Showdown on J Street
J Street’s director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, published an open letter to Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren in the Jerusalem Post this week insisting that he appear at the J Street Conference at the end of the month. Hopefully, Ambassador Oren will continue to deny the supposed “pro-Israel” organization the legitimacy of his presence.
J Street’s goals and policies were revealed when Stephen Walt, co-author of the venomous The Israel Lobby, recently proclaimed, “This is a key moment in the debate. It will be important whether Obama gets enough cover from J Street and the Israel Policy Forum so Obama can say, ‘AIPAC is not representative of the American Jewish community.’”
It’s time to call out Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s director, to answer the following questions:
1: You served as Fenton Communications’ senior vice president until you established J Street, launched in 2008. In early 2009, Fenton signed contracts with a Qatari foundation to lead an 18-month long anti-Israel campaign in the United States with a special focus on campuses. The actual text of the contract called for: “An international public opinion awareness campaign that advocates for the accountability of those who participated in attacks against schools in Gaza.”
Did you sever your ties with Fenton when you began J Street? Do you retain any role or holdings in Fenton today? Did you play any role in introducing Fenton to the Qatari agents or play any role in facilitating the contract? Were you aware of the negotiations or the contract signed on March 12, 2009?
These questions are relevant because it’s important to know if J Street’s refusal to support Israel’s anti-Hamas military campaign was influenced by your ties with Fenton, whose promotional material claims: “We only represent people and projects we believe in.”
Were there discussions with Fenton prior to J Street’s refusal to condemn the Goldstone Report on Gaza, a report that certainly serves the Fenton/Qatari interests? Were there communications with Fenton surrounding J Street’s support for Rep. Donna Edwards who refused to sign a congressional resolution supporting Israeli actions in Gaza?
2: You were recently asked in an interview about funds J Street received from Palestinians, Arab-Americans, and Iranian-Americans, to which you answered: “J Street does have some Arab and Muslim donors — about five. These are individuals, not organizations, corporations or foreign countries. Well over 90 percent of our money comes from Jewish Americans and Christians.”
Did you really say J Street has only five Arab and Muslim donors? A partial listing quickly extracted from the U.S. Federal Election Commission shows more than 30 contributors, many with ties to Arab-American organizations.
So far, only J Street’s Political Action Committee has disclosed its contributors, as mandated by federal law. But who are the donors to the main J Street organization? Make that list public, and these pesky inquiries will probably go away.
When asked about J Street’s funding by the Jerusalem Post — the newspaper that ran the original exposé — you responded “at most 3 percent” of contributors were Muslim or Arab. Now you state that the figure may be closer to 10 percent. One tenth of J Street’s budget of $3 million, or $300,000, is a substantial sum. Why do so many Arabs contribute to an organization that purports to be “pro-Israel?”
3: Do any Israelis support J Street’s agenda? How many? Look at the list of Israeli speakers appearing at J Street’s Conference, all losers in Israel’s political arena: Ami Ayalon, Colette Avital, Amir Peretz, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yuli Tamir, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. They have all failed to secure support from the Israeli electorate or even from their own parties, so they take their messages to the U.S. and plead with the U.S. government to pressure Israel’s government, make the Israelis do things that their citizens have already rejected. The tactic is patently anti-democratic.
Two retired senior IDF officers, well-known members of the peace camp, recently went to the U.S. to speak on J Street’s behalf. When they got there they discovered that J Street opposed sanctions against Iran. According to a JTA account, Brig. Gen.(res) Israela Oron called for a “timetable that would be tied to punishing sanctions.”
“The thing that worries me and that worries other Israelis is that [current negotiations are] not limited in time,” Oron said as the faces of her J Street hosts turned anxious, adding “I’m not sure I’m expressing the J Street opinion.”
Maj. Gen. (res) Danny Rothschild discovered that he differed with J Street’s policies on an immediate freezing of settlements, the halting of settlements’ natural growth, and opposing tough sanctions against Iran.
And then Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz spoke to a Washington gathering in early October sponsored by J Street’s co-founder, Daniel Levy, today of the New America Foundation. When Pines-Paz was told he was wrong in “assuming that everyone on the left is aligned on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and threat, [and in agreement] with Israel’s assessment,” he exploded. “Wake up!” he shouted.
