J Street’s Troubles Began Even Before its National Conference Convenes: Could This Year be Its Swan Song?
Even before its national conference convenes on Saturday night (which I and other PJM folk will be covering and blogging about throughout the conference), J Street is facing opposition from Kadima, the Israeli centrist party headed by Tzipi Livni, because some of its members agreed to attend and speak at the event.
Writing today in the Jerusalem Post, Gil Hoffman reveals that the few who accepted the invitation to speak were told by colleagues in their own faction that “they should not be supporting the left-wing American lobby.” By putting it in this way, the opponents of participation have accurately portrayed J Street for what it is: a fringe leftist sect trying to appear as a mainstream part of American Jewish life.
Hoffman also notes that J Street was unable to get senior Israeli politicians to attend, even a minister whom Hoffman calls “the most dovish minister in the cabinet, Intelligence Services Minister Dan Meridor,” who is from Likud, PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s party.
J Street, which continually tries to assert that it is “pro-Israel and pro-peace,” is well known for opposing whatever measures the Israeli government takes to protect the country. Most recently, it refused to oppose the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Now that the United States voted against it — (although UN Ambassador Susan Rice undercut the meaning of the vote by explaining the administration’s reluctance and stating that “we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. We view Israeli settlement activity in territories that were occupied in 1967 as undermining Israel’s security, its democracy, and hopes for peace and stability…”) — J Street is in the position of formally opposing a decision taken by the United States delegation to the UN.
The organization had also escorted Judge Richard Goldstone around Washington, D.C., to gather support for his notoriously biased anti-Israel report, and refused to condemn the Goldstone Report, even though it accused Israel’s leaders of purposefully targeting civilians in Gaza. Most recently, as Lenny Ben-David pointed out at PJM, its founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has greatly compromised the group’s raison d’etre.
Among the organization’s many recent embarrassments, Ben-Ami was first discovered denying that the anti-Israel billionaire George Soros was funding the group, then reluctantly trying to spin his extensive monetary contributions after they were exposed, to finally bragging about his financial support to make it appear that they always knew about it and were proud of his role in helping them.
As Lenny Ben-David reported, J Street founder Ben-Ami co-authored an article with Trita Parsi in 2009 opposing U.S. sanctions on Iran, in favor of diplomacy. At the time, the real debate in our country was between those who supported some form of military action against Iran — because they argued sanctions were not working and would not work — and those who argued we should rely on sanctions alone. There were very few who took the position taken by Ben-Ami and Parsi, which was a stance that, if adopted, would have strengthened the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. No wonder that, as Hoffman writes, Kadima members of the Knesset “were also upset with J Street for undermining the international effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran.”
Keep in mind that these Kadima MKs are opponents of the Netanyahu government, and want it to fall. But as MK Ze’ev Bielski told the Jerusalem Post, “this organization is doing tremendous damage to Israel.” Bielski thinks they may actually “have good intentions,” but he realizes the facts are that “they oppose an American president vetoing an anti-Israel resolution at the Security Council” and also opposed the defensive actions taken by Israeli commandos at the time of the flotilla crisis. Another MK, Shai Hermesh, added that “he could do his job of trying to topple the government while in Israel, but when he went abroad, he wouldn’t cooperate with any organization that worked against the Israeli government.”
Hermesh then said: “It is too bad that some of my colleagues do not understand the danger of supporting an organization that is working against Israel.” Another MK who is attending, Nachman Shai, defended his participation, but took offense at Ben-Ami’s claim that J Street was the equivalent of Kadima in Israel. “He can say that J Street is Kadima,” Shai put it, “but Kadima is not J Street. I am not a supporter of J Street, but I support Jews helping Israel, each in its own way.” He said he is participating because he wants to answer the questions of American young people who are critical of Israel, or else “we may lose them.” As a result, he now plans to change his prepared remarks at the J Street event by focusing on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy. He wants to defend building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the building of settlements outside of the capital.
Another MK who is attending, Yoel Hasson, said he would criticize J Street for opposing the U.S. veto at the Security Council.
So J Street, it turns out, will not be getting what it sought by inviting Kadima to their conference. Instead of support and affirmation, they will receive bold criticism.
