Twenty-Six Reasons J Street’s Demise Shouldn’t Be Mourned
I recently conducted a week of meetings on Capitol Hill, and it’s clear that Israel’s supporters on the left need a better organization than J Street to represent them.
J Street’s attack on liberal flagbearer Rep. Gary Ackerman is evidence of the organization’s incompetent decision-making. J Street’s support for a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel proves just how counterfeit its “pro-Israel” claim is. The latest Washington Times exposé showing that the organization’s director apparently violated IRS “self-dealing” regulations proves just how corrupt, dishonest, and devious J Street is.
Here are 26 reasons why no one should mourn J Street’s downfall, or at the very least, the resignation of J Street director.
1. According to the Times, J Street’s founder and director Jeremy Ben-Ami is co-owner of the Ben-Or public relations company in Israel. A dozen far-left organizations and detractors of Israel make use of Ben-Or’s services. Ben-Ami can claim as much as he wants that he doesn’t receive compensation from Ben-Or, but the fact remains that as a founder and owner he is responsible for the leftist ideological orientation of the PR company. As the head of a charitable organization (J Street Educational Fund) and a non-profit organization (J Street), he has retained Ben-Or to work for J Street. He is, in effect, paying himself with charitable donations. It’s a conflict of interest and called “self-dealing” in the world of tax violations.
2. J Street claims to be “pro-Israel,” but its actions, coalition partners, positions, speakers it sponsors, and Ben-Or clients show that its pro-Israel assertion is one big con job. Jimmy Carter and his “Elders” partners Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson, three of Israel’s biggest critics, are clients in Ben-Ami’s PR company. Can Ben-Ami ever take positions contrary to his clients?
3. J Street’s political action committee continues to take contributions from the Saudi Arabian embassy’s attorney. First exposed in the Jerusalem Post in August 2009, Nancy Dutton’s J Street PAC contributions continued in October 2010, according to the most recent Federal Elections Commission reports. What is it about J Street that attracts Dutton and other Saudi-related power-brokers in Washington?
4. J Street received $811,697 — half of its 2009 budget — from Consolacion “Connie” Esdicul, a mystery woman from Hong Kong. The only thing known about the woman is a lame J Street explanation that she is a friend of a J Street benefactor, world-class professional gambler Bill Benter. Does she even know where Israel is on the map? Until Ms. Esdicul comes clean, the donation — probably a foreign currency money transfer based on the uneven sum — smells of money laundering.
5. Look who endorses J Street. “This is a key moment in the debate,” says Stephen Walt, co-author of the anti-Israel book The Israel Lobby. “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.’” — Mother Jones, September 2009
6. How many times did Jeremy Ben-Ami deny that J Street received funds from the Israel- and AIPAC-loathing George Soros? Eventually, it was discovered that J Street was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from Soros and his family when J Street’s IRS files were accidentally made public. Now, Ben-Ami covers his deceit by publicly expressing pride in the Soros participation.
7. J Street’s lobbying operation is detailed in records of the secretary of the Senate and the clerk of the House. The records show that in the first quarter of 2009, J Street was spending less than $5,000 on lobbying expenses. By the first quarter of 2010, it was spending $130,000 per quarter. Where did this windfall come from, if not from George Soros or the mysterious Hong Kong donor?
8. J Street upholds a fundamentally anti-democratic ideal that Israel must be saved in spite of itself, that the people of Israel will never voluntarily surrender the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and that the United States must impose a solution on Israel. Ben-Ami, the son of a right-wing Irgun operative, Yitshaq Ben-Ami, who died in 1985, could have been an Irgun “prince” just like Dan Meridor, Binyamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni, and Ehud Olmert, but he couldn’t hack it in Israel, by his own admission to Moment:
Personally, Ben-Ami found Israeli society harder to penetrate. “If you didn’t grow up in Israel, and you’re making aliyah, and you don’t speak Hebrew fluently, and you didn’t serve in the army, in terms of professional opportunities and full acceptance into the society, there were some barriers to coming in at 35.” Despite his sabra ties and professional success, he concluded, “I didn’t think I could ever be 100-percent fully accepted as an Israeli.”
