Soccer Dad

Happy birthday to j-street

The Washington Post sends a Happy Birthday card to J-Street, New Liberal Jewish Lobby Quickly Makes Its Mark:

When a group of Jewish liberals formed a lobbying and fundraising group called J Street a year ago, they had modest hopes of raising $50,000 for a handful of congressional candidates.

Instead, the group's political arm ended up funneling nearly $600,000 to several dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans in 2008, making it Washington's leading pro-Israel PAC, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure records. Organizers say 33 of the group's 41 favored House and Senate candidates won their races.

The article mentions some messy observations, but overall the tone is positive. For example:

Ben-Ami also said J Street deserves credit for attracting more than 100 co-sponsors in the House for a resolution welcoming Obama's appointment of Mitchell as Mideast envoy; AIPAC was neutral on the issue.

This is about as uncontroversial an action as J-Street has undertaken, so to cite it as an example of its success is a bit underwhelming. What about J-Street's opposition to Operation Cast Lead? Noah Pollak provides a necessary perspective.

In the early days of J Street, M.J. Rosenberg, the policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, a group that Rosenberg says works "in parallel" with J Street, speculated that Jewish Democrats such as Barney Frank would become more critical of Israel if a liberal Jewish group existed to provide them moral and financial support. "They hear from the right-wing AIPAC crowd on this issue, but the people on the left talk to them about other issues," Rosenberg said. "They don't talk to them about this one. So I think all it takes is them hearing that this is what their constituents want, and I think that they will moderate their positions."

Rosenberg thought wrong. Barney Frank defended Cast Lead vigorously, saying that it is "a terrible thing to have happen but I think Americans ought to think about this, frankly, as analogous to what we did in Afghanistan." Other J Street endorsees in the House of Representatives, such as Adam Schiff of California, Robert Wexler of Florida, and Charles Rangel of New York, made similar pronouncements.

Whoops.

And I just noticed (h/t Simply Jews) that J-Street has endorsed the showing of "Seven Jewish Children."

Ami Isseroff writes:

But our concern must firstly be with the J-Street organization that has endorsed the staging of this play, supposedly in its capacity as a "pro-Israel" "pro-Peace" organization. J-Street has also endorsed Israeli recognition of Hamas, presumably on the basis of accepting as legitimate Hamas's declared goals of destroying the Jewish state and physical annihilation of the Jewish people.

The BBC does not have a good record regarding neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has spent a fortune to bury a report that shows its consistent pro-Palestinian bias. Nonetheless, even the BBC wisely and justifiably refused to air this play.. What can we say about a supposedly "pro-Israel" organization that is is more anti-Israel than the BBC?

On the topic of J-Street's endorsement there's also Jamie Kirchick

J Street attempts to cover itself with a fig leaf of moral deniability by saying that it "takes no position on the content" of Seven Jewish Children but insists that its performance is a good thing nonetheless because it will encourage "a difficult but necessary conversation." If you don't understand this distinction between the play's anti-Semitic message and the desirability of putting it on, it's because there is no distinction. Just the opposite: To J Street, the inflammatory message of Seven Jewish Children is precisely what makes it worthy of production.

INSTEAD of admitting this, J Street engages in a feeble and transparent attempt at having it both ways, distancing itself from the disgusting content of the play while encouraging the spectacle of pain that will follow in its wake. J Street says that Seven Jewish Children will contribute to debate about Israel. Which part of it contributes to what part of the debate? The part where the Jews celebrate the killing of Arab children? Or is it the part where they use the memory of the Holocaust to justify the wanton slaughter of Palestinians?

(J-Street's Jeremy ben-Ami wrote a non-response to Kirchick.)

I've posted about Seven Jewish Children before, including a link to Bret Stephens' critique of the play. It is rather astonishing that an organization that claims to be "pro-peace" and "pro-Israel" would endorse such agitprop. But then again, it seems more and more that the new pro-Israel is the old anti-Israel.

Though not referring to J-Street on its birthday, Legal Insurrection sums up the group's focus nicely:

What is important, however, is that the liberal bloggers -- on whose beneficence J Street depends -- have it all wrong. J Street's blame Israel first focus is as old as Israel itself. Study history, not just your own memories, and you will see that pressuring Israel to put itself in a strategically weak position in the hope of garnering Arab goodwill has been advocated for generations. Peace may come to the region, but only when Israel is accepted as a legitimate and permanent Jewish state, not a "cancerous growth" which needs to be exterminated; and when moves towards peace and conciliation are not merely strategic ploys to push back the borders.

So J-Street advocates the recognition of Hamas and celebrates an antisemitic play. It is endorsed by Stephen Walt who likes its "pressure Israel" stand. In fact J-Street isn't a new "pro-peace," "pro-Israel" organization, but a recycled anti-Israel organization. But don't tell the Washington Post that.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 17, 2009 6:15 AM