JCall: the European Echo to JStreet

The incisive and undaunted Nidra Poller provides a roadmap to J Street's French offspring, JCall:


Nidra Poller
J Street Jive
03 May '10

May 2, Paris

What follows is the kernel, the beginning, or the false start of an article that will be developed in the coming days. But I wanted it to exist right now in its imperfect state. The creation of a JStreet look alike in Europe might be a ho-hum ripple in a long saga, but it comes as a last straw at a time when the noose is tightening around our necks. This JCall, one more frivolous example of how much we love Israel but just give the Palestinians what they want, whatever they want, is going to be presented to the EU Parliament on May 3rd and meanwhile back at the UN, Ahmadinejad will present his plan for nuclear disarmament… of Israel. With the blessings of Barack Hussein Obama. The JCall Appeal, at a time like this, is so infuriating, that it immediately provoked a vigorous response here in France. A genuine intellectual debate is underway, and I take it upon myself to report it with the fullness it deserves. We are good at this kind of debate in France.

The debate goes to the heart of a conflict that has been brewing in our societies, communities, and families in the first decade of the 21st century. I cannot approach it with any pretense to distance and objectivity. It is the dilemma that occupies my thoughts from morning to night. How do I reconcile my respect for freedom of thought and expression with my conviction that this kind of thinking—call it leftist, progressive, peace nowish—is so harmful that I must combat it? In a fair fight! That’s what I’ll try to explain.

JCall: the European echo to JStreet / Part 1

Let me begin with a prediction before I even explain the tune that JCall is calling: it won’t get anywhere. It’s no JStreet because it has no Obama in the wings, no AIPAC to snipe at, no Soros or Saudi money, and because European Jews are too close to the bone to heed this call.

Friday, April 30, Strasbourg. David Pariente, age 41 and wearing a kippa, was brutally attacked in the center of town at 12:30 in the afternoon as he got off the tramway in a square aptly named “l’Homme de Fer” [Iron man]. A vivid account of the incident by Maylis a 16 year-old lycée student is reported in the local paper--Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace: The victim was attacked by “ …two men in djellaba. One hit him in the back with an iron bar and knocked him down. Then he gave him a terrible kick in the face. I saw his head flung back.” Maylis called for an ambulance, the assailants ran off. One was caught shortly afterward, the other was arrested at his home where police found the iron bar—actually part of a weight lifting apparatus--and the knife. One of the aggressors is allegedly deranged. He said he attacked a Jew because a Jewish doctor sent him to a mental hospital.

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