J Street, the political arm of the American Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace movement, will convene its second national conference on Saturday night. There will be an enormous turnout. An organizer told me that about 2100 people are pre-registered (at their last conference, only 850 people were pre-registered but 1500 people showed up). There will be about 500 students from 100 campuses.
Why are all of these people converging? There are many reasons. They are desperate to find hope in what often seems like a hopeless mess in Israel and the territories. They want answers to troubling questions, like, "Is the 2-state solution dead?" and "What, in God's name, can the U.S. do to help?" They want community. They want inspiration. They crave ideas for mobilizing somnolent American Jews and cowardly U.S. politicians. I'm going, and I want all of those things.
This won't be quite as large as AIPAC's legendary policy conferences, but AIPAC has had more than 50 years to build momentum; J Street is only three years old.
So what is the reaction from the American Jewish and Israeli right? Abject terror.
There is no other way to explain the panicky screeds on the right-wing Judeo blogosphere. Check out these widely-publicized riffs from Noah Pollak of the Emergency Committee for Israel and the permanently truculent folks at Front Page magazine. I won't dignify all their arguments and character assassinations by conveying them here, but one of their objections to the conference is that some of the speakers are, gasp, Arabs who are unhappy with Israel!
American Jews, you see, are not supposed to listen to Arabs who are unhappy with Israel, people with different narratives and perspectives than those of the pro-Israel community, people like James Zogby or Mustafa Barghouti. Spend three minutes reading about Barghouti here, and you will learn about the kind of impassioned, articulate Palestinian nationalist that not all Israelis like very much. But surely all Israelis need to figure out how to live with a neighbor like Mustafa Barghouti.
But Americans Jews, you see, are not allowed to hear him speak. Perish the thought! And, of course, if an organization gives him a podium, that automatically means the organization endorses each and every one of his views. That is an enduring principle of the Jewish thought police. He will be speaking at a panel on Hamas, summarized as follows: "Hamas remains in control of the Gaza Strip, armed and opposed to the existence of the State of Israel. What is the best way to counter the threat posed by Hamas? Is reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah a prerequisite to peace, or would it make peace more difficult to achieve? Can Hamas be neutralized by undermining its popular support among Palestinians or splitting its moderate elements from its militants?" It would make perfect sense to exclude Palestinians from the ground who actually know what they are talking about from such a panel, wouldn't it?
American Jews are not supposed to hear from Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the physician and friend to many Israeli moderates whose daughters were tragically killed by Israeli forces during Operation Cast Lead. Perish the thought! He has devoted his life to reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. But we must not hear about his experiences or his three lovely, lost daughters because, Front Page asserts, he denounced the Israelis but not Hamas. We must run the other way if we see him coming.
Front Page sums up the other principal objection: "Any illusion that J Street has included these speakers merely to give insight into "the other side" is dispelled by the roster of Jewish speakers scheduled to speak at `Giving Voice to Your Values.' All are leftists, and most are even more radically anti-Israel than the Islamists who will appear." There are certainly a lot of leftists, and it is not hard to show that they are, in fact, pro-Israel. But what scares these righties more than anything, I think, is all of the thoroughly mainstream, centrist speakers who are also gracing J Street with their presence: Knesset Members from Kadima; Dennis Ross; Kenneth Pollack of Brookings; Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Peace; Tom Dine, who used to run AIPAC; Ethan Felson of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; Rabbi David Sapirstein, head of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement--the largest synagogue movement in the US.
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself," wrote Justice Potter Stewart. And that is what is going on here. We are listening to the sputterings of an insecure right wing that has no answers. They have no suggestions about the Israeli-Palestinian situation other than grim, bloody "conflict management," which should really be called "nightmare management." They have no notion of how to preserve the democratic Jewish state. They don't know how to stop the steady drift of young people out of the American Jewish community because what is happening to the Palestinians cannot be reconciled with either Jewish or universal values.
And they are panicking. They want us to put our hands over our ears, like the haredim who don't want to hear women's voices singing, or the fanatics who want to burn down the offices of newspapers that print cartoons of the prophet Muhammed. Sorry folks. It won't work. Thousands of American Jews and others will show up in DC this weekend, eager to hear complicated truths and nuanced arguments, instead of the useless pablum of those who cling to a horrific status quo.
Originally posted at Realistic Dove
staunch Pro-Israel supporters which -in effect- make them: Agents of the Foreign Country: Israel!
Such Agents are REGULAR FEATURES EVERWHERE as was the case in YESTERDAY's Fareed Zakaria's CNN at 10AM & 1PM (Eastern) and the GUEST of HONOR was NO OTHER than Wolfowitz who was ONE of the MASTERMINDS of the Invasion of Iraq whose costs is running in the TRILLIONS of Dollars.
staunch Pro-Israel supporters which -in effect- make them: Agents of the Foreign Country: Israel!"
Translation: Jews.