So Ben-Ami did the next best thing: He returned to the U.S. to attack Israel’s government from Washington. We’ll leave it to Freud to analyze Ben-Ami Junior’s opposition to everything that his father Ben-Ami Senior stood for.
9. J Street joined with the pro-Iranian lobby, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), to oppose congressional efforts to impose sanctions on Iran. Ben-Ami and NIAC director Trita Parsi co-authored an anti-sanctions article titled “How Diplomacy Can Work with Iran” in Huffington Post in June 2009.
10. J Street receives large contributions from one of NIAC’s directors, Genevieve Lynch of New York. She serves on J Street’s Finance Committee, and her J Street PAC contributions exceed $10,000 per year.
What else would you expect from a group that is a front for a Nazi collaborator (Soros)?
Tragically,many childhood psychodramas end up being played out on the world stage, more often than not to the detriment of millions of lives.
Ben-Ami (which ironically, tragically and paradoxically means-son of my nation!!)not unlike Norman Finkelstein, George Soros and Noam Chomsky (to name a few high profile parasitic influences on the world stage)have one thing in common, childhoods rooted in drama where their Jewish lineage became the locus for all their angst and self loathing.Sigh…..
While many Jewish children of Holocaust survivors, and others fighting for their lives have risen above their circumstances, becoming preeminent in their fields too,there are a sub sect who end up becoming the gravest threats to their people.Much of this is due to their URGENT need to separate from all things Jewish.
The best explanation for this psychosis/Jewish pathology is gleaned through Dr Kenneth Levin’s book, ‘The Oslo Syndrome:Delusions of a People Under Siege’.This Harvard educated psychiatrist, a Princeton educated historian too, dissects this thorny subject with acute precision. Anyone interested in understanding the above will find this book to be a life saver, finally explaining the heretofore inexplicable, thus placing it into laser sharp focus.
In any case, J Street is not going unnoticed in Israel, nor is it lost under the radar. There are people-unashamed, unapologetic Jews-who are watching/monitoring them.
Let us leave it at that.
Lenny, I think you did a fine job exposing the lies and hypocrisy that make JStreet stink to the high heavens.
Col HaCvod!
The entire organization was conceived to deceive. It was only a matter of time before the stink got to be too much. Shows how stupid these people really are because they actually thought this could fly under the radar and they could get away with it. Happy they bit the dust. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch.
I used to think J street were Jews dumb enough to march themselves into death camps, but now I see them for what they really are-Jews who march other Jews(Soros)into death camps.
Ben Ami is a low-grade Marx-alike: envious of his father. (p*nis envy??)
One has to wonder if the J in ” J Street ” really is a wistful reminder for Soros of the time when all Jews simply had the letter J stamped on the official documents?
Perhaps his longing is truly depraved.
I don’t think “demise” means what you think it means.
Snork: “Demise” is the correct word. J Street is dying in Washington, in Congress and even in the White House. It may continue to have its fans among the confused and crazy anti-Israel crowd, but its influence on US policy is nil.
de·mise noun, verb, -mised, -mis·ing. –noun
1. death or decease.
2. termination of existence or operation: the demise of the empire.
And it may not be far away before members of the House of Representatives atart demanding investigations of Hong Kong funding and IRS violations of Ben-Ami’s self-dealing.
For Jews, the whole game, win or lose, is going to be decided by decisions made in Israel. Or as Caroline Glick put it, “We can only rely on ourselves and so we’d better strengthen ourselves as much as possible as quickly as possible in every possible way.”
Sadly, the last people to give up on this brief agitprop operation are the numerous leftist rabbis who still give J-street representatives a warm welcome at their synagogues.
“….Sadly, the last people to give up on this brief agitprop operation are the numerous leftist rabbis who still give J-street representatives a warm welcome at their synagogues….”