Lenny, good article. But I don’t think that you mentioned the most damning fact about George Soros. During the Holocaust, he was living in Budapest and helped the Nazis find Jews who were in hiding. He was a Nazi collaborator. That should disqualify from any role in American or Israeli politics.
But Soros is very rich, unfortunately. And money talks loudly. Especially in the of J Street.
Why don’t you just interview him, you idiot. We both know the answer to that: he’d answer your questions, and you’d be left with no conspiracy theory to shine off on your dumb-as-a-post readers.
“An international public opinion awareness campaign that advocates for the accountability of those who participated in attacks against schools in Gaza.”
Yeah, that really sounds anti-Israeli…
It’s kind of stunning, really, that a former AIPAC flat-earther has the chutzpah to attack J Street for its sources of funding. How about some questions for Lenny, such as, why hasn’t AIPAC listed itself as a “foreign agent” pursuant to American laws? Is it possible, from AIPAC’s perspective to be pro-Israel if you believe Palestinians have a right to self-determination? Is it possible to be pro-Israel, if you disagree with Likudniks? Is it possible to be pro-Israel if you despise FM Lieberman and think of him as a David Duke racist? Is it possible to be pro-Israel if you believe the use of white phosphorus on innocent children during Operation Cast Lead was at a mimimum, regrettable, at the other end, a possible war crime? Keep up with the hasbara, it’s so charming.
Moho, do you REALLY think that Jeremy Ben-Ami would HONESTLY answer the questions posed by Lenny Ben-David? If so, I would like to know which planet you came from or what kind of glue you were sniffing. Alternatively, I’d be willing to make a bet with you: 5:1 says he’d either evade or lie.
Carol, you are either ignorant or playing dumb when perpetrating the common blood libel against Israel: its use of phosphorous flares was in accordance with international law and is the same as that of all the other countries using phosphorus for this purpose. It was NOT used by Israel as an incendiary ordnance – it was used only for illumination. Check your sources.
Incidentally, Carol, Avigdor Lieberman is a rather sensible, astute and capable politician – this explains his popularity, btw. Watch his star rise even higher in the coming years. BTW, I don’t always agree with him, but in general he is right on. And if it happens that you don’t like his opinions, and even despise him for them, that in and of itself does NOT make him a David Duke – but it certainly does show you for an intolerant closed-minded bigot that you are.
To the likes of you, Likud (let alone Israel Beiteinu) is an anathema. Oh well, too bad for you – we the Conservatives and Right-wingers are alive and well, both in the U.S. and Israel (as well as Europe and elsewhere), and have yet not lost the common sense which is so uncommon among your camp.
After all, modern-day Conservatives are the true Liberals in the Classical sense, whereas you “Liberal” “Progressives” (who are neither Liberal nor really progressive) are the quintessential fifth column in the heart of the Western civilization, bent on its destruction. You are either unwitting or willful dupes to the Islamists (aka “useful idiots”) or hypocritical enemies of the West.
Phew … ugh
Moho, do you REALLY think that Jeremy Ben-Ami would HONESTLY answer the questions posed by Lenny Ben-David?\
LoL. What a great argument for the end of journalism. SInce there’s a chance that someone might not answer you honestly, you shouldn’t interview them at all! Why should anyone listen to you dopes?
Great article. Informational, but way over my head in terms of verifying any of the allegations and/or claims of a conspiracy. Still, it would not surprise me at all. Left or right, Jewish-Americans need to wake up to Obama’s anti-Israel tactics.
Below is an open letter I sent to ‘Jstreet.org’. It will be interesting to see how they respond. Here is the letter:
Comments posted on the “Jstreet.org” website on October 20, 2009
The life story of Muhammad, the founder of Islam and the author of the Koran, is nowhere to be found in the American main stream media. Jewish-Americans and Christian-Americans alike are ignorant of the facts.
How can peace be achieved with a people and a belief system that most of us do not understand? Islam is a radical belief system that forbids anyone from telling the truth about its founder.
What is the real story behind the claim that Muhammad flew in a dream on a unicorn to Jerusalem? And, perhaps more importantly, why should we take that seriously enough to sacrifice the lives of thousands of innocents? Why should world wars revolve around this issue?