Jerry my family came to America 250 years ago from the country of Scotland. My family with the rest of this invasion force participated in all the battles to form this country. I was born in Georgia and grew up in South Carolina , My father was a Navy veteran that served in WW2 I served in the Army during the Vietnam war and my brother served in the Air force . I feel that my service to America gives me the freedom to chose the religion of my choice. . I know that the SCOTUS decision handed our government to the Highest bidder IE Corporations , the wealthy and their lobbys . I am also very aware of our government's actions to support Israel andCorporations at all costs , citizens be damned . People like you are part of the problem and not the solution
Seems like no Kosher option on what is supposed to be a Jewish organization.
When I arrived at the conference this morning, before 8 a.m., I asked a staff person if the breakfast would include kosher options. She told me it would. But when the food arrived, there was nothing kosher to be found–not even fruit. I sufficed with coffee and decided to wait for lunch, when–with an hour of free time–I could rush on the metro to a kosher restaurant.
When that time came, I got ready to hurry out of the conference room only to be told by multiple J Street staffers that there were sandwiches for purchase across the building and yes, some of them were kosher.
You can guess what happened next. I arrived at the sandwich cart and requested the kosher option. I got a blank stare in return, and when I asked the manager she told me she had no idea what I was talking about. She hadn’t heard anything about kosher sandwiches. The best they could do, they said, was a regular turkey sandwich with the cheese taken off. No good. I bought a Clif bar, a Nature Valley, a Kit Kat, an apple and a banana. I filled the feast out with some mini Twix I found at a conference table."
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/02/j-street-is-treif.html
THey comments on many posts are stupefyingly bigoted.THe writer lives in Israel--looks like he made a special trip to criticise J-Street, which he portrays as a threat to Judaism.
Nice.
AIPAC and J Street are unimportant to our thought process.
These organizations are just like these 1000s of lobbying groups that work the captital.
If you have a message you want us to hear, appeal to the 90%, and worry less about the J Streets and AIPACs of the US. If your message makes sense we will listen.
The people who are against occupation, blockade and siege--and that includes many Israeli and American Jews-- are not anti-zionism but FOR human rights and self -determination. More and more people agree with them, once they understand. See, explaining what you are FOR takes longer than saying what you are against.
So, the goal is for ordinary Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, without fear of attack, to have full human rights and self-determination in their communities, to remain in their homes and communities (this goes for all settlements), to have freedom of movement and the ability to live a normal life.
The dominant narrative of the Palestinian issue presented by groups like AIPAC and other friends of Israel seems to rest on a pinch of lies, a dash of half-truths and a cup of deceit. The American people must activley seek out the truth of events in the Middle East as corporate media will not present the truth.
Here is a video of Israeli Gilad Atzmon speaking about Zionism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fKYAkKIKFk
J-Street wants Netanyahu gone. Now that is ONE difference between them and AIPAC.
J Street is as irrelevant to most as Israel is to the majority of the Arab world .. or haven't you noticed?
Sorry if I rained on your parade
The American neocons tried to tell us that democracy would come to Islamic nations in the middle east and Asia only at the end of the barrel of a gun. Wrong. That folly found fruition on September 11, 2001. Then the last gasp of the neocons was 2 failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now because of that failed policy the US is at the edge of the economic abyss.
Have a cigar.
Nothing because Israel shares America's values. We are both democracies. Our populations participate. Religion isn't the only voice and certainly not the last say as it is in so many of the Muslim and Arab societies like Iran/
There is never an extreme change. We go from just right of center to a just left and back again but not much more then that.
We are now frequently hearing Arabs expressing their joy at finally being free enough to express their anger at what they've repressed for decades.
This is so far from what we in America experience and far from what Israeli citizens experiences.
And surprise surprise, none of that anger by the way ever has anything to do with Israel.
The objection is for an organization like J-Street to claim that they are "Pro-Israel". To have the chutzpah to tell the people of Israel what is best for them, and then to try to encourage foreign governments to use their powers to force that organization's views on the Israeli government, making an end-run around Israeli democracy, is shameless.
AIPAC stands very clearly in support of the policies of WHATEVER government the electorate of Israel votes in, in the belief that the people whose lives are on the line, and who put their children's lives on the line, are best suited to determine what policies are required to preserve Israel's security. And AIPAC also believes that our government should support those security-related policies, and works to convince our government of the benefits accrued to both sides in doing so.
That is what it means to truly be "Pro-Israel".
So, dissent of policies that harm Israel is not pro-Israel?
Bravo and I wish for the conference to be a great success.
- JPL, Montreal, Canada
There is a Canadian Boat to Gaza. It will sail with the flotilla 2, to break the siege-- Gazans don;t want aid, but to live a normal life. We do what we can. Jews for a Just Peace and Independent Jewis Voices would be, I suppose, our J-street.
I like most of my friends who support the state of Isreal are not blind to its imperfections. Just as an American who supports the USA, I understand its imperfections.
They way many of you talk of these two groups' powers is silly - they are only as powerful you make them.
True of J Street, not of AIPAC. AIPAC wields influence by directing who receives campaign contributions and as former AIPAC employee Steve Rosen said, "a lobby is like a nightflower, it thrives in the dark and wilts in sunlight".