Defining Questions For J Street

• Were you in favor of former president Jimmy Carter’s recent trip to visit with Hamas?
• Do you agree with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby?
• Have you spoken out about Reverend Wright’s comments about Jews and Israel?
• Do you favor Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president?

These aren’t trick questions, but key to understanding concretely what J Street really represents and whether to take its professions seriously. Carter’s trip lent legitimacy to terrorist Hamas, and Carter’s claim of Hamas concessions were immediately contradicted by Hamas. (See post below) Every mainstream scholar has criticized Mearsheimer and Walt’s book. Even Obama has, finally, after defending him, disassociated himself from Wright. The majority of American Jews vote Democrat, and the majority of them choose Clinton. J Street is a fringe group, at best, and a real harm to American Jews, the US and Israel.

The new anti-AIPAC, J Street, says AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is unrepresentative of American Jews and of the best interests of Israel and the United States.

From J Street’s policy statement:

At its core, our policy platform is based on the view that American interests require robust and strong diplomatic engagement to promote the interests of our allies and potential allies and to check and try to alter the unhelpful actions of our adversaries. We firmly believe that engaging with problematic leaders and states is neither an endorsement of their policies nor is it appeasement.

The policies of J Street offer similar platitudes. Specifics are required.

The executive editor of Salon who supports J Street says that AIPAC’s influence on Congress “intimidated by the moral authority (or moral blackmail)”.

Jonathan Tobin, editor of a Jewish newspaper, calls this “J Street jive”:

The reason why the overwhelming majority of Americans back Israel has little to do with AIPAC's lobbying prowess and everything to do with the fact that most of us rightly see Israel as a democratic ally with Western values, assailed by Arab and Muslim authoritarians and Islamists. Oh, yes, then there is the small detail that a huge slice of the US electorate believe that their Christian faith makes it imperative that they support Israel….

And despite the fact that anti-Israel members of Congress are a minority these days, foes of the Jewish state still make themselves heard with ease in Washington and in the academy. They are, after all, funded by a source that actually dwarfs AIPAC's American Jewish donors: the Saudis and the Persian Gulf states.

That Salon executive editor, says of Rev. Wright:

[B]eyond the fake shock and the all-too-familiar racial politics, what the whole episode reveals is how narrow the range of acceptable discourse remains in this country. This is especially true of anything having to do with patriotism or 9/11 -- which have become virtually interchangeable. Wright's unforgivable sin was that he violated our rigid code of national etiquette. Instead of the requisite "God bless America," he said "God damn America." He said 9/11 was a case of chickens coming home to roost. Now we must all furrow our brows and agree that such dreadful words are anathema and that no presidential candidate can ever have been within earshot of them.

Of Christian supporters of Israel, however, he says: “They're not your real allies.”

CAMERA, in 2001, commented on this one-sided salon:

Similar agitated scapegoating of Israel was to be found in a September 17 piece by Gary Kamiya, executive editor of the online magazine, Salon.com. Kamiya insistently demanded that Israel comply with Arab-Islamic demands. “As long as millions of Islamic and Arab people hate America because of its Mideast policies, we will be in danger,” he explained.

Spare America – take Israel is the thrust of Kamiya’s petition in a rambling, contradictory argument about settlements and Camp David. “There will be no peace for the U. S. until we convince Israel to make peace with the Palestinians,” he states, ignoring that at Camp David, despite Israeli concessions and the importuning of President Clinton, it was the Palestinians who refused to make peace.

As Tobin says of those who haven't learned much since 2001:

Diplomatic charlatans, such as the aforementioned Jimmy Carter, may tirelessly promote, as he did just this week, the idea that Hamas wants peace but no one - not even the Palestinians - believe him. Its goal is not a secret: the destruction of the Jewish state and not merely its withdrawal behind the 1949 armistice lines.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority - the body that Israel's government and the Bush administration claim is "moderate" - is powerless to make peace, even if they really want it. But given the role that the P.A., and its Fatah and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade components, play in fomenting hate and terror against Jews and Israel, faith in their good intentions requires a substantial suspension of disbelief.

MORE TO the point, in the aftermath of the crackup of Oslo, the second intifada and the rise of Hamas, the whole idea of American Jewry, as well as Israeli voters being split along "right" and "left" fault lines about peace, is an outdated concept.

The vast majority of both Israelis and American Jews no longer support the idea of holding onto most of the territories. But the concept that more Israeli concessions (on top of the enormous sacrifices in terms of land and blood already made by Israel in the name of peace) will transform the Palestinians into peace partners is discredited. The majority of Israelis would gladly make a land for peace deal. But they now understand that there is currently no one to make it with.

The founders of J Street think they’re cute, because K Street is the home of so many Washington lobbies, and there is no J Street in Washington. There is no J Street anywhere else either but in the dangerous ambitions of extremists. Some supporters may be of Jewish background, or such, but their serious delusions are not those of more than a few whose confusions they seek to promulgate. The rest of us, the overwhelming majority of Jews and non-Jewish Americans, will not be fooled.