Who was in Israel first? Was it the Jews or the Arabs? Is there no place for the Arabs that migrated to Palestine in the rest of the Arab world? Do the Palestinians really want peace – or are they just an excuse for Muslim pursuit of entire world domination?
Please tell us your position on this very important matter.
Thank you.
>>> What is the real story behind the claim that Muhammad flew in a dream on a unicorn to Jerusalem?
Good question. I have a few others. What is the real story behind this Jesus fellow being conceived by an angel while his mother remained virginal? Just how can she remain virginal while giving birth? Or did they have C-Sections 2,000 years ago? What is the story behind the King of all Men allowing himself to be tortured and killed in order to ‘save’ man from their real or perceived sins? What kind of belief system would blame the Jews for the death of their savior?
The point? Don’t make fun of anyone’s religion unless you remember that every religion has a leap of faith. If you believe in Christianity, then you accept these wild stories. If you believe in the Islamic Faith, then you believe in Unicorns carrying Mohammed. And, Judaism has man-eating whales and Hinduism has gods with 35 arms.
J Street puts the Israeli diplomats and the Jewish Community in a delicate balancing act. It is no secret that the White House plotters, the renowned Ballerina and Axelrod with the funding arm of George Soros, have conceived this front organization as a platform to weaken the Israeli consensus and to tarnish Israel’s standing among its many supporters in the Congress. I can only imagine that the Ballerina, aka R. Emmanuel, whose father was an Irgun operative and Bibi’s papa who was one of the brains behind Menahem Begin must have had some spat in the past. Bibi had a hard time during the days of President “Is”, whose behind the scene operative was the dancing Ballerina. Dr. Freud could explain it better. Meantime these 3 Jews are serving Israel on a cutting board to the community of world haters, with the assistance of many Academic haters, found in most U.S Campuses and many think tanks, funded by the Wahabis. No one will look pretty at the end of this brawl.
Carol, the reason AIPAC has not registered as a foreign agent is that AIPAC is not a foreign agent. It’s money does not come from Israel, but from US citizens who believe that support of a strong and safe Israel is in the US’ best interest. And yes, it is possible, from AIPAC’s perspective to be pro-Israel if you believe Palestinians have a right to self-determination. Believing that Palestinians have a right to self-determination is not the same as allowing them to use the supposed right of self-determination — which they have shown repeatedly is a much lower priority than aboloshing Israel — as a fig leaf for committing genocide. It is the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, who are the reason that there is no Palestinian state today and that there is likely to be none in the foreseeable future.
It’s not surprising that AIPAC (and Lenny Ben-David, a former AIPAC staffer, who then went by the name Lenny Davis) are going full guns on J Street. AIPAC feels threatened by J Street, as they should. Finally, a pro-peace and alternative pro-Israel lobby is gaining legitimacy in Washington.
To counter the threat, AIPAC (and its supporters) are engaging in smear tactics. However, AIPAC’s smear campaigns against pro-peace Jewish activists and groups are nothing new.
AIPAC’s concerted efforts to discredit Jewish critics of Israeli policies are well documented. An August 1992 Village Voice article by journalist Robert I. Friedman revealed that a unit of AIPAC investigated and harassed dovish Jewish groups advocating land for peace. The AIPAC office, known as Policy Analysis, maintained files for the purpose of discrediting pro-peace groups like American for Peace Now and the Jewish Peace Lobby.
J Street is just the latest target for AIPAC’s smear tactics.
Daddy, what kind of terrible schmearing are you into now?
Bad enough to be a former AIPAC flunky, but to be known as their mascot?
Lenny the Weasel?
Shouldn’t maybe it be better to stop living?
“Moho, do you REALLY think”
No.
Daddy, what kind of terrible schmearing are you into now?
Bad enough to be a former AIPAC flunky, but to be known as their mascot?
Lenny the Weasel?
Shouldn’t maybe it be better to stop living like that?
No Carol, you cannot be pro-Israel if you favor Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. And since J Street opposes even sanctions against Iran, essentially it is supporting Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons. You can’t be pro-Israel if you think hamas should be part of a unity government and you can’t be pro-Israel if you oppose Israel’s basic right to self-defense. And Carol, it isn’t just Likudniks who oppose J Street’s agenda. If you actually bothered to read the article, even Israelis on the left are backing away from J Street as they become more aware of what it truly represents.
