest from the anti-Israel group J Street, which has organized a trip to Israel in partnership with Churches for Middle East Peace. CMEP is a leader in the so-called “BDS movement” — boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. These are the people who want to isolate Israel in the way that the world is currently isolating, say, Iran — which is a tremendous irony, being that J Street is opposed to anything resembling BDS when it comes to the Islamic Republic.

These guys have gone so far off the deep end that I think if Ismail Haniyah invited J Street on a solidarity mission to Gaza City, Jeremy Ben-Ami would have to sit down and think really hard about the offer.

Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Love of the Land: Israel to J Street: We Know You're Not Pro-Israel

Israel to J Street: We Know You're Not Pro-Israel

Stop pretending.


Michael Goldfarb
The Weekly Standard
16 February '10

Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, lowers the boom on J Street:

"The thing that troubles me is that they don't present themselves as to what they really are. They should not call themselves pro-Israeli," Danny Ayalon, the deputy to hard-line foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, told Jewish leaders today.

It's funny because that's what troubles me, too. Of course, Ayalon can be less than diplomatic at times. He was last seen dressing down the Turkish ambassador on Israeli TV, but he did offer a humble apology for that, promising the use of "more acceptable diplomatic means" in future protests. J Street isn't likely to ask for any such apology and is even less likely to get one. Still, I can make a well educated guess about what the group will say -- Ayalon has "no right to decide who is and is not pro-Israel based on whether they agree with your views." At least that's how J Street responded to Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, when he questioned the group's pro-Israel bona fides.

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Love of the Land: Israel to J Street: We Know You're Not Pro-Israel

Love of the Land: J Street’s Agenda Remains Irrelevant to Middle East Realities

J Street’s Agenda Remains Irrelevant to Middle East Realities

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
16 February '10

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, threw the left-wing lobby J Street a few bones in an interview last week. JTA quotes Oren as telling a California Jewish newspaper that the “J Street controversy has come a long way toward resolving. The major concern with J Street was their position on security issues, not the peace process. J Street has now come and supported Congressman [Howard] Berman’s Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone report; it has denounced the British court’s decision to try Tzipi Livni for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream.”

By refusing to appear at J Street’s conference last fall and saying that its views on Israel were “dangerous,” Oren demonstrated Israel’s impatience with a lobby whose agenda was solely focused on instigating pressure on Israel from the Obama administration while foiling pressure on Iran. It’s understandable that Oren would attempt to reward some moderation in their stands. His priority is to aid the assembly of the largest possible coalition of support for Israel, not to punish those whose efforts are, at best, less than helpful. However, to the extent that J Street is trying to behave like a mainstream organization — an assumption that is certainly open to debate — this change reflects two important factors.

First is the complete irrelevance of J Street’s main idea: that there is a need for a Jewish lobby whose purpose is to push Washington to push Israel to make peace. As the events of the last year continue to prove, the obstacle to peace remains the Palestinians and their political culture of violence and hatred for Israel. As much as the Jewish Left has gained in the United States during the Obama presidency, the Left in Israel is as close to dead as it can be. That’s because the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that after Oslo’s false promises, Arafat’s refusal of a state in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2000 and 2001, and Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal of an even more generous offer in 2008, the Palestinian nationalist movement Fatah has proved it is not interested in a state as long as that state must live in peace alongside Israel. That the even more extreme Hamas terrorist movement controls Gaza and might expand someday into the West Bank if Israel abandons its security presence there has rendered the idea of further concessions and withdrawals absurd. This is a political reality that no amount of pressure from either Obama or the American Left can alter.

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Love of the Land: J Street’s Agenda Remains Irrelevant to Middle East Realities

Love of the Land: Second Thoughts on Israel-Bashing

Second Thoughts on Israel-Bashing

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
13 February '10

It seems as though at least one of the 54 signatories on the “lift the Gaza blockade” letter is having second thoughts. This report explains that U.S. Representative Yvette Clarke (D-NY) is pulling her support after a meeting with Jewish activists:

The result was an “open letter” issued by Clarke’s office disavowing her signature on the letter accusing Israel of collective punishment in Gaza. The open letter also disavowed her participation in another letter she had co-signed in support of the Goldstone report. The second letter came out against last November’s Congressional resolution calling on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to unequivocally oppose the United Nations’ Goldstone Report accusing Israel of guilt in committing war crimes in Gaza.

“These letters are uneven in their application of pressure and do not sufficiently present a balanced approach/path to peace,” Clarke wrote in her new letter. The Congresswoman claimed that the two earlier letters did not “reflect [her] record with regards to Israel” and “have a provocative and reactionary impact, as they do not provide a complete, and therefore accurate, picture of the situation.”

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Love of the Land: Second Thoughts on Israel-Bashing

Love of the Land: Going Left on J Street

Going Left on J Street

Lenny Ben-David
National Review Online
12 February '10

When 54 congressmen sent a letter to President Obama on January 21 asking him to press Israel (and nominally Egypt) to lift the blockade on Gaza and provide “immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza,” I looked for J Street’s fingerprints. Since its inception two years ago, the well-heeled PAC has rarely missed an opportunity to attack the policies of the Olmert and Netanyahu governments: It criticized Israel’s military operation in Gaza, held out the option of negotiating with Hamas, called for freezing all Israeli building in east Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank, refused to support sanctions against Iran, and more. But, lo and behold, there was nary a word about the Gaza relief letter on the J Street website or in the press materials of the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization.

Others, however, did credit J Street with supporting the letter, and even with sponsoring it. According to Ha’aretz, “In addition to members of Congress, several leftist organizations also signed the letter, including Americans for Peace Now and J Street.”

Wrote Michael Rosenberg, one of Israel’s harshest critics, “The [54 members of Congress] deserve our thanks as does J Street and Americans for Peace Now which pushed the letter.”

And who appears first on the Minnesota Independent’s list of the letter’s backers? “Among the groups supporting the letter: J Street, The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), The American Near East Refugee Association (ANERA), The Methodist Church, The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and Rabbis for Human Rights.”

With the exception of the rabbis, none of J Street’s colleagues on the letter are known for their fraternal feelings toward Israel.

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Love of the Land: Going Left on J Street