Yes. Also the institutes of learning like Pardes in Jerusalem, which coddles them. and offers them opportunities to try to justify their behavior by cherry picking Jewish texts they study. I lived with these people for 4 months.
Lenny, well done! I’ve been following your articles on J street from the beginning and I have no doubt that you’re behind most, if not all, the exposures about J street. If J street truly disappears from the lobbying world, I think the state of Israel owes you a reward.
In the name of truly pro-Israelis thank you very much!
Chana.
Regarding: “Israel’s supporters on the left need a better organization than J Street to represent them.”
This is a serious need. AIPAC used to be the voice of the American Jewish left before J Street invented itself as an organ to slander AIPAC before moving on to slandering Israel. Republican Jews had their own scattered groups; AIPAC was the Democrats and socialists. Now AIPAC is irrelevant. Its name has been dragged through the mud too much.
The ZOA ought to be the voice of the American Jewish left as it was from its founding until the left, following Khrushchev’s 1961 definition of Israel as an “imperialist” power for allying with capitalist France and Britain, left the Jews. The ZOA today lacks the inspiration to be something more than Morton Klein’s personal home page.
There are a loose assortment of good bloggers on the subject of Israel who show no signs of being right wing, such as EoZ, Karmafish, and Fresno Zionism, but no one reads them who does not already agree and go looking for them in the first place. There is no mechanism for presenting their writings to a leftist audience, and no organization.
The “J” in J Street stands for Jihad. These ar etrhe Jews for a Second Holocaust!
Do not confuse leftist pseudo-rabbis with rabbis
Let’s read and hear what the Islamists that will be speaking at the upcoming J St. conference have had to say for THEMSELVES – all IN THEIR OWN WORDS. Nothing defines J St. like the jihadist company it keeps.
Monday, February 21, 2011, Jewish Press Blog
Moslems and Arabs who will Attend the “J Street” Event
New Banner for J-Street?
“J Street” is the leftist radical anti-Israel lobby group funded by George Soros and others who hope it will neutralize AIPAC.
In a few days it will be holding a large shindig in Washington, DC. They are calling it “Give Voice to your Values.” (Get it? The Zionists do not let critics of Israel have a voice!)
We thought you might want to get to know some of those “voices” who will be speaking there:
* Suhail Khan, an Islamic radical, often proclaimed incorrectly as a moderate, who has consorted with and praised the Muslim Brotherhood. See this, this, and this
* Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, the radical pro-jihad Islamofascist anti-Christian Imam from the proposed Ground Zero Mosque. See sample statements of his here.
* Maen Rashid Areikat, PLO terrorist and its “representative” in Washington, DC. Has been jailed by Israel for terrorism. Defender of anti-Semitic bigotry (see this)
* Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose daughters were killed in the crossfire when Gaza terrorists opened fire, including with RPGs and missiles, at Israeli troops. See this. He sued Israel for returning fire at terrorists when his daughters were killed. He did not sue the Hamas.
* Imam Yahya Hendi, a chaplain at Georgetown University, is the closest thing around to a moderate Moslem. He has spoken out against terrorism. Just how that makes him a bona fide lobbyist for this radical group funded by George Soros is unclear. (A true moderate would refuse to attend!)
* Mustafa Barghouti, anti-Israel “activist,” arrested by Israel several times for involvement in terrorism, leader in the Boycott Israel movement
* Amjad Atallah, legal advisor to Chief PLO Terrorist Mahmud Abbas, propagandist and apologist for the Hamas – see this, in which he falsely claims Hamas accepts the existence of Israel.
* Nadia Bilbassy Charters, “journalist” for the pro-jihad Al-Arabiya news service
* Mona Eltahawy – Arab anti-Israel blogger. See this. See her Israel-bashing quotes here.
Does the “J” in “J Street” really stand for jihad?