Carol and Norm think of themselves as the “good Jews” whom they believe that the Palestinians will tolerate once they’ve destroyed Israel.
I mean who do those Israelis and Jews who support Israel think they are? They’re a shanda fur die goyim as far as good thinking folks like Carol and Norm are concerned.
J-Street’s craven desire for acceptance by those who would destroy Israel makes the court Jews and assimilationists of the past look positively bursting with dignity by comparison.
I wonder, though, if Carol and Norm are such dedicated Jews as they claim they are, and so concerned with Jewish survival, that they actually do Jewish things. Does Norm keep kosher? Does Carol go to the mikvah (well, if she’s married and pre-menopausal)? Does Norm even know how to put tefilin on? Does Carol even know what a mikvah is?
I wonder, also, how many of the Jews affiliated with J-Street send their kids (well, the ones who are mature enough to have kids) to Jewish schools. Or are yeshivas and day schools too parochial for the world citizens of J-Street?
I wonder, too, just how much money Jeremy Ben-Ami and his wife have donated to non-political Jewish causes. It’s not like Jeremy is poor. His late father was a vice president of a chemical company, and he grew up in the affluent upper west side of Manhattan. He attended exclusive and expensive private colleges, Princeton and NYU (his wife went to Haverford and NYU). He’s been affluent enough to have nothing but political jobs since law school.
Of course it would take a psychiatrist to figure out the dynamics of the son of an Irgun fighter simultaneously undercutting support for Israel while presenting his father’s activities as credentials for his own loyalty to Israel. Poppa was an Irgun “terrorist” but Jeremy’s had no problem spending daddy’s money.
BTW, if you notice, groups like J-Street and Human Rights Watch like to put Jews with identifiably Hebrew names in prominent places. BenAmi, Smadar, Sarah Leah, etc.
If J Street has nothing to hide, why is it hiding its supporters and funders?
Why does J Street advertise “160 Senators and Congressmen” who are signed on to their Convention when most have dropped out?
Come on J Street, come clean!
Ronnie Schreiber, had it occurred to you that groups like J-Street” and HRW didn’t “put Jews” in those places, but these Jewish human beings chose to go there because they share the views of these organizations? It seems you lack the imagination to realize that Jews can disagree with you, so these must be fake, tokens, useful idiots, etc. A disgusting implication, really. I thought ad-hominem attacks were banned from the comments? This is smear on those Jews’ integrity and decency.
As an Israeli I find it incredibly offensive that organizations such as J-street not only think that they know better than the voting public in Israel what is best for Israel, they also try to pressure the US government to act against the wishes of the Israeli electorate.
> As an Israeli I find it incredibly offensive that organizations such as J-street not only think that they know better than the voting public in Israel what is best for Israel, they also try to pressure the US government to act against the wishes of the Israeli electorate.
As a US citizen, I find it incredibly offensive that Israeli’s immediately assume that US and Israeli interests ALWAYS line up in agreement with each other. Until GWB started kow-towing to Israeli leadership, the fact is that older US administrations tended to go against Israeli wishes more often than most Israelis’ care to remember. Yes, the US SHOULD act against the interests and wishes of the Israeli electorate when it is in our interests to do so. Case in point — knocking down the settlements in the West Bank. GWB let Israel do whatever it wanted with the Settlements. Now it is time to shut them all down and clear them all out.
I second Lucabrasi. As an American I resent an Israeli beneficiary of my tax paying largesse complaining about the support we give him. Hey, dude, lump it or leave it. There are plenty of other patrons out there ready and willing to fund your military endeavors and countering sanctions at the UN. Don’t come around here asking for more favors, you’re extremely lucky for the gifts we already donate to your country.
Why is it that such intelligent people are so unilaterally partisan with regard to the issue of Israel, and subsequently unable to accept any attempt to even _approach_ a mutually equitable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?
