Soccer Dad

Walkin' blindly on j-street

In a poll this past summer pro-Palestinian lobbying group, J-Street, found (MS Word file):

Jews want America to be much more aggressive in its Middle East peace efforts than it is today. We conducted an extensive exercise in the survey, first asking people whether they supported the United States playing an active role in helping the parties resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Initial support for this general statement was a remarkable 87 percent. Then, we asked if they would still support America assuming an active role if it meant the U.S. taking tough positions such as publicly disagreeing with both the Israelis and Arabs or exerting pressure on both parties to make compromises. Support remained very strong after these harder tests that gauged reactions to public disagreement (75 percent) and pressure (70 percent). "Firm support" - that is, the number of people who supported all three statements - was 66 percent and represents an extraordinarily strong base of people who seek active American engagement. After we presented a mixture of hawkish and pro-peace messages, we re-asked this series of questions and the "firm support" number was unchanged. In other words, when the debate is engaged by both sides, Jews strongly support America taking major steps to pursue peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Hmm. Well a new poll shows something else.

In addition, 66 percent said America should be a supporter of Israel, with just 6 percent saying America should be a supporter of the Palestinians. Some 80 percent of those who called themselves Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats said America should support Israel.

Not that the United States should be even-handed as J-Street's poll supposedly says, but that the United States should support Israel.

Ron Kampeas of the JTA has taken to doing J-Street's work for them and quotes the organization's Jeremy Ben Ami without responding.

Why does the Israel Project insist on asking Americans to choose sides between the Israelis and the Palestinians in a conflict that the United States is uniquely positioned to help resolve?

The right question is what percent of Americans support active U.S. leadership to resolve the conflict in order to provide both sides with security and peace. Perhaps knowing that that number would have been above 80 percent, the Israel Project chose not to ask that question.

Now you know the problem. Ben Ami's premise is false. If he were right we'd have had peace by the end of President Clinton's second term. President Clinton did what J-Street's ancestors advocated and applied political pressure to Israel when Netanyahu was Prime Minister. For nearly his entirely two terms President Clinton was actively involved in the peace process, even pushing negotiations once the "Aqsa intifada" had started at the end of his term. If Ben Ami were correct, we'd be living now in Messianic times.

The current machinations of Fatah should be enough to disabuse J-Street of their faith that American involvement will automatically bring peace. In the end the Palestinians need to accept Israel's presence in the Middle East and recognize that they are not going to get everything they - or the Saudis - claim. No amount of American money, encouragement or cajoling is going to change Palestinian resistance to Israel. And pretending that it's "settlements" and not Palestinian rejectionism that is the primary obstacle to peace only serves to justify that very same rejectionsim and the accompanying violence.

See more at Israel Matzav, who (more or less) correctly predicted J-Street's response. Daniel Pipes wrote about a similar divergence 11 years ago.

UPDATE: I've added a bit to the original post.

Crossposted on Yourish.