For those of Kadima who still believe that J-Street is not left-wing and is a “legitimate organization that wants to help Israel,” as Hasson does, they will be in for a surprise. He will find that playing a big role in the conference are major opponents of both Israel policy and Israel itself, including Peter Beinart, who is actually being honored as a “hero”; Roger Cohen of The New York Times; New Israel Fund president Naomi Chazan; Bernard Avishai, whose recent cover in The New York Times Magazine story was taken apart by Sol Stern; Robert Malley, who was so controversial that the Obama administration did not let him advise on the Middle East during the 2008 campaign; Dr. Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative; Ambassador Maen Areikat of the PLO delegation to the UN; the contentious critic of Israel from The Nation magazine, Eric Alterman; and the far left editor and founder of the virulent anti-Israel publication Tikkun, Michael Lerner.
As a shrewd observer of the foibles of J Street e-mailed me, it has become political poison not only for pro-Israel Democrats in Congress to align with J Street, but now it is becoming the same for pro-Israel Israeli politicians.
J Street may be getting 2000 attendees this year. It moved its conference from a hotel to the large Convention Center in D.C., but judging from the flack it is getting even before the conference starts, this could well be its swan song.
Update: 4:15 p.m., EST
A letter has just been addressed to White House advisor on the Middle East, Dennis Ross, by Noah Pollak, Executive Director of the Emergency Committee for Israel. Addressing Ross’s forthcoming plenary speech to the J-Street national conference, Pollak writes the following:
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.
Pollak goes on to write about many of the speakers who have a clear and forthright view of opposition to the values for which Israel stands, as well as to the existence of Israel itself. He ends offering Ross this challenge:
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.
I have one question. Will Ross do as Pollak suggests, or will he be bound by his administration position to offer a wishy-washy and essentially meaningless statement, that reflects the confused attitude towards J-Street of the Obama administration? We will soon find out the answer.
Israeli MKs are allowed by law to accept campaign contributions of up to 10,000 NIS ( approx. $2500 ) from persons who are neither citizens nor residents of Israel.
The only reason why this bunch of Knesset members is coming is to pick up a bunch of checks.
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 PALESTINIAN 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) 4) Promise of endless war – never peace – the Israel.
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.
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
Could it be that the J in JStreet stands for jihad?
good one– yes Jihad_street-
Could This Year be Its Swan Song?
as my mom would say “from your mouth to G-d’s ear”
When a liberal Jewish congressman such as Gary Ackerman decides to cut ties to J St. after a lenghty association – because J St. advocates for anti-Israel vote in UN – that is the signal to all that J St. is a Jewish stealth jihadi organization that needs to be shunned. Article on Cong. Ackerman’s J St. renunciation:
House of Representatives, January 26, 2011
Jewish Lawmaker Slams J Street for Position on Anti-Israel U.N. Resolution
A liberal Jewish congressman tore into the liberal Jewish lobbying firm J Street this week, saying the organization’s “brains have fallen out” after it urged the Obama administration not to veto a proposed U.N. resolution condemning Israel.
Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., effectively cut ties with J Street, a group that raised campaign money for him last year, in a searing press release Tuesday. The tipping point was the group’s call for the administration to clear the way for a Palestinian-backed proposal at the U.N. Security Council condemning Israel’s settlement expansion.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that J-Street is not an organization with which I wish to be associated,” Ackerman said.
J Street bills itself as the voice for “pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” and is often critical of Israel’s policies in the process. That hasn’t stopped Ackerman from associating with the group before, but the organization’s stance on the resolution triggered a harsh response.
“The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out,” he said. “America really does need a smart, credible, politically active organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel. Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”
Ackerman accused the Palestinians of refusing to make “unilateral gestures of good faith” and sending Obama administration-led peace talks into a “dead end.”
“But astonishingly, it is Israel that J-Street would put in the stocks in the public square,” he said.
I have a novel idea, or maybe just a common sense one.How about normal Jews-Zionists too-call J Streeters what they really are-JIHAD Street?
Is there ANYTHING, other than an accident of birth, which brings these Jewish cretins together, but for the purpose of destroying the JEWISH homeland?
And herein lies the heart of the conflict, and what is really driving these Jewish loving jihadists.
Their problem is not with Israel per se, it IS with Israel being the JEWISH homeland for the JEWISH people.This is precisely why they align themselves with Islamists in western garb and their fellow radical left travelers.Israel can survive, but only if it becomes ONE state for all, effectively killing our homeland.
Moreover, Soros is hell bent on destroying western civilization, transforming it into his new world order. What better way to accomplish this Machiavellian goal than to destroy the epicenters of both capitalism and Judeo Christian ethics, other than going after Israel?
He surely knows this verily truth-whiter goes Israel, so too goes the US and the US is the ultimate prize.