I found it particularly curious, as another responder pointed out, that this quote indicated some sort of anti-Israel sentiment: “An international public opinion awareness campaign that advocates for the accountability of those who participated in attacks against schools in Gaza.” When is accountability ever a bad thing? All this requires is an objective investigation into actions taken by IDF soliders, which many people, including our current administration, feel has not yet be adequately carried out by the Israeli government. This is in no way unreasonable, nor in any way damning of Israel. If the actions were truly justified, then a thorough investigation would corroborate them–it is similar to the expressed desire for J-Street to release the full list of its “supporters and funders.” The notion that Israel is unequivocally incapable of wrongdoing is a complete distortion of reality.
Furthermore, many of these responses seem to suggest that in order to approach this situation we have to be “good Jews.” This is somewhat disturbing, and indicative of the insular mentality which has exacerbated the conflict since the initial pre-war emigration to Eretz Yisrael. Considering that I’m not Jewish nor religious in the slightest, and merely an impartial third-party searching for an objective, peaceful solution to the conflict should I be excluded from the discussion? I too have any personal connections to the conflict. In fact, my best friend, whom I care for dearly, is currently in the IDF–so achieving peace in in both of our best interests.
The underlying commonplace here, among those who support Israeli policy without question (which seems to include the article’s author as well) is that Arabs as a whole are working towards the destruction of Israel. This is exemplified by the notion that any affiliation on J-Street’s part with “Palestinians, Arab-Americans, and Iranian-Americans” indicates that the organization is anti-Israel. Is it really logical to believe that there are no intelligent, critical Arabs who also yearn for an equitable peace? In fact, it’s about on-par with antisemitism, as both indicate an irrational distrust/fear/hatred of an entire group of people based on a mere correlation.
Maybe I’m completely off-base, and if so I’m always happy to learn. If anyone wants to discuss this constructively, I’d gladly indulge.
Likewise lucabrasi, Israel should act against the wishes of the American government when it is in their interests to do so. And it is against the interests of Israel to ethnically cleanse Jews from Judea and Samaria, it is against the interests of Israel to surrender territory to enemies that want it annihilated. It is against the interest of Israel to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. It is in the interst of Israel to ignore obama’s demands. You see, it goes both ways.
moho do you resent your tax dollars going to Egypt? Do you resent your tax dollars going to the “palestinian” terrorist regimes of hamas and fatah? Do you resent your tax dollars going to the world’s biggest welfare leeches called the “palestinians”?
BTW moho, America does not give any “gifts” to Israel, it provides loans to Israel on the condition Israel uses it to buy military equipment from America. This is a quid pro quo, not a handout. Obviously the US believes it is in its own interests to provide loans to Israel. It is good for our aerospace business.
Incredible. “Jews” like this frothing racist Lenny Ben-David, so concerned with the strength of Israel, will be the very thing to massively undermine American Jews support of Israel. Too bad if there isn’t a “united front” in presenting American Jewry’s support of Israel, there is no rock solid “united front.” Arrogant racist rants, like this one by this “writer,” will do way more to fuel not only anti-Israel sentiment but Anti-semitism in general than any number of left-wingers. Shame on you lenny ben-david for your non-rigorous fallacious arguments. Disgusting. So “pro-israel” that you spew poorly thought out illogical arguments abhorrent enough to turn the stomach.
Lenny Ben-David is a frothing racist for daring to expose J Street as the virulently anti-Israel organization that it is? Why do you attack the messenger? J street disgustingly uses its supposed Jewish identity to give credibility to policy ideas that are outright perilous to the Jewish state. Explain to me what is pro-Israel about supporting hamas, opposing any measure to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes, inviting speakers which accuse Israel of being a nazi state and receiving donations from radical muslims?
This quote says it all about what J Street represents: “I can’t help fearing that the Zionist enterprise will one day be seen to have done the Jewish people more harm than good. Our tenacious hold on this strip of homeland has become the scapegoat for the world’s terrorism and this wouldn’t be the case if we remained a people of the diaspora.” — Ayelet Waldman (jstreet adviser). There couldn’t be more blatant evidence that J Street is in fact a group dedicated to the obliteration of Israel as a Jewish state. Nothing more needs to be said.
Why has this place become infested with so many anti-Israel scoundrels?
Lenny Ben-David is a frothing racist for exposing J street as being the anti-Israel outfit that it is? Why attack the messenger? What is truly disgusting is how J Street uses its supposed Jewish identity to give credibility to policies which are perilous to the Jewish state. Explain to me how a group which supports hamas, opposes any measure to prevent Iran from acquiring nukes, invites speakers who accuse Israel of being a nazi state, accepts donations from radical muslims, can be considered anything but anti-Israel?
