J Street Comes to Jerusalem: Anti-Israel, not Pro-Peace

David Bedein
Israel Resource Review
03 May '11

http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=4370&q=1


[See J Street backgrounder at: http://www.jikileaks.com/ , examining allegations of J Street corporate corruption]

J Street has dispatched a delegation this week to Jerusalem, to meet with Israeli officials, presenting itself as a “pro-Israel”and “pro peace”.

The reality is that J Street plays a critical role as part and parcel of the Anti Israel lobby in Washington DC - Indeed, instead of expressing shock or apprehension over their new terror alliance that Abbas has now formed with Hamas, J Street’s delegation is set to congratulate Abbas for the accord with Hamas.

The J Street April 29 2011 press release goes so far as to say that “preliminary agreement on political reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas poses one of the most important challenges in years to those who hope to see a peaceful two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

J Street has announced that two Israeli leaders agreed to meet with their delegation : President Shimon Peres and Deputy Minister Dan Meridor.

The question remains: Did Peres and Meridor raise the following 16 crucial issues with the J Street delegation?

1. J Street’s political action committee receives funds from The Saudi Arabian embassy’s attorney. Nancy Dutton.

2. J Street adamantly denied that that J Street received funds from the Israel- loathing George Soros and then finally admitted that it.received the funds.

3. J Street joined with the pro-Iranian lobby, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), to oppose congressional efforts to impose sanctions on Iran. Ben-Ami and NIAC director Trita Parsi co-authored an anti-sanctions article titled “How Diplomacy Can Work with Iran” in Huffington Post in June 2009. At the Knesset, J Street Director Ben Ami lied and said that J Street had never opposed sanctions against Iran.

4. J Street received large contributions from one of NIAC’s directors, Genevieve Lynch of New York. She serves on J Street’s Finance Committee, and her J Street PAC contributions exceed $10,000 per year.

Was Sestak THE Test For J Street? Back In July, J Street Seemed To Think So

Daled Amos
04 November '10

Back in July, the Jewish Telegraph Agency was reporting that J Street saw Sestak as an important test for J Street:

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street's director, acknowledged that the Pennsylvania race is a test for his group.

"There's no question that this race is a very important test of what kind of support J Street and its supporters can deliver," he said. "We will show a substantial amount of money can be raised from our political action committee, and that a substaintial amount of money can be raised for a candidate that opposes the right wing on these issues."

Donors thus far have dedicated $100,000 to Sestak's race through the J Street PAC -- a hefty chunk of the $650,000 the organization has raised this cycle.

At the same time, Ben-Ami was hedging his bets:

(Read full post)

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J Street Crows About Victory--But In Fact They Laid An Egg

Daled Amos
04 November 10

Mere Rhetoric notes J Street's deceptive claim that many of the candidates they backed won

J Street endorsed 61 candidates for the 2010 election, 58 Democrats for the House and 3 Democrats for the Senate, and today they’ve been bragging about how 46 of those candidates won. The results are supposed boost the group’s post-Soros, post-Goldstone, post-Levy rehabilitation strategy, where they’re bypassing the journalists they’ve alienated and appealing to politicians in terms of raw power.

...The ultimate test is supposed to be last night’s scoreboard, where 46 of J Street’s 55 incumbents won their races.

There is no denying that 49 out of 55 is an enviable success rate: but as with so many J Street claims--such as with their claim that they were not receiving money from Soros--once again you have to go below the surface.

It is one thing to look at those 55 races--it is quite another to take a look to see how many of those races were actually competitive races where one could assume that the backing of J Street actually could have made a difference.

That is where J Streets bragging shows the extent of their desperation.

(Read full post)

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J Street’s outrageous new initiative

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem
19 July '10

The time has arrived for liberal American Jews who support Israel to ask themselves whether there should be some limitations or red lines for organizations seeking to be part of what they describe as the “Jewish tent.” Until now, many seem to be convinced that it is in the Jewish interest for all organizations to be brought into the Jewish fold irrespective of how much they malign the Jewish state.

The most prominent example is J Street, which is publicly committed to lobbying the US government to force Israel to take actions contrary to the will not only of the democratically elected government, but the vast majority of the people.

Many consider that tolerating such a group within the Jewish mainstream transforms the concept of a Jewish tent into a farce.

EMBOLDENED BY the reluctance and in some cases cowardice of establishment Jewish leaders to confront it, J Street has now advanced beyond this.

Deliberately designed to coincide with the date of President Barack Obama’s meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, The New York Times published a full-page article challenging US charitable contributions which directly or indirectly assist enterprises in Jewish settlements.

