FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I really have to take a vacation from J Street, the “pro-Israel” lobby that takes money from Iranian and Saudi sources. But I can’t stop feeling that I need to understand them.

Recently, the Israeli embassy in the US criticized J Street for “advocating policies that could impair Israel’s interests”. Today its director, Jeremy Ben Ami, published a letter to Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren:

In just two weeks, over 1,000 people – most of them American Jews – will gather in Washington to give voice to a burgeoning movement that loves Israel, cares about its future, and believes only peaceful and immediate resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can secure Israel’s future as the democratic home of the Jewish people.

I hope that he and the other 999 people will think twice about this, because a “peaceful and immediate resolution” of the conflict will not happen, not in this world, not when the Palestinian leadership consists of the PLO and Hamas. Anyone who knows anything about the Mideast understands this.

But I don’t think this is the important argument. The real thrust of the letter is to play to the insecurities of  some American Jews, not to relate to the objective situation in the Mideast:

We will come together as pro-Israel activists to discuss the best path forward for Israel and the United States in troubling circumstances, balancing a desire for security and for peace and a commitment to the values we bring to the table as Jews and as Americans.

Ben Ami is suggesting that there is a conflict between Israel’s security and our values as Jews and Americans. In this he outdoes Mearsheimer and Walt, who don’t mention Jewish values, but simply suggest that the conflict is between American and Israeli interests. It’s a very strange conception of “Jewish values” that doesn’t support a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, but of course Ben Ami claims that he does. Here’s more in this direction:

The excitement that J Street has generated and its rapid early growth indicates that there is a thirst in the progressive Jewish community – and among young liberal Jews – to find a way to relate to, to talk about and, yes, to advocate for Israel that is consistent with progressive Jewish values. We are only one facet of a new and growing movement in American Jewry that is attracting hundreds of thousands of progressive Jews into study, communal service and non-traditional observance.

Judging by the policies advocated by J Street, one can assume that this progressive Jewish way to relate to Israel includes denying it the right to self-defense — J Street called for an immediate cease-fire on the first day of the Gaza war — and opposing sanctions on Iran. Try as I might, I can’t find the Jewish value in Iranian atomic bombs.

But of course what he really means is to find a way to oppose Zionism, like most of today’s ‘progressives’, without having to admit that one wants to see the Jewish state disappear.

Some have suggested that maybe J Street, as an American organization, should not assume that it knows better how to assure the survival of Israel than the government democratically elected by the people that live there, the people who will have to live with the outcome; and that even though it might disagree with some of the actions of that government, as a ‘pro-Israel’ group it should at least support the broad outlines of Israeli policy — such as strong diplomatic action to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. But Ben-Ami sets them straight in no uncertain terms:

Public comments by your spokesman last week indicate that you have “concerns over certain policies [of J Street’s] that could impair Israel’s interests.” I’m sure you also have concerns and disagreements over policies advocated by certain political parties and their leaders in Israel. That’s democracy – and it is fitting that there would be deep disagreements at moments of important communal decision.

We too have our own serious concerns over the policies of the present Israeli government and its impact not just on Israel’s interests but on our interests as Americans and as American Jews. As Jews who care about Israel, we fear that, on Israel’s present path, we will see our shared dream of a Jewish, democratic home in the state of Israel slip through our fingers.

As Americans, we worry about the impact of Israeli policies on vital US interests in the Middle East and around the world.

Finally, as American Jews, we worry that the health and vitality of our community will be deeply affected by what happens in the region, how the world perceives Israel and by how our community here at home deals with increasingly complex conversations around Israel.

This is incredible.

First of all, it’s not a question of ‘democracy’. J Streeters in the US do not have to worry about Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, or sending their sons and daughters to fight wars, or — at least for a while — getting vaporized by Iranian nukes. Does he seriously suggest that taking decisions about dealing with these threats is ‘communal’ and should include J Street?

Second, this is at least the third time Ben Ami plays the ‘American interests’ card. What interests in particular is he talking about? Cheap oil? Or is he just trying to raise the spectre of ‘dual loyalty’ accusations against Jews?