This quote sums up perfectly what J Street represents: “I can’t help fearing that the Zionist enterprise will one day be seen to have done the Jewish people more harm than good. Our tenacious hold on this strip of homeland has become the scapegoat for the world’s terrorism and this wouldn’t be the case if we remained a people of the diaspora.” — Ayelet Waldman (jstreet adviser). Can there be more blatant evidence than this statement that J Street is committed to the obliteration of Israel as a Jewish state?
J Street and its apologists remind me of the current White House in that whenever its true agenda gets exposed by their own members statements and activities, they lash out at the messengers for being racists or conducting a smear campaign. All people like Ben David are doing is simply informing everyone about what J Street is up to. They are just pissed off because they have been exposed.
Laura,
> Likewise lucabrasi, Israel should act against the wishes of the American government when it is in their interests to do so. And it is against the interests of Israel to ethnically cleanse Jews from Judea and Samaria, it is against the interests of Israel to surrender territory to enemies that want it annihilated.
I don’t think asking Israel to STOP placing Settlements in the West Bank is an outrageous request. Nor, do I think asking Israels to knock down the existing Settlements in the West Bank is an outrageous request. You already are the dominant military force in the mid-east. You already HAVE most of the land. Why do you really need those additional dozen acres or so?
> It is against the interest of Israel to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
As for Israel bombing Iran, if it were up to me, I’d say go for it. Israel already bombed the USS Liberty. Why would we expect your government to behave in a rational matter when it comes to Iran, when you obviously can’t even behave rationally when it comes to your largest and most important ally?
> America does not give any “gifts” to Israel, it provides loans to Israel on the condition Israel uses it to buy military equipment from America. This is a quid pro quo, not a handout.
And, how would AIPAC respond if someone in the US government ever proposed that the US stop these loans? More importantly, If they aren’t handouts, why doesn’t Isreal simply refuse to accept them? Puh-leeze. Call it what it is, a handout to a government that BOMBED OUR SHIP!
> J Street and its apologists remind me of the current White House in that whenever its true agenda gets exposed by their own members statements and activities, they lash out at the messengers for being racists or conducting a smear campaign. All people like Ben David are doing is simply informing everyone about what J Street is up to. They are just pissed off because they have been exposed.
Personally, I wish more Isreali’s acted with the attitude of Tzipi Livini:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/10/tzipi_livni_sho/
What about JStreet scares AIPAC (and Laura) so much? I guess they don’t like the fact that JStreet is a threat to view of the world that is held be AIPAC. The only group that has been ‘exposed’ Laura is AIPAC. Exposed for opposing anyone with another point of view, no matter how valid.
“You already HAVE most of the land. Why do you really need those additional dozen acres or so?”
…………………………………….
Most of the land? Are you for real? Take a look at a map of the Mideast.
It would be irrational to allow Iran nuclear weapons. Israel cannot allow itself to be a sitting duck because the rest of the west is too feckless to stop Iran.
=====================================
“And, how would AIPAC respond if someone in the US government ever proposed that the US stop these loans? More importantly, If they aren’t handouts, why doesn’t Isreal simply refuse to accept them? Puh-leeze. Call it what it is, a handout to a government that BOMBED OUR SHIP!”
…………………………..
If the loans are merely “handouts” without any benefit to the US, why doesn’t the US government simply end it? Let me guess, the Zionist lobby, right? Why was it that back in the 80′s when Israel started to develop its own fighter jet, the Lavi, it was the US government which twisted Israel’s arm into scrapping the project, which Israel foolishly obliged? It’s quite obvious that the US government didn’t want the competition and did not want to lose Israel as a customer. So these loans which you refer to as “handouts” actually benefit the US.
As for the Liberty, there’s no point in trying to convince a demon like yourself that the ship was in a war zone and so got accidentally bombed as frequently occurrs in the heat of battle. Audio tapes of the pilots have proven this. And the US military investigated the incident and determined it was so. Yeah, I know how you would respond to that. The Israel lobby made them do it, pathetic.
You see even we have bombed our own during wars. Perhaps the Canadians should accuse us of having purposely shot at their soldiers in Afghanistan.
