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The main thing to keep in in mind about the phony ‘pro-Israel’ lobby J Street is that it is a creature of the Obama Administration.

So what are we to make of the latest J Street initiative, which appears to call for the US to impose a map on Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)?

…whether direct talks resume or not, we believe the time has come for American efforts to shift from a heavy focus on getting the parties to decide whether to keep talking – to one that puts fundamental choices squarely before the parties about whether and how to end the conflict.

Therefore, we believe that it is time for the Obama Administration to adopt a “borders and security first” strategy that focuses on delineating a permanent border between Israel and a future state of Palestine, based on 100 percent of the land beyond the 1967 Green Line with one-to-one land swaps, as well as finalizing the necessary security arrangements for a two-state agreement.  Such a strategy should be adopted with or without a 90-day extension of the limited moratorium on settlement construction.

Setting an agreed-upon border would both create positive momentum to address other final status issues and eliminate the issue of settlements as a barrier to continued negotiations, as Israel and the Palestinians would be able to build where they please within their established borders.

Let’s look at what they are asking for:

First, J Street is prepared to give up on the idea of direct talks, which means they realize (correctly) that there is no intersection between Israeli and Arab bottom lines, and that therefore the talks cannot succeed.

This is because the Arab leadership doesn’t accept the existence of any Jewish state, and so the only way to proceed is to keep (more or less) the status quo while helping the Arabs learn that they need new and different leaders. But of course neither J Street nor the administration gets this.

So they are suggesting that the border be delineated now. This is the important part of the proposal (I’ll get to the “security arrangements” later). Once a map has been drawn and somehow given legitimacy, then the argument that the 1949 lines are not borders goes away. One side is Israel, the other becomes Palestine. At this point there would be no obstacle to declaring the Arab state.

One would expect that the land swaps would be defined so as to keep some of the large settlement blocs in Israel. At best, perhaps a hundred thousand Jews would have to leave their homes in what would be ‘Palestine’. Of course, no Arabs will be forced to move, regardless of boundaries. After all, that would be racism [sarcasm alert].

Needless to say, this is a bad outcome for Israel, which loses control of the territory in return for basically nothing: no recognition of Israel as Jewish state, no renunciation of further claims or ‘right of return’, and no end of conflict. Consider also that only about 8,000 Israelis were evacuated from Gaza, and the social repercussions continue today. Multiply that by at least 12. And I haven’t even mentioned Jerusalem, the holy sites, etc.

Although they say that it will create “momentum to address other final status issues” it will do the opposite. Once Israel relinquishes control of the land, the Arabs have no reason to give up anything. What would it get them?

What about the “security arrangements?” Well, this is supposedly what Israel gets. Israel’s concerns about a Gaza-like terror state being established a couple of miles from its international airport can’t be denied. Unlike the Gaza strip, it would be an internationally recognized state which can make treaties and invite foreign armies, etc. So there has to be a way to guarantee Israel’s security, or at least to pretend to do so, once she has been forced to live within indefensible borders.

This is especially true because once the IDF leaves the territories, there will be nothing to prevent a takeover by Hamas (the ‘Palestinian security forces’ will not stand for a day).

So there will be some kind of guarantee, perhaps involving NATO peacekeepers or even Americans. But none of these will be prepared to die for Israel, and either they will be gone after the first large-scale terror attack against them, or they will be as ineffective as UNIFIL is in enforcing the arms blockade against Hizballah.

Understand that the concern for security is lip service. What is important is to create ‘Palestine’. That is the objective of the Obama Administration.

So the interesting question is “why is J Street floating this idea?” Are they announcing the administration’s intent? Or is it just a threat — this is what will happen if we don’t get a freeze?

My guess is that it is actually the position of the administration. The freeze seems to be a non-starter, with the PA refusing to accept it unless it explicitly mentions Jerusalem. Not to mention the fact that the Palestinians have no incentive to restart talks if the alternative — as J Street suggests — is an imposed map!

What I would like Israel to do is agree to the freeze on condition that the Arabs commit in advance that any agreement must include the following:

• Recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people
• Renunciation of all Arab claims against Israel, including for ‘right of return’
• Agreement that the treaty marks the end of the conflict

It seems to me that these principles represent the minimum requirements for a treaty that will actually be a peace agreement, and not simply the document of surrender that the Arabs have been demanding. Otherwise, talking about borders is premature.

The Arabs seem to have defined the problem as Israel’s possession of Arab land. Israel needs to take control of the story and bring it back to reality, which is that the problem is Arab aggression against the legitimate state of Israel.