Posted by Steven Plaut at 6:17 AM
How to really bring about J St.’s demise? Expose PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas for what they really are – IN THEIR OWN WORDS. Team PA/Abbas curriculum and political/media rhetoric of incitement to hate and violence. See web site PLALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH. Read/see/hear Team PA/Abbas 1)terror worship and adulation of terrorist 2)encouragement and justification for murdering Jews 3)Israel delegtimization by lying about ALL Jewish connection to ANY part of Israel – even saying Tel Aviv is a “Palestinian city).
Take out ads in your local Jewish community paper directing all to PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH web site.
Have large, well advertised PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH presentations in your community.
Once Team PA/Abbas is delegitimizaed (using their own words, of course!) J St. will be completely delegitimized.
Several comments here about Jeremy Ben-Ami’s childhood and or relationship with his father being responsible for his twisted brain. What are the details? Same goes for Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Richard Goldstone, George Soros. What happened to these people that they can be filled with such self loathing that they lie about Jews and israel for a living???? Please answer in “Comments”, not in “Reply” to this comment.
Anyone with a leftist soo-do rabbi that supports J. St.: See my comment above that begins “What condemns J St. the most – its own words”.
Print out. Show to members of the congregation. LEAVE synagogue for an Israel supporting – anti-J St. one. Thee is NO reason to continue to support an anti-Israel institution. The soo-do rabbis and their “social justice for everyone except Jews” and “human rights for everyone except Israelis” programming is doing nothing but turning our kids into self-hating Jews.
LEAVE the synagogues behind. I did and have never looked back.
Although I have heard about J street here & there, I was not aware of the devious nature of the organization. Anything that Goldstone, Soros & people of that ilk support cannot be for the good of Israel. Keep up the good work of exposing these corrupt, Jew-hating Jews. Am Yisroel Chai!
Sampling of the blood libelers and defamers speaking at the J Street meeting:
http://www.committeeforisrael.com/uncategorized/a-letter-to-dennis-ross-give-voice-to-americas-pro-israel-values/
A Letter to Dennis Ross: Give Voice to America’s Pro-Israel Values
February 24, 2011
Ambassador Dennis Ross
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington DC 20500
Dear Ambassador Ross:
You have devoted your career to helping Israel find peace with her neighbors. In high-level positions in administrations of both parties, you have been a leading presence in the peace process for over two decades. Because you possess such a detailed knowledge of the conflict and the attempts to resolve it, you are capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, helpful criticism and destructive activism.
It is thus with some surprise that I learned you would be speaking at this year’s J Street conference. Speaking, that is, before a group that has worked diligently over the past three years to become a voice for weakening the U.S.-Israel alliance, for pressuring Israel to accept policies that Israeli voters have rejected as dangerous, and perhaps most important, for giving Jewish support to a global campaign of delegitimization directed against Israel and Zionism.
J Street has spent much of the last two years opposing sanctions on Iran while demanding that Israel refuse to consider military self-defense; it has partnered with leaders of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement; its inability to draw distinctions between Hamas and the IDF during the Gaza War was so striking that the president of the Union for Reform Judaism called the group “morally deficient” and “appallingly naïve.” And, more recently, the group was exposed as having dissembled for years about its sources of funding (much of it foreign) and about its support for the Goldstone Report. Rep. Gary Ackerman recently ended his relationship with the group in exasperation, writing that J Street is “so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out.”
The conference at which you will be speaking is titled “Giving Voice to Our Values.” J Street’s values are most clearly articulated by the speakers it has selected for its conference. These include:
Maen Areikat of the PLO, who denies there was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and accuses Israel of “state terrorism.”
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who said that Israel has “a full-fledged Apartheid system” that is “much worse than what prevailed in South Africa,” and that Israel has been “ethnically cleansing” Palestinians since 1948.
Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, a correspondent for MBC TV, who says that Hamas should not be “lumped in” with other terrorist groups because “once Palestine is liberated then [Hamas] will cease to use violence.”
Edina Lekovic, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who was a managing editor of a magazine that praised Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter.”
Imam Feisal Rauf, the Ground Zero Mosque leader, who refuses to call Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups.