And third… this is the best one. What are the “increasingly complex conversations” that he refers to?

Are they the conversations that ‘progressive’ Jews have with their ‘progressive’ friends when Israel keeps embarrassing them by not committing suicide? The Left’s adoption of Zionophobia as an integral part of its world view  is a long-established fact, and this may give rise to a feeling of being left out for Jews who haven’t yet purged themselves of their ‘bourgeois Zionism’. Is Ben Ami suggesting that the lack of courage to hold an unpopular position is a virtue?

Or maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he means that the US Jewish community better be careful, because they don’t want to become associated with those hated Israelis, lest it give rise to a new wave of antisemitism in the US. So when they come to beat you up or worse, you can tell them that you are a real American, not one of those Zionists.

You know what? It’s just too hard to answer all of these questions. Is J Street’s ‘progressive’ Jewish sensibility a manifestation of the old ghetto self-protection instinct to not stand out, not make waves? Or is Jeremy Ben Ami just another guy paid to screw Israel, like Jimmy Carter or Chas Freeman?

You decide.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street

The New York Times Magazine this weekend will publish an article about J Street, an organization which has made its mark by redefining  being ‘pro-Israel’ as knowing what is good for Israel better than the Israeli government and the great majority of Israelis.

The author, James Traub, is at pains to show how J Street is an entirely new kind of Jewish group:

Important Jewish organizations are normally reached through a series of locked doors presided over by glassed-in functionaries. The peril may be real. But it can also feel like a marketing device…

J Street, by contrast, is wide open to the public. Visitors must thread their way through a graphic-design studio with which the organization shares office space. There appears to be nothing worth guarding.

The peril certainly is real, as they found out in 2006 at the Seattle Jewish Federation — not exactly a radical settler organization — when one woman was killed and several wounded by a Muslim terrorist who said he was “angry at Israel”.

What terrorist would try to shoot up the office of J Street, an organization which called for an immediate cease-fire on the first day of the Gaza war, believes that negotiations with Iran should be carried out without threat of sanctions, opposed — lobbied against — a congressional initiative asking the President to encourage Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel, called for a complete freeze on construction inside settlements, approved of President Obama’s granting the Medal of Freedom to  Mary Robinson (who as UN Commissioner for Human Rights presided over the 2001 Durban conference), favored an American performance of the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children, calls for negotiations with Hamas, and is funded not only by the dollars of liberal Jews, but those of known supporters of Arab and Iranian causes?

In any event, Traub is impressed by the fresh young faces that aren’t burdened by Holocaust consciousness:

The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. [J Street director Jeremy] Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.”

There you have it. At the risk of being revealed as being old enough to remember if not the Holocaust, the aftermath of it, I need to repeat the cliché that nobody learns from history, especially when they are ignorant of it. They are baffled by the idea that despite their Buddhist seders and non-Jewish spouses, it might be dangerous to be a Jew, and even more dangerous to be one when there is no Jewish homeland.

Why should they think otherwise, having grown up in possibly the only place and time in Jewish history — late 20th/early 21st century America — where Jews could live among non-Jews in complete security and equality?

These young people are Jewish only in the most accidental, genetic sense. They are not religiously observant, but — unlike a previous generation of left-wing secular Jews — neither do they have a consciousness of themselves as members of a people. For them, like some other notable young Jews, Israel is just another country.

Traub himself shows how much he doesn’t understand about the Mideast when he recycles this bit of nonsense by way of explaining J Street’s lobbying to back up the administration’s settlement freeze demand:

Like Israel, mainstream Arab states are worried about Iran and want American support for a hard line toward Tehran and its nuclear ambitions. The Palestinian problem is an obstacle to uniting against Iran. Indeed, Netanyahu himself has tried very hard to change the subject from Palestine to Iran. But that won’t fly either in Riyadh or in Washington; as the Cairo speech demonstrated, White House officials recognize that they must make real progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace in order to regain credibility in the Middle East. Such progress, they believe, will be possible only if Netanyahu curbs the settlements, which Palestinians and the larger Arab world see as part of an ongoing effort to alter “facts on the ground” to preclude a two-state solution.

