'Pro-Israel, Pro-peace'

Ben Smith
Politico
28 October 09

Matthew Yglesias, who is deeply sympathetic to the liberal Jewish group J Street's aims, has an interesting point on the gap between its leadership's stated policy positions and those of many attendees at its conference:

I was debating with Jon Chait at a J Street panel this morning on the subject of “what does it mean to be pro-Israel?” As expected, we disagreed on a number of points, most of which I was right on and he was wrong on. But one thing he said in his opening remarks that I really disagreed with was that there was an ambiguity running through the J Street constituency as to whether the group was or should be pro-Israel at all.

That just struck me as kind of nuts. My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” It’s not a subtle aspect of the messaging. But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. I was, of course, aware that those views existed but it had seemed to me that it was clear that that wasn’t what J Street is there to advocate for. Apparently, though, it wasn’t clear to everyone.

Yglesias continues that the anti-Zionist notion of a peaceable one-state solution, but that people who think "that the area west of the Jordan River would be a great place to try implementing [post-nationalist values] in the short-term are being a bit crazy."

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