James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute, who has compared Israelis to Nazis and accused the IDF of “genocide” and a “Holocaust.” Only three months ago he wrote that “In a real sense, the plight of the Palestinians is to the Arabs, what the Holocaust is to Jews worldwide.”
Lawrence Wilkerson, a former State Department official, who has repeatedly accused Jewish members of the Bush administration of “working for Israel” and being “card-carrying members of the Likud Party,” and asked whether “their primary allegiance was to their own country or to Israel.”
Daniel Levy, one of Richard Goldstone’s leading advocates in Washington.
Jessica Montell, executive director of B’Tselem, who says that “the situation in the West Bank is worse than apartheid in South Africa” and that Israel’s policy toward Gaza is a “siege.”
Naomi Chazan, a leader of the New Israel Fund and a conference honoree. Her organization funds NGO’s that accuse Israel of war crimes and Apartheid, provided the bulk of the accusations contained in the Goldstone Report, support the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, and seek the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Rebecca Vilkomerson, who runs the BDS group Jewish Voice for Peace. She has said, “Just as in Apartheid South Africa’s day, Israel’s society seems to be turning more bluntly racist and repressive.” She says her organization “speaks out for Goldstone, and we speak out for BDS campaigners.”
Debra Delee, president and CEO of the NGO Americans for Peace Now, who commented on the Turkish flotilla attack on IDF soldiers, “The root of this disaster lies not in the actions of the flotilla’s participants.”
Oded Na’aman, a founder of Breaking the Silence, which accuses IDF soldiers of war crimes. He says the IDF “is guilty of a wide range of abuses” including “allowing Jewish settlers to poison Palestinian wells” and evacuating entire blocks of Palestinian towns and then demolishing them. Palestinian terrorism, he says, is merely a “perceived threat.”
Daniel Seidemann, founder of the NGO “Terrestrial Jerusalem,” who claims that the Old City of Jerusalem is being turned into an “Evangelical settler theme park” and compared Israel’s security fence to the Berlin wall.
Michael Sfard, a lawyer for several radical NGO’s, who routinely demonizes Israel, accuses it of “Apartheid,” and promotes war crimes allegations against it. He testified as a paid witness on behalf of the PLO in a lawsuit brought in U.S. Federal Court by victims of terror attacks perpetrated by the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. He is best known as a leading advocate of “lawfare” – prosecuting Israeli soldiers and officials in European war-crimes trials.
Will you challenge those who seek to brand nearly every Israeli security measure a war crime? Will you take on the inventors and proponents of so many false claims about Israel? Will you repudiate the Goldstone Report?
The pro-Israel community – and the American people – have great respect for Israel because of her consistent willingness to seek peace with her neighbors, even as those neighbors have used the peace process as a means to continue to fight. The American people not only understand and sympathize with Israel’s security challenges, but they refuse to be taken in by cynical and fraudulent accusations that aim to make it impossible for Israel to exercise her right to self-defense. Not only do they refuse to be fooled, they admire the Jewish State for the way it has created a vibrant and prosperous democracy while being subjected to constant terrorism, hatred, and incitement.
There are few moments when someone with your experience and credibility is invited into the anti-Israel echo chamber and provided an opportunity to dispel myths, combat falsehoods, deliver much-needed moral clarity – and state clearly that the United States stands with Israel. I trust that you will seize this moment to explain why the Jewish State is not just one of our closest allies, but a country that fully deserves the admiration and moral support of all Americans.
Yours sincerely,
Noah Pollak
Executive Director, Emergency Committee for Israel
Nice JStreet Hookers for Soros & Arabs
J Street is no longer referred to as a “left wing Jewish group” or a “liberal Jewish group”. It is now commonly referred to as a “Jewish jihadi group”. When we read well meaning journalists referring it to anything other than a Jewish jihadi group we should ask them to be more accurate in the future. As clearly demonstrated with roster of speakers, as in comments above, the “J” in J St. stands for “jihad”.