Let’s suppose for a moment that Obama somehow forces Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. 300,000 ‘settlers’ are relocated to the Negev. A Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza with a unity government composed of Fatah and Hamas, under the leadership of, say, Marwan Barghouti. God knows where the Palestinian refugees go. Now what?

Does Iran suddenly agree to scrap its nuclear weapons (which it will have by then)? Does Syria suddenly agree to stop taking weapons from Iran, give up its interest in Lebanon and embrace an end of conflict with Israel? Does Hezbollah decide that they no longer have a quarrel with Israel? Does the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt stop trying to overthrow the Mubarak regime? Does al-Qaeda stop trying to subvert Saudi Arabia and attack the US? Does Pakistan renounce its nuclear weapons? Indeed, do the Palestinians even stop trying to reverse the nakba?

I think Barry Rubin wrote something like the above, although I’m sure he did it better. The point is that the policy rehashed by Traub, which also may be the position of the Obama Administration, and which is being lobbied for by J Street, is irrelevant to the real problems of the Mideast. The only certain outcome is that Israel will be smaller and much weaker. But maybe that’s its goal after all.

Technorati Tags: J Street, Israel

Jeremy Ben-Ami explains the meaning of 'pro-Israel'

He didn’t actually say this  — as far as I know — but he certainly could do so without self-contradiction.

Recently I wrote about Ben-Ami’s J Street organization — an allegedly “pro-Israel” group which was found to be taking contributions from Arab and Muslim sources.

I thought the exposure would be enough to kill them. After all, since most of their money comes from liberal Jews who support Israel to some extent — even if, in my opinion, the policies they promote would hurt Israel if implemented — surely these contributors might ask themselves what this tells them about the goals of the organization, which called for an immediate cease-fire at the start of Operation Cast Lead, advocates negotiating with Hamas, supports a complete settlement freeze, the Arab (or Saudi) Initiative, etc.

As yet, I’ve seen no mention of this in the mainstream media other than the Jerusalem Post story. The only reaction so far has been bloggers writing that critics of J Street are far-right neo-con racists, and that J Street’s policy recommendations really are good for Israel.

Let me dismiss the ‘racist’ label: the problem is not that the donors are Arab or Muslim (some of them aren’t, but they just happen to work for the Saudi Embassy, for example). It is that the donors are people who normally spend their good money in ways that advance Arab and Iranian interests (big surprise). And — have you noticed? — these interests are opposed to those of Israel!

Listed as having given $10,000 or more are Richard Abdoo, a board member of Amideast (an organization primarily financed by Saudi and oil interests) and former board member of the Arab American Institute, and Genevieve Lynch,  a member of the board of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Although these groups do not have banners on their websites demanding that the Jews be thrown into the sea, does anyone doubt that they are not exactly friendly to Israel?

Ben-Ami, J Street’s Executive Director, meanwhile continues to pretend that there is absolutely nothing wrong with claiming to be pro-Israel (by his very quirky definition) while taking contributions from people who are decidedly not pro-Israel:

I don’t actually see it as an accusation. I see it as a truth. A small percentage of money J Street raises comes from people who are non Jewish … I’m thrilled to see there are non-Jews who are pro-Israel who see that Israel’s future depends on making peace with the Palestinians. [my emphasis]

I wonder what the implications are for any effort to reach a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if you really believe that anyone whose religion happens to be other than yours can’t share a common agenda.

As if ‘religion’ has anything to do with it!

This appears so astonishingly stupid that it must mean something else. And I think it does: I think Ben-Ami shares the view of Mahmoud Abbas that ‘Jewish’ only refers to a religion; there is no ‘Jewish people’, so there can’t be a Jewish state.

Unfortunately, it may be the case that many of J Street’s Jewish supporters belong to the “we must destroy the state in order to save it” crowd. If you want to be convinced of this, look at the J Street Facebook page.

Technorati Tags: J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Nasser was pro-Israel