Peeling Off J Street’s Invisibility Cloak: What Today’s NY Times Magazine Won’t Tell You
There is no street in Washington named for the letter “J,” but that hasn’t stopped a group of critics of Israel from forming the “J Street” lobby. It’s like J. K. Rowling’s invisible Platform 9 ¾ at the King’s Cross Station. Befitting a Harry Potter character, J Street performs acts of illusion and deception such as cooking its polling data and presenting it as scientific truth. The “pro-Israel” J Street PAC has cloaked dozens of PAC contributors as plain citizens, when they are actually Arab-American, Palestinian, Islamic, and pro-Iranian activists. All the while, J Street hides the names of its directors and has never explained who makes its controversial decisions.
The adoring media audience gasps with uncritical wonderment at the amazing show of prestidigitation carried out so far by the upstart lobby. The J Street appreciation society was expanded today with a lengthy piece in the New York Times.
Breaking out of the media trance, a Jerusalem Post reporter recently revealed that the organization maintains a “finance committee” consisting of “50 members — with a $10,000 contribution threshold.” It’s members include, according to the report, “Lebanese-American businessman Richard Abdoo, a current board member of Amideast and a former board member of the Arab American Institute, and Genevieve Lynch, who is also a member of the National Iranian American Council board.”
The latest conjurer is Zahi Khouri, who contributed to J Street PAC this summer. The unfortunate man is listed in Federal Election Committee records filed by J Street as “not employed” and living in Orlando, Florida.
Open the New York Times of September 9 to the Op-Ed section, however, and learn that he is the “chief executive of the Palestinian National Beverage Co.” The Times could have gone on to describe Khouri as a director of the Palestinian Development and Investment Company (PADICO) and CEO of Paltel, the Palestinian telecommunications company and cellular service provider. He also writes that he lives in the West Bank, [cue violins] having “left a comfortable life on Park Avenue in Manhattan” to open his Coke franchise.
In his New York Times article, Khouri decries Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attempts to achieve an “economic peace” between the Palestinians and Israel. He dismisses the seven percent growth projected for the West Bank, fails to mention the crippling corruption that has plagued the Palestinian Authority, and ignores the Palestinian terrorism that wracked the West Bank and Gaza economies and forced Israel to build security barriers to protect its citizens. When the previous Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered almost all of the West Bank and sections of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s Abu Abbas rejected the deal. But Khouri the conjurer lays the blame for the stalemate at Netanyahu’s feet.
I hereby call upon the 2 intrepid reporters who exposed the criminality of ACORN for ALL the world to see (except delusional leftists)to unmask the hidden hands behind J Street.
IF J Street is in fact a pro Israel organization I will lay claim to the title of fairy princess of our times.
It will take a heroic, no holds barred effort to get at the underbelly of the J Street anti-semites. But at the end of the day the truth often has a way of smacking people upside the head.
It is my fervent New Year’s prayer that those who seek to harm the Jewish homeland receive concussions from the ensuing smacks they will surely get!
J-Street is a facade, a collection of anti-Zionists that masquerade as a pro-Israel lobby while acting as agents for her destruction.
I get the distinct feeling that there is another fellow who has been instrumental in organizing J Street. He’s a community organizer by profession, and has figured out a way to manipulate the American Jewish community like a master. He’s an excellent speaker – and not much else.
I leave you to figure out this fine gentleman’s name….
An organization like J Street can only flourish (heck, anyone can form any organization at any time), because the American Jewish establishment has done a terrible job providing a good, thoughtful, intellectually stimulating job of teaching our heritage, culture, and laws.
I did a brief stint teaching at a Jewish junior high school, teaching history, which was under the artificially created category of ‘secular history’. One day I put a question to the class, ‘how would you address the problem of poverty in America?’ I was shocked that so many of the kids began their solution with the statement ”round up all of the poor people’…
Now, of course I didn’t last there very long –and these were sixth and seventh graders. But already, it was obvious to me that their previous 10 to 12 years of education was a colossal failure. And many of those years were spent at that school.
These kids are now adults, and more than likely, they still don’t know any better, and the line peddled by J Street can sound very appealing. This isn’t the fault of J Street.
Apparently being Palestinian is some kind of crime now. Hopefully they’ll pass some kind of resolution that prevents us from donating to organizations, and indeed, from even voting. That will put everything.
Seriously, the idea that he poses a threat to Israel because he opposes Netanyahu is one of the silliest things I’ve ever read. And yes, I have read Pajamas Media, before.
This is an article by Khouri published in the Wall Street Journal, two years ago. You’ll see his radical agenda, an end to Israeli blockades of Palestine. I assume most of that is self-interest. He is the bottler of coke there. Duh.
Things Go Better With Rights
By ZAHI KHOURI
September 30, 2006; Page A8, The Wall Street Journal
In 1995, I moved from a comfortable life in America to Ramallah, Palestine, to invest in the most American of businesses there. I was instrumental in bringing Coca-Cola to the Middle East in the early 1980s; after the Oslo Peace Accords were signed I decided to launch the Coke franchise in the West Bank and Gaza.
Over the last decade, the business has grown. Today, Coca-Cola employs hundreds of Palestinians and sells 10 million cases of Coke a year.
As a Palestinian American, this was more than a moneymaking venture. Each gleaming bottle, with that red Coca-Cola swirl in both Arabic and English, would be a miniature ambassador from America. And each potential investor who saw that Coke was successful might decide to invest as well. It seemed the perfect strategy: to promote American interests while helping to build an economy that could serve as the foundation of a viable, independent Palestinian state.