Technorati Tags: J Street, Israel, Obama administration, Arab-Israeli conflict

There is probably no single political action that has done more to prevent peace between Israel and the Arabs than the cynical exploitation of the descendants of the Arab refugees of the 1948 war. John Ging is the head of UNRWA, the UN refugee agency which does the dirty work of keeping the ‘Palestinian refugees’ living in camps for the Arab nations, who will agree to no form of resettlement except ‘return’ to Israel.

He’s the perfect guy for the job: here is a fact sheet on John Ging from NGO Monitor:

November 4, 2010

The Role of John Ging, UNRWA Director in Gaza, in Political Warfare

John Ging has been the head of the United Nation Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza since 2006. In this role, Ging has promoted political warfare targeting Israel, as illustrated by the following quotes:

• Support for “Free Gaza flotillas” provoking violent confrontations with Israel: In May 2010, Ging expressed support for flotillas to Gaza, encouraging the world to “send ships to the shores of Gaza”: “Many human rights organizations have been successful in previous similar steps, and proved that breaking the siege on Gaza is possible.” In fact, most flotillas have been comprised of fringe activists from ISM, ICAHD, Viva Palestina, and the IHH terror organization. One week after Ging’s remarks, the “Free Gaza” flotilla initiated a violent confrontation with the Israeli navy, resulting in nine deaths.
• Promoting Palestinian victimization: “I am delighted that the Elders come again to Gaza…The truth that…we are in the fourth year of an illegal, inhumane and counterproductive blockade on 1.5 million innocent civilians…it has taken the tragic deaths of activists on a flotilla to generate this new level of political clarity and resolve… Whether it is realized or not depends on the triumph of truth over propaganda and legality over illegality. The fate of children well beyond the borders of Gaza is at stake.” (“Gaza: The simple truths that go untold,” John Ging, The Elders, October 16, 2010)
• “Stripped of their dignity”: “The situation is very desperate at the humanitarian level, I mean people have been stripped of their dignity here, it is a struggle to survive for every body.” (“UN aid chief to EI: Gaza people ‘stripped of their dignity’”, Electronic Initfada, November 25, 2008)
• “Sub-human existence” in Gaza: “There’s a very sub-human existence for the general population… The definitions of a humanitarian crisis are rather obscene when compared with just how people are having to struggle to survive here…” (“‘A disaster for everybody’”, Guardian UK, May 12, 2008)
• “Immoral equivalence” on Gilad Shalit (comparing the kidnapped Israeli soldier to Palestinian terrorists): “Equally, there must be action to end all violence emanating from Gaza into Israel and to secure the release of Gilad Shalit and Palestinians administratively detained in Israeli prisons, including more than 300 children.” (“Gaza: The simple truths that go untold,” John Ging, The Elders, October 16, 2010)
• Demonization of Israel: Ging’s condemnation of Israel for allegedly causing 43 civilian deaths in an UNRWA school in Jabalya, Gaza on January 6, 2009 fuelled false accusations of an Israeli “massacre” and demonization of Israel. Ging’s statements erased the fact that Hamas fighters were in the immediate vicinity of the school, and that the deaths occurred outside the school grounds. Three weeks later Ging admitted, “I know no one was killed in the school,” and acknowledged that all three Israeli mortar shells landed outside the school. (For more on Ging’s role, see CAMERA’s “UNRWA’s Omissions Distort Coverage of Jabaliya Tragedy,” February 4, 2009)

***

Does John Ging sound like a “pro-Israel” figure to you? Would you invite him to speak to people interested in peace in the Middle East?

Well, the phony ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street would:

J Street DC Metro and the Peace Café present a Two State/One District Dialogue — “A Conversation about Gaza” with John Ging, Director, Gaza Operations, United Nations Relief and Works Agency.  Mr. Ging will be joined by Stephanie Fox, who works with UNWRA in Gaza.  We will explore Director Ging’s and Ms. Fox’s experiences and the impact of unremitting conflict on the people of Gaza.

And that’s not all. Recently J Street partnered with Yale’s “Students for Justice in Palestine” to present Anat Biletzki, an extreme left-wing academic from Tel Aviv University. Biletzki calls for a “right of return” for Arab ‘refugees’ and recently co-authored a study which purports to show that there would be less terrorism if Israel stopped defending herself.

While Ging and Biletzki have a right to speak in the US, even if they are advocating for Israel’s enemies and the destruction of the Jewish state, is it really the role of a “pro-Israel” organization to sponsor them?

You decide.

More FresnoZionism posts about J Street are here.

Technorati Tags: John Ging, UNRWA, J Street, Anat Biletzki

I thought it was impossible to find anything else to criticize about the self-described ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ J Street, after it was exposed for taking money from anti-Israel sources and lying about it (some of my previous posts on J Street are here), but apparently its perfidy is  bottomless.