The article selectively focused on fringe extremist elements and implicitly linked them with the broader settlement movement, questioning the validity of tax deductible status for donations which may benefit such areas. Not surprisingly, as Gerald Steinberg pointed out in a recent Jerusalem Post article, the Times skimmed over the many radical left organizations soliciting tax exempt funds to undermine and demonize the Israeli government.

J Street capitalized on this article and bombarded its members and supporters with an e-mail titled “Investigate the Settlement Charities: Take Action Now,” which was followed by utterly misleading themes including: “Disgraced Political Fund-raiser Jack Abramoff; Settlements in the West Bank; US-designated Jewish Terrorist Groups.”

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[Democracy innaction] What the J Street NYT Ad doesn't say

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
22 March '10

Here is the score:

Last year Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a major policy speach in which he spoke of a two state solution. And instead of putting him to the test as to what he meant by this the Arabs decided that there was no rush to enter negotiations.

They did this because the Obama team, encouraged by folks like J Street, were so busy salivating over the possiblity of deposing Netayahu and enjoying the sheer pleasure of trying to screw him against the wall that actually engaging in negotiations was of secondary or even tertiary importance. So we had demands on Israel as preconditions for talks that we never had before.

J Street plunks down money for an ad in The New York Times (see below)

They warn that "time is running out". But they don't call on the parties to cut to the chase and enter direct talks.

In fact, J Street doesn't want negotiations at all.

They want an American imposed "solution,"

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Thoughts on the Situation, Part 3 -- J Street Defends the Letter of 54

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
22 February '10

Today’s Jerusalem Post carries an Op-Ed column by officials from J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

They defend the recent letter they sponsored with 54 Members of Congress to President Barack Obama which “express[ed] concern for Israel's security, for the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, and for the urgency of reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But that was not the reason for the letter. Read the letter here. The Members themselves state, “We write to you [Obama] with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.”

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern.

Defending the Gaza 54

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 February '10

J Street and Peace Now rush to the pages of the Jerusalem Post to defend the letter sent by 54 Democratic congressmen (one subsequently fell off the Israel-bashing bandwagon) calling on the lifting of the Gaza blockade. It’s what we have come to expect from those who find Israel’s reasoned self-defense measures to be gross violations of human rights. It is also deeply misleading. As others have noted:

Note that for the Jerusalem Post, J Street and APN argue that first they were concerned for “Israel’s security,” but the text of the letter indicates that Israel’s security is of little concern. More than 90 percent of the letter deals with the “collective punishment of the Palestinian residents” of Gaza and easing their plight. This accusation of Israel’s “collection punishment” helps explain why J Street failed to condemn the Goldstone Report. This is not a letter from “pro-Israel” sources, but from “pro-Gaza” sources. And in the case of Hamas-occupied Gaza, the two are mutually exclusive.

There always seem to be those — the Gaza-letter brigade and their boosters at J Street, most prominently — who offer themselves as true friends of Israel, knowing better than the Israelis what sacrifices are to be taken. Lift the blockade, they say from the cozy confines of New York, waving off the notion that more Israeli children will die from the bombs smuggled among the “construction supplies” they seek to allow into Gaza.

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Ha'aretz's J Street Promotions, Continued

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
22 February '10

You got to give them points for consistency. Ha'aretz has systematically ignored substantive criticism of J Street's policies, methods and funding, and so it comes as no surprise that the paper ignores the latest development in the reported snub of a J Street delegation by deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon.

It's not that the paper has ignored the controversy. To the contrary. Coverage includes two news articles (see here and here) and at least one Op-Ed condemning the alleged snub, which appeared today.

While the paper which has paid the matter substantial coverage until now, it nevertheless ignores the fact, that as reported in the Jerusalem Post today, the Foreign Ministry claims that J Street has lied about the whole affair. The Post reports:

The American “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group J Street made “untrue assertions” about an alleged boycott of the congressional delegation it recently brought to Israel, and about Israel allegedly apologizing to the group for the slight, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
“[Deputy Foreign Minister Danny] Ayalon did not prevent the delegation from meeting with senior Israeli officials,” as claimed by J Street last week, said Barukh Binah, Foreign Ministry deputy director-general and head of its North America Division.

(Read full article)
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What makes J street the enemy and is it the enemy?

Ami Isseroff
Israel News
19 February '10

The J Street lobby has managed to generate a lot of publicity for itself. Most of those who praise it however, are anti-Israel and most of those who are critical are pro-Israel. That suggests that J Street may be the enemy. J Street's Jeremy Ben Ami told Haa'aretz:

A part of the Jewish community in the United States and some people here are intolerant of people who disagree with them or criticize them.

"And that intolerance immediately flips to 'you are anti-Israel - you're a Muslim lover or you're Muslim,'" ... "These are things that they call me, and this is what some of them call the president. It has to change both in the politics here and in the right wing of the American Jewish community."