Hence, JIHAD Street was conceived as a dagger in Israel’s heart, but only as their first stop.The fact that leftist Israeli hacks are in bed with the above is nothing new under the sun.Their religion is certainly not Judaism, it is leftism.As for Arab motives-into the sea they see us going.IF JIHAD Jews help them, then surely Allah pegged them well.
Heh! Only after I had asked #3 Freedomlover the question about the meaning of J did I read your comment.
When an uber liberal Jewish congressman such as Gary Ackerman decides to cut ties to J St. after a lenghty association – because J St. advocates for anti-Israel vote in UN – that is the signal to all that J St. is a Jewish stealth jihadi organization that needs to be shunned. Article on Cong. Ackerman’s J St. renunciation:
House of Representatives, January 26, 2011
Jewish Lawmaker Slams J Street for Position on Anti-Israel U.N. Resolution
A liberal Jewish congressman tore into the liberal Jewish lobbying firm J Street this week, saying the organization’s “brains have fallen out” after it urged the Obama administration not to veto a proposed U.N. resolution condemning Israel.
Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., effectively cut ties with J Street, a group that raised campaign money for him last year, in a searing press release Tuesday. The tipping point was the group’s call for the administration to clear the way for a Palestinian-backed proposal at the U.N. Security Council condemning Israel’s settlement expansion.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that J-Street is not an organization with which I wish to be associated,” Ackerman said.
J Street bills itself as the voice for “pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” and is often critical of Israel’s policies in the process. That hasn’t stopped Ackerman from associating with the group before, but the organization’s stance on the resolution triggered a harsh response.
“The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out,” he said. “America really does need a smart, credible, politically active organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel. Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”
Ackerman accused the Palestinians of refusing to make “unilateral gestures of good faith” and sending Obama administration-led peace talks into a “dead end.”
“But astonishingly, it is Israel that J-Street would put in the stocks in the public square,” he said.
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
Dennis Ross has a warm and loving home at JStreet, indeed, Dennis Ross has done more damage to Israel personally than JStreet as a whole could ever expect to.
Dennis Ross was especially involved with the Left wing, secular, and often anti democratic Rabin Peres and their obscene creation, the infamous and lethal Oslo Accords.
Dennis Ross supported these filthy Accords, cheer-led the Left wing Israeli media’s propaganda efforts to sell them to a sceptical Israeli public, and then when Arafat’s predicted Palestinian terror war against Israel began, Dennis Ross was there to tell Israelis that sometimes innocent people had to die for the cause of peace.
Dennis Ross is no friend of Israel or the Jewish People, his own Jewishness notwithstanding.
Dennis Ross is a reliable enabler of anti Jewish individuals and organizations like JStreet.
Dennis Ross is untrustworthy, duplicitous, and treacherous to Israel and the Jewish People.
The Obama administration is not wishy-washy about JStreet. JStreet is their creation through the Jewish Democratic National Council, to give cover to the President’ radical antisemitism.As far as Dennis Ross is concerned, the truth is the minute he was accused of being an “Israel-firster” by voices in the administration he should have resigned with massive indignation. But he chose the halls of power over self-respect.Meanwhile have you noticed that he has stopped defending Israel and its right of self-defense.He is no more than a spineless craven has-bin, not truly worthy of anyone’s time nor effort.
You are 100% correct
I knew Dennis Ross when he was a T.A. in my Arms Control class at UCLA. I took my measure of him back then when he made a fairly outrageous comment about a Soviet ICBM dropping on the suburbs of Los Angeles, and how if it didn’t hit its direct target, the mission would be a failure.
Hmmmm.
His career has been marked by arse licking and sucking up to his bosses, whether they be Jim Baker, Bill Clinton, or Obama. Only once has he shown some moral clarity when he realized Arafat wasn’t the peacemaker he thought he was (his pal Aaron Miller continued on with that fantasy) and chose to resign from government service when President Bush was elected. No doubt, given the atmosphere of the Obamas, he’s much more comfortable with someone sticking it to Israel just as Jim Baker did (and Ross lied about him too). Don’t expect Dennis to show some guts and clarity this time, he’ll do a backhanded slap at Israel but couch it in nicer terms than his anti-Semite friends (Obama, Hillary, Susan Rice) will. He just doesn’t have a backbone.
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”.
Why is it bad to oppose the settlements? Alan Dershowitz doesn’t support the settlements. Is he against Israel? Seriously.
“… opponents of participation have accurately portrayed J Street for what it is: a fringe leftist sect trying to appear as a mainstream part of American Jewish life.”
Speaking of fringe sects, what do you feel about the John Birch Society co-sponsoring CPAC?