J Street has a youth organization, J Street U, “The Campus Address for Middle East Peace and Security.” What does it teach American college students about Israel and the conflict?

J Street U has a new National Board President, a Middlebury College senior named Moriel Rothman. Here’s how he explains the controversy surrounding the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan and Sheik Jarrah:

…the Jerusalem municipality has been bending to the will of fanatic Jewish settlers, and producing -based on archaic documents from the Ottoman period and manufactured Israeli law– eviction notices to a number of Palestinian families, and in some cases -such as with three families in Sheikh Jarrah- acting on those eviction notices by force and removing those Palestinian families from their homes. The municipality’s actions are hugely problematic from a moral standpoint: not only are Jews buying up and/or stealing Arab land in East Jerusalem, but Arabs are moreover unable to buy land in the primarily Jewish West Jerusalem… These policies are also hugely problematic from the standpoint of peace, as East Jerusalem must be the capital of the future Palestinian state, and the Clinton Parameters, which state that Palestine will get control of Arab neighborhoods and Israel will control Jewish neighborhoods, are made harder and harder to implement with each infiltration of Jewish settlers into Arab neighborhoods like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.

I am not going to go into detail about the legal issues, except to mention that the Jewish ownership of the homes in question was decided by the left-leaning Israeli Supreme Court. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters have simply decided that the neighborhood will be theirs for political reasons, and the law be damned. I quote this passage in order to draw attention to Rothman’s tone. Not very ‘pro-Israel’, is he?

But at least they oppose the boycott-divestment sanctions (BDS) movement. Don’t they?  Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes,

…let’s take a close look at the single positive point about J Street raised in the articles by those who admit being disappointed by J Street’s lies but believe there’s still life in them thar liars.

Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils, criticized J Street’s lack of candor [!] but said that he and some of his constituent agencies have praised the organization because J Street was “very helpful” as a “credible left-wing pro-Israel organization” that opposed divestment efforts on campuses…

BDS attempts to damage Israel economically, but far more significantly, to delegitimize it by placing it on the same moral level as apartheid South Africa, which was subjected to similar actions. Marcus notes that J Street U doesn’t seem to have a problem with this aspect of BDS:

But why doesn’t J Street favor divestment from Israel? Is it because an economically strong Israel is a healthy and safe Israel? Nope. Is it because an economic intifada is a danger to Israel’s existence? Nope. Is it maybe even that Israel isn’t so bad that it deserves BDS? Nope again.

The reasons appear in an email sent about a year ago from J Street U National Board member Tal Schechter (quoted in the abominable Mondoweiss blog at http://mondoweiss.net/2009/11/j-street-seeks-to-undermine-bds.html):

To Jewish Israelis, divestment only reinforces the notion that they are constantly under attack, creating an environment in which it is harder to achieve peace, not easier.

For Palestinians who already suffer from a weak economy, divestment only puts their society more at risk.

Get it? It will make those irrational Israelis even more stubborn and it will damage the Palestinian economy. They oppose BDS because it is counterproductive, the same reason given by Mahmoud Abbas for (at least for the present) opposing terrorism.

That’s it. That’s the most ‘pro-Israel’ they get.

Technorati Tags: J Street, J Street U, BDS, Moriel Rothman

Daniel Levy is one of the co-founders (with Jeremy Ben-Ami) of the phony pro-Israel organization J Street. He took part in a panel discussion called “The Future of Palestine: in Search of Alternatives,” which seems to have taken place this May in Doha, Qatar.

Following is a short (2 minute) video clip in which Levy says two notable things:

One is that the creation of Israel was an “act that was wrong”, although it was “excused” for Levy by “the way Jewish history was in 1948,” apparently a reference to the Holocaust. And he adds that “there is no reason for a Palestinian to think that there was justice in the creation of Israel.” This is perhaps reminiscent of Ahmadinejad’s comment that the Palestinian Arabs should not be made to suffer for the mistreatment of the Jews in Europe (although maybe it didn’t happen).

The other is that murderous Arab violence is normal, if ill-advised. “It’s a human reaction, when a foot is held to your throat, to respond violently,” says Levy. But “it’s not the most strategic thing to do always, it’s not the most effective thing.” Just like Mahmoud Abbas, who cannot bring himself to criticize the murder of Jewish children on any but practical grounds, Levy seems to be lacking in moral sense.

Watch the video and then decide if J Street — which, incidentally, denied that Levy had said what he said and provided a cropped video as proof (really) — can be called a pro-Israel organization.

And then ask yourself what Daniel Levy should be called.

Technorati Tags: Daniel levy, J Street, Israel