Ben-Ami's rant sounds a bit like "Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism." That's true. But some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and J Street is not only engaged in criticism of Israel.

Criticism of Israel is not what makes J Street the enemy. Signing a letter calling on President Obama to loosen the Israeli blockade of the genocidal Hamas organization might make J Street the enemy.

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It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 February '10

Solomonia has the details on the latest from the anti-Israel group J Street, which has organized a trip to Israel in partnership with Churches for Middle East Peace. CMEP is a leader in the so-called “BDS movement” — boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. These are the people who want to isolate Israel in the way that the world is currently isolating, say, Iran — which is a tremendous irony, being that J Street is opposed to anything resembling BDS when it comes to the Islamic Republic.

These guys have gone so far off the deep end that I think if Ismail Haniyah invited J Street on a solidarity mission to Gaza City, Jeremy Ben-Ami would have to sit down and think really hard about the offer.

J Street’s Agenda Remains Irrelevant to Middle East Realities

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
16 February '10

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, threw the left-wing lobby J Street a few bones in an interview last week. JTA quotes Oren as telling a California Jewish newspaper that the “J Street controversy has come a long way toward resolving. The major concern with J Street was their position on security issues, not the peace process. J Street has now come and supported Congressman [Howard] Berman’s Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone report; it has denounced the British court’s decision to try Tzipi Livni for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream.”

By refusing to appear at J Street’s conference last fall and saying that its views on Israel were “dangerous,” Oren demonstrated Israel’s impatience with a lobby whose agenda was solely focused on instigating pressure on Israel from the Obama administration while foiling pressure on Iran. It’s understandable that Oren would attempt to reward some moderation in their stands. His priority is to aid the assembly of the largest possible coalition of support for Israel, not to punish those whose efforts are, at best, less than helpful. However, to the extent that J Street is trying to behave like a mainstream organization — an assumption that is certainly open to debate — this change reflects two important factors.

First is the complete irrelevance of J Street’s main idea: that there is a need for a Jewish lobby whose purpose is to push Washington to push Israel to make peace. As the events of the last year continue to prove, the obstacle to peace remains the Palestinians and their political culture of violence and hatred for Israel. As much as the Jewish Left has gained in the United States during the Obama presidency, the Left in Israel is as close to dead as it can be. That’s because the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that after Oslo’s false promises, Arafat’s refusal of a state in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2000 and 2001, and Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal of an even more generous offer in 2008, the Palestinian nationalist movement Fatah has proved it is not interested in a state as long as that state must live in peace alongside Israel. That the even more extreme Hamas terrorist movement controls Gaza and might expand someday into the West Bank if Israel abandons its security presence there has rendered the idea of further concessions and withdrawals absurd. This is a political reality that no amount of pressure from either Obama or the American Left can alter.

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Going Left on J Street

Lenny Ben-David
National Review Online
12 February '10

When 54 congressmen sent a letter to President Obama on January 21 asking him to press Israel (and nominally Egypt) to lift the blockade on Gaza and provide “immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza,” I looked for J Street’s fingerprints. Since its inception two years ago, the well-heeled PAC has rarely missed an opportunity to attack the policies of the Olmert and Netanyahu governments: It criticized Israel’s military operation in Gaza, held out the option of negotiating with Hamas, called for freezing all Israeli building in east Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank, refused to support sanctions against Iran, and more. But, lo and behold, there was nary a word about the Gaza relief letter on the J Street website or in the press materials of the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization.

Others, however, did credit J Street with supporting the letter, and even with sponsoring it. According to Ha’aretz, “In addition to members of Congress, several leftist organizations also signed the letter, including Americans for Peace Now and J Street.”

Wrote Michael Rosenberg, one of Israel’s harshest critics, “The [54 members of Congress] deserve our thanks as does J Street and Americans for Peace Now which pushed the letter.”

And who appears first on the Minnesota Independent’s list of the letter’s backers? “Among the groups supporting the letter: J Street, The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF), The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), The American Near East Refugee Association (ANERA), The Methodist Church, The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), and Rabbis for Human Rights.”

With the exception of the rabbis, none of J Street’s colleagues on the letter are known for their fraternal feelings toward Israel.

(Read full article)
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The New Wing of the "pro-Israel, pro-Peace" Lobby Comes to Town

J Street deceives others in order to falsely represent and promote itself.


Lori Lowenthal Marcus
The Weekly Standard
10 February '10

The "new," "progressive" voice of the "pro-peace and pro-Israel" lobby known as J Street has had its "pro-Israel" label questioned by many observers, and even some of its own have shed that label. J Street has now also revealed it doesn’t keep its word to trusting Jewish organizations.