I’m not the least bit scared of J Street, its J street that is scared now that it is being exposed for its treachery.
To suggest that the American/Israeli special relationship is symmetric is preposterous: it is the relationship of the giant to the dwarf. To suggest that Israel has the freedom to defy American interests in any serious manner does not pass the straight face test, or perhaps people are forgetting 1973.
Apart from the cupidity of the arms merchants, Israel enjoys overwhelming support among the American people because, emerging from the grim shadow of the Holocaust, Israel has largely tried to set an example as a moral, democratic state, and because Americans like an underdog. To assume that this support will survive intransigence in the peace process *might* be a mistake, however, particularly if Americans decide they are tired of their national security being held hostage to the squabbling of two tiny groups of people over a desiccated piece of land about the size of New Jersey. America has done too much to ensure the survival and prosperity of Israel to put up with disrespect from the AIPAC crowd.
Bill,
“American interests” have shifted for the “personal reasons” of a few, making them “personal interests,” NOT the interests of America. This is why AIPAC doesn’t endorse blind new strategies that evolve from academia experimentally embracing an approach regardless of the obvious & severe consequences.
It’s interesting how many of the comments on Clemon’s blog, The Washington Note, are flirting with outright antisemitism. These aren’t posts of people with principled disagreements with Israel or its policies; like so many leftists they’re consumed by hatred of Israel and Jews.
Israel is a great country, a democratic and moral one, no matter how much the haters try to distort reality and lie about the facts of her appropriate acts of self-defense in Gaza.
Zionist Israel, the Golden Calf of the Jewish people. We will lose our souls the further we head down this path. At best it offers discrimination and segregation. At worst it is Israel’s one true existential threat.
J Street message is ridiculous, what is this ‘approach’ to peace that is so unique? Throw down your rifles and “hope” for “change” is not applicable in Israel. Eventually J Street will be exposed for its lack of validity and support will dwindle as it garners the stigma of a fringe & extremist organization.
J-street is trying to change a decades-long, mutually self-destructive relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Your screed against this message is factually baseless and at its heart an appeal to racist fears and warmongering tendencies.
As long as we as a nation blindly support Israel’s every foreign policy blunder or, yes, war crime, they will continue unhindered. As an added plus, we engender the animosity of the Muslim world when we prop up criminal regimes. We’re doing it in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Through our explicit denial of any possible wrongdoing on the part of the Israeli government in any situation, we ensure that peace will never come to the region.
Palestinians use children as shields, they hide their weapons among civilian housing, they hide their faces when they’re out and about. I love Israel and how she defends herself at all times. All of you morons how back Hams or any of the terrorists are compelte and total boneheads…they will kill you as quickly as they can once they are done using you……..
It does seem to me that you are doing against J STREET exactly what your rules will not allow to be done by posters here, slandering instead of debating. That, I feel is dangerous. If you look back at the public picture of Bush and the neocons, right or wrong, many Americans see Bush as dummy duped by Israel’s operatives, the neocons—whom themselves insisted that they are the only legitimate voice of American Jews. As a goy who looks closely at anti-Semitism under the sheets (where you can’t go to look) rather than wherever it erupts openly, I must tell you that it is simmering as a widespread super-volcano underground and when it will erupt it will be massive and all pervasive as an American Krystalnacht. The case about FIFTH COLUMN is already discretely disseminated quite widely and meets with little resistance. Nothing solidifies it like the chutzpah of impugning the motives of critics. The neocon call for “World War IV” against Islam caused one of their adherents, Fukuyama, to question why all this bringing “democracy” Crusade is limited to Arab nations. For that, the neocons accused one of their own of anti-Semitism! There is still lingering suspicion of Israel’s participation or prior knowledge of 9/11, right or wrong, among many Americans who read blogs just as declarative as yours. We live in an era where disseminated notions via the internet live on forever as building blocs for later theories, seeming soooooo legit when footnoted with URLs. AIPAC has quite a dubious record as a backflow of US aide $ to Israel come back here as propaganda support, so why expose itself by attacking J STREET? Please explain for the GOYIM MAJORITY in America on what basis do you think that Arab support discredits J STREET. Does that make them