Soccer Dad

The immodest hopes of j-street

Essential to maintaining the fiction that it is a mainstream Jewish organization, J-Street was careful to pretend that received support from many sources. We see this in a press release news story that appeared last year in the Washington Post.

Last year, I noted a Washington Post article, New Liberal Jewish Lobby Quickly Makes Its Mark that celebrated J-Street's first birthday:

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's writer, Daniel Eggen, dutifully promoted Jeremy Ben Ami's boasts, while giving relatively little attention to J-Street's critics. Though, Eggen did observe:

But the group's aggressive tactics have prompted criticism from many established Jewish advocacy groups, which say the project appears calibrated to grab attention and often goes too far in its critiques of Israeli policy. Critics also say J Street has drawn most of its financial contributions from a relatively narrow group of supporters, raising questions about the breadth of its appeal.

Of course no specifics are given. But the "questions about the breadth of [J-Street's] appeal" should have been investigated. The questions were investigated recently but not by the Washington Post, rather by Eli Lake of the Washington Times:

Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

The contributions represent a third of the group's revenue from U.S. sources during the period. Nearly half of J Street's revenue during the timeframe -- a total of $811,697 -- however, came from a single donor in Happy Valley, Hong Kong, named Consolacion Esdicul.

So in the year ending June 30, 2009 - covering about 9 months leading up to the Washington Post article - J-Street raised over $1 million from the Soros family and Consolacion Esdicul.

Note the claim of "modest hopes" was false. Ben Ami knew J-Street had plenty of cash coming his way from Soros and friends. Eggen wasn't enterprising enough to investigate the sources of J-Street's funding, which would have shown J-Street's critics to be correct.

Jeremy Ben Ami is a con man relying on the credulity of a media ever anxious to show that being pro-Israel is something to be ashamed of. In fact Jeremy Ben Ami represents a fringe position, who only came to prominence due to his political connections and the wealth others spread around.

Crossposted on Yourish.