On Thursday, February 4, 2010, J Street launched a new "grassroots" division—J Street Local—with an event at the University of Pennsylvania, which was webcast to twenty other locations.

The event involved a deception by J Street leadership on the local Hillel and the surrounding Jewish community. When it was discovered that J Street planned to have its new division roll-out from the Penn Hillel, many Israel supporters were concerned that the outside world would assume that Hillel had endorsed J Street, especially because J Street would be webcasting live from there to cities across the country. Not to worry, said J Street to the local Hillel leadership: We promise not to mention that we’re using your facility, and to make clear in our written and oral statements that Hillel does not endorse us. That condition was agreed upon—it was "not just a promise, it was an agreement"—according to Rabbi Howard Alpert, the executive director of all the Philadelphia area Hillels. On the strength of that essential agreement, Hillel went ahead and rented J Street its space.

And then? J Street’s Ben-Ami said exactly what he’d promised not to say—that he was speaking "here at Penn Hillel"—and failed to say a word about what he’d promised solemnly to make clear: that Hillel does not endorse J Street or its message.

(Read full story)

J Street Is Ba-a-a-ck

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 January '10

When last we left the J Street gang, they were enjoying their Washington confab — though with many fewer congressional “hosts” once it became clear what the group’s agenda really was and what sort of Israel-bashing “artists” planned to entertain the assembled crowd. Then the conference itself proved informative. We learned that the J Streeters didn’t fancy calling themselves “pro-Israel,” at least not on college campuses. And we learned that what really got their juices flowing was a healthy dose of anti-anti-Iranian-regime propaganda and good old-fashioned neocon-bashing. Alas, there’s not much of a market for that on Capitol Hill, so their “lobbying” devolved into some mushy nothingness in which lawmakers were asked to do something to show they favored a two-state solution. (Gutsy stuff from these J Streeters, eh?)

Soon afterward we learned that J Street and NIAC shared some interesting conference calls, the object of which seemed to be, among other things, to get Dennis Ross. J Street didn’t like any of the Iran-sanction measures floating around Congress but seemed powerless to influence the votes.

So now that our memories are refreshed (ever since “engagement with Iran” became a laugh line, they’ve been sort of quiet), we see this report that J Street will ”be increasing the number and amount of its contributions to US Congressional candidates by at least 50 percent in the coming year. The announcement comes a few weeks ahead of J Street’s first planned trip to bring members of Congress to Israel.” One wonders if Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson are to be the tour guides.

(Read full article)
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J Street Fails Its Fans

The hoopla surrounding the upstart lobby doesn't translate into instant political clout.

Lenny Ben-David
pajamasmedia.com
22 November 09

On November 3, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to support Resolution 838 calling on the president and the secretary of state “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ [a.k.a. the Goldstone Report] in multilateral fora.”

The vote was 344 to 36, with 22 representatives copping out with a “present” vote and 30 not voting. I assumed, probably like other Washington observers, that the 36 members, who by their vote supported Goldstone’s anti-Israel report, were members who had accepted political contributions from J Street’s political action committee. After all, the upstart organization had just completed their much ballyhooed conference in Washington, sent their delegates to lobby on Capitol Hill, and had expressed strong reservations about the congressional resolution.

To be fair, J Street didn’t come out with a blatant declaration of opposition to the resolution. It just called for the passage of “a balanced, thoughtful Congressional resolution” or “amendment of the resolution before passage to bring it in line with the principles we articulate.” As one of J Street’s blogger allies wrote:

Members of Congress close to AIPAC introduced a resolution condemning the Goldstone report that is so one-sided it might have been drafted by the Likud Central Committee. J Street did not waste a moment. It issued a statement that it would not support the resolution.

J Street’s opposition couldn’t have been clearer.

J Street takes great pride in their upstart political action committee. “The PAC distributed over $578,000 to its candidates,” J Street’s website crows. “[That’s] more than any other pro-Israel PAC in the two-year cycle, despite only launching publicly in April 2008.”

[NB: That $578,000 distributed was out of more than $840,000 raised, according to Federal Election Commission records.]

Since that election cycle, J Street’s PAC boasted contributions in 2009 of more than $30,000 to Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland and $35,000 to Steve Cohen of Tennessee.

Those PAC contributions translate to political clout, right?

Absolutely wrong.

In the case of the Goldstone vote, not one of the top 10 J Street PAC recipients in the 2008 cycle voted against the pro-Israel resolution, and some of those candidates (Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, Gary Peters of Michigan, Debbie Halvorson of Illinois, and Steve Cohen) had received as much as $30,000 to $47,000. Only Donna Edwards, the J Street darling for whom the organization ran a special appeal in 2009, voted against the resolution. Others who voted with Edwards included Arab-American representatives, congressional gadflies such as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, and a handful of representatives who are long-time critics of Israel.

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