less Jewish or less American than you? Is your goal to make it seem like an Arab mouthpiece? Bravo, you attack your own Jewish children, chasing them away from the synagogue, and then wonder why ADL’s Foxman had to explain to a Jerusalem meeting of “Jewish students feeling oppressed on campuses abroad because they are Jews” that ADL has not been supporting Zionism because it has been too busy “fighting assimilation” of Jews in goy society. Can’t you confront ideas in MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE– especially when it is your fellow Jews– or is slander and assault on motive for not supporting your views all you can do? If it’s all you can do, keep two things in mind: 1) You are losing MOST Jews because MOST JEWS live in the Diaspora and deem Israel a nice place to visit but not to live while very many Israelis get their degrees and move out to the Diaspora; 2) Jewish culture and ethic are the strongest and richest contribution Jews have ever made to Diaspora civilization. By demanding parrot-like compliance in order for you to restrain your scandalous slander (slander that could be deadly to all Jews because of your recklessness) you force young Jews into emersion AWAY from their roots and lose them forever religiously, culturally and as Zionists. As they face ostracization through slander by the likes of Kramer and yourselves, the same standards are applied to you but it is not these Jews you chased out that come after you but raging mobs who feel you took them for “dumb goyim” with your propaganda that, in the end, led to a lot of dead non-Jews fighting Israel’s battles. If you need evidence just read the Daniel Report commentary in the US Army Journal PARAMETERS by one of its authors: AN AMERICAN JEW who seems to forget his nationality by speaking as a policy maven of the Israeli military.
I grew up with Jews as fellow refugees and my mentors were survivors of a double Holocaust, Hitler’s and Stalin’s. They taught me that violence in words and deeds only begets violence that is overwhelming. Better, they argued, to engage in meaningful dialogue. To my amazement, at UC Berkeley in 1964, it was NYC Communist American Jews who fomented a FREE SPEECH student revolution, supported by the Conservatives, and when they won they did not call for a Red Revolution but for MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE. The then college age neocons were hiding under their beds. Bettina Aptheker can be slandered by you for a lot of things but as a good Jew more than a good Communist she brought meaningful dialogue to the 60s, not Communism or anti-Semitism. To this day, neocons make a living abusing on campuses the right she fought and obtained for them. They used it to slander as you now use the internet. But remember, those who would push forward the minute hand on the American Krystanacht clock, thus abusing their internet freedoms, only invite a flood of anti-Semitic reactions on the very same internet that point to your slander. Israel is an over 60 years old fetus of a state living off of an engorged American $ placenta. America is broke and no matter what Congress does to give $10 billions a year to Israel, those who scream at the bailout of banks will just as loudly scream for cutting off Israel. Then you will regret having lost all the J Streeters who care for Israel as much as you. The very Christian Zionists of today will show their anti-Semitic side as they did yesterday. History has proven that for exaltation types it’s very easy to switch from “Chosen people” to “killers of Christ” once their need for cheap oil or other interests are at play. So if the placenta dries up and the anti-Semitic fires you fuel become a conflagration, where will you go? Where will all these Israeli right-wingers– who today feel “safe” because they have dual passports– go? Wouldn’t it be better to engage your fellow Jews in meaningful dialogue and learn how to debate the facts rather than slander? After all, if Israel were so sure of itself Ambassador Oren would not have dual citizenship.
I was raised to believe that when you put six Jews in a room you get interminable debate over seven opinions. I bring that up when people confront me (and incredibly more now than ever do) with the notion of world Jewish conspiracy. It is you who seek to debase my argument by demanding uniformity where none is possible. Neocons thought themselves so smart following their former Leninist dictum: POLARIZE TO MOBILIZE. Finally you have polarized Jews. But what have you got? Wouldn’t it be better to seek common ground by debate instead of slander?
Keep Jews together through meaningful dialogue!
J-Street, who claims being pro-Israel, is in reality anti-Israel organization with a clear objective of making money and political face through indengering Israel and Jews around the world and ultimately eliminating Israel from the map. These people have no credible education and knoledge in ME and Israel history, UN resolutions and documents, and thjey are acting based on street-popular anti-Israel and anti-Semitic information. They sponsors include a number of muslims and possible funding from arab organizations and countries looking for destruction of Israel and killing Jews.