Following the peace accords, scores of other Palestinian Americans moved to the West Bank and Gaza. Professors came to teach at universities. Doctors came to help modernize the healthcare system and treat patients. Artists came to exhibit and perform. Other business professionals came to invest, modernize the economy and create jobs. Each, in their way, wanted to help build an independent Palestine. Each served as the real ambassadors of America, so different from the American-made Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets Israel uses to rain destruction on the Palestinian economy, cities and villages.
But Israel has decided that we Americans are not welcome. Many, like me, have lived in the West Bank for more than a decade. Unlike American Jews — or Jews from anywhere — who can receive instant citizenship upon arrival, we are unable to obtain residency. Instead, we Christian and Muslim Palestinians must rely on our American passports, renewing our tourist visas every three months. A hassle, yes, but the only way to stay in Palestine, often in the homes our families have inhabited for generations.
Since Hamas assumed government authority after democratic elections this year, Israel has begun to deny Palestinian Americans the right to enter. We are left to wonder why.
This new policy could be another turn of the screw to pressure Hamas. It could be manufactured as a painless concession for future negotiations. It could be one more tactic in Israel’s drive — which began in 1948 with the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians — to empty as much land of as many Palestinians as possible.
We do not know the reason for denying entry to Palestinian Americans. But we do know the result. In addition to breaking families apart — for example one spouse with children in the West Bank, and the other unable to return from visits to the U.S. — it is discouraging investors. It is driving out the very people the U.S. State Department, the World Bank and other international organizations encouraged to return. We are the ones building businesses, creating jobs and inspiring hope for a better future.
Using the pretext of security, Israeli policies of home demolitions, land confiscation, restrictions on movement and construction of the separation wall have choked the Palestinian economy. According to the U.N., more than 540 checkpoints and other structures impede movement throughout the West Bank, and crossings into Gaza are rarely open. Gaza represents 30% of the Palestinian economy. Yet we cannot ship goods from the West Bank to Gaza. And Gaza cannot import raw materials for processing, even though it possesses a talented labor force. Israel has also been refusing to turn over nearly $55 million a month (now totaling roughly $400 million) in Palestinian tax revenue. With the cutoff of international aid, this has led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Since March, Palestinian Authority employees — about one-quarter of the labor force — have not received their salaries.
Israel will not gain security by creating Mogadishu next to Silicon Valley. Only an open and thriving Palestinian economy can lay the foundation for a sustainable peace.
Our humanitarian crisis is not the result of a natural catastrophe. There was no tsunami, earthquake or drought. We helped to build nations. We have the natural resources and human capital to build a thriving, stable Palestinian economy as well. We do not need international handouts. We need the free movement of people and goods. We need unrestricted gateways between the occupied Palestinian territory and the rest of the world.
American policy makers have tremendous influence with Israel. They should use it to insist on freedom of movement of people and goods, and to maintain access for Palestinian Americans and Palestinians with other foreign passports to continue to play a role in economic development. A vibrant Palestinian economy serves the interests of all — Palestinians, Israelis and Americans.
Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Moho–
Interesting article by Khouri who states in several different forms that it IS a crime to be an Israeli. If you really need for me to point out the phrases, then we don’t have much to talk about.
In the minds of those living in Gaza and the West Bank, who evidently can’t access a history book or the internet, or a television or a radio, is America really all about the F-16? Personally, I’ve never seen one, and none of my neighbors own one. It’s a shame to think of these folks as not knowing what blue jeans are, or 7UP, or McDonald’s, or televisions, tennis shoes, and computers. And in terms of philosophy, that they’ve never heard of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Bill of Rights.
I suspect that as a whole, the idea of everyone having inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is foreign, given the many attempts to deprive 5 year old Israelis of life.
That does seem to be the crux of it–the many attempts since 1948 to deprive all Israelis of life. And those attempts haven’t stopped. In fact, tomorrow there will be plans for such a deprivation, and the day after, and the day after that.
Moho–
And while we’re talking about a thriving Palestinian economy, it would seem that a peaceful businessman like Khouri would understand that the real impediment to a vibrant Palestinian economy is the billions of dollars in foreign aid that goes directly into the hands of terrorists via Yasser Arafat’s more than likely still active bank accounts–which is big business there, and to the purchase of sophisticated weaponry, much like the enormous cache found on the Karin A.
Perhaps if the UN would remove itself from the West Bank and the foreign aid would stop, using sound principles of economics, a viable Palestinian economy would develop. You know, free market and all. I think that’s another thing America is known for, supporting the growth of free markets and entrepreneurs.
I mean, if a guy owns a Coca Cola plant, how interested is he in the purchase of short range missiles? And could he really afford them? No, to get into that store, and man would need billions of dollars, not just tens of thousands, nor hundreds of thousands.
Just because someone calls themselves “pro-Israel” doesn’t necessarily make it so. It’s crucial that we understand not only that the money behind the group is rotten, but that the views, goals, principles and objectives of the group itself are also rotten:
http://ronmossad.blogspot.com/2009/09/j-dead-end-street.html
Because even if the financiers themselves have righteous intentions of acheiving real peace (and as this article correctly points out, they don’t) – these people’s ACTIONS are incredibly counterproductive.
In the end, J Street is a great “hope and change” alternative to real Israel lobbying. Hope for terrorists and change that reduces the support for the only real democracy in the Middle East.
hit the road lenny