J Street Fakery

Jonathan Chait responds to J Street, which according to him “main accomplishment seems to be replacing right-wing shibboleths with left-wing shibboleths.” That’s about right. What Chait doesn’t provide, due to size restriction probably, is a fuller background of J Street’ emergence.

The left likes to see the world in oppressor vs. oppressed colors. For the lefty J Street, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is rather simple. Palestinians are the oppressed while Israel is the oppressor. There some mitigating, not too strong, factors that elevate Israel somewhat. It’s the fact that the Palestinians use the most barbarian terror against Israeli women and children and the second factor is that J Street basically consists of Jews that identify themselves as such.

J Street and their supporters may not be anti-Semitic, but the left’s view of Israel does originally stem from a foundation of anti-Semitism. For instance, José Saramago the Nobel Prize winner in literature is poisonously anti-Israeli and downright anti-Semitic. He belonged to the communist party. Gore Vidal said many years ago: “I don’t like your country” about Israel. He didn’t say I don’t like your country’s policy.

The original Soviet politburo had a Jewish majority, but after Stalin’s liquidations, and the execution of most the politburo members, the Soviet Union became virulently anti-Semitic until Glasnost. That left a long shadow on the left that has never been totally removed.

Furthermore, the Nazi period in Europe was fertilized by wide spread anti Semitism in the continent. The Nazi loss didn’t change the emotional make up of Europe although it did mitigate it substantially.

Another source of anti-Israeli tendency is the common view of Arabs as blacks and Israelis as whites. This conjures pictures of Africa and European, colonialism and the white race, etc. The problem of that picture is that it doesn’t reflect reality. Israelis and Palestinians look very much alike. The joke has it that the way to distinguish Israelis males from Palestinians males in summer is pants; Israelis wear shorts.

Ben-Ami, J Street Executive Director, last year denounced conservatives "who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic." Well, that is a nice statement that falls flat on its face. The majority in the media doesn’t accept Ben-Ami’s views. Instead of fighting for his views, including taking the heat typically associated with expressing controversial ideas, he whines foul. There is a price to pay for going against the stream. He can call it fear, but blogs readily show that people are very crude, verbally violent, not very accepting and do not mince words. Ben Ami wants to be comfortable sounding off discomforting opinions to others. Does he think that he works for Citibank?

As for intimidation, I don’t really know what J Street refers to. Did anyone threaten to break his legs or does he mean people wrote ugly and descriptive words about him? If that is enough to merit being defined as intimidation, J Street should stay away from the kitchen. Taking heat is part of the public discourse.

As far as criticism goes, J Street knows as opposed to the docile American media, Israeli media is the World Wrestling federation. Every gets hit and heat is considered par for the course. Ben-Ami would’ve probably be running to daddy if he to survive against Haartz.

Personally, I agree with J Street’s policy except for a minor point on the settlement. (The problem with the settlement is the size and the confiscation of Arab land; very few settlements could rectify the uneasy 67 borders that have no sanctity or reason.) The problem with J Street is in other areas that have nothing to do with policy or at least explicit policy.

According to J Street, Israel's strikes in Gaza "can be understood and even justified in the wake of recent rocket attacks," J Street "believe[s] that real friends of Israel recognize that escalating the conflict will prove counterproductive, igniting further anger in the region and damaging long-term prospects for peace and stability." In other words, Israel’s right to self-defense is qualified by Israel’s need to behave. Somehow, there is nothing related to such a statement in the policy I read. Furthermore, "The United States, the Quartet, and the world community must not wait — as they did in the Israel-Lebanon crisis of 2006 — for weeks to pass and hundreds or thousands more to die before intervening. There needs to be an urgent end to the new hostilities that brings a complete end to military operations, including an end to the rocket fire out of Gaza, and that allows food, fuel and other civilian necessities into Gaza." Carefully note that J Street’s opinion here clearly ignore Israel’s security needs by neglecting to explicitly the need to prevent Hamas from rearming.

J Street gets into real circus acrobatics in its effort to object to Israel’s response to Hamas rockets attacks on Israel. To the question: “Isn't Israel just doing what any other sovereign nation would do? If Canada fired rockets on America, wouldn't we respond?” J’s respond by: “While there is a history of peaceful relations between the United States and Canada, there has been a running dispute between Israelis and Palestinians for the better part of the last century that has been marked by wars and violence throughout. Canadians have no outstanding grievances against the United States and they have their own independent state. Palestinians in Gaza have been living for over 60 years in a stateless situation with no real self-governance and no negotiated resolution to the grievances they nurture that brought them to this point.” (Oddly, J Street gives Canada permission to bomb Buffalo.)

Nobody at J’s cares much about Hamas declaration that they will not negotiate and they intend to eliminate Israel, that part of the 60 years Gaza was under Egyptian control that Israeli citizens are paying for Hamas way of life and death, etc. In other words, I can kill you because I am angry at you. J Street doesn’t seem to care that Hamas took over Gaza violently and control it through the use of military force.

That, of course, is a form of morality not yet revealed to us the uninitiated. Since, even J Street realizes the outrageous stand they have just taken; they immediately find another circus act to get out. Namely, “One important component of the June deal was that Israel would ease the blockade on Gaza. This, however, never happened, and the humanitarian situation in Gaza was allowed to deteriorate. Had Israel eased the blockade, it would have created deeper incentives for Hamas and the Palestinian people to renew the ceasefire, giving civilians in Gaza a tangible sense that they had more to lose in a military confrontation.” Clearly, then Israel cannot respond because it is guilty in the rocket attacks. But that is not the end, J feels unfulfilled.

“Israel would have benefited from encouraging more effective mediation channels to Hamas through others, like Turkey and Qatar, instead of relying exclusively on Egypt. Similarly, Israel could have sought greater external pressure from Egypt and the United States to stop weapons from entering Gaza, particularly through the tunnels, while simultaneously improving defense systems and shelters in the south.” This finale of the circus act has infinite beauty. From Jeremiah comes the admonition to Israel not to rely on Egypt. Then immediately, a call for Israel is called to seek Egypt’s help to stop weapons entering Gaza.

Let’s stop this stupid game, J Street supports Hamas and opposes Israel. It does pay lip service to its smoke screen: “we support Israel security” but does the best it can to prevent it from happening. I am disappointed; I would expect more intelligence from East Coast uber khokhems.

No, J Street is not a bunch of anti-Semites. There may be one or more anti-Semites hiding in one of the alleys off the Street, but they are not the heart of the Street. J Street, however, is a typical anti-Israel faux-left organization. The faux-left movement in the US is relatively large and constitute way too much of the total American left. These lefties could care less about anything but foreign relations. Iraq, Iran and the beloved Palestinians are their center of attention. Review of the so-called left blogs reveals readily that the poor, unions, poor housing conditions, migrant worker and the like are almost never topics of discussion. These blogs are concerned with three topics: the media, Republicans and foreign policy. Of course, that is not the world of Cesar Chavez or even Ted Kennedy. J Street belongs to this gangrened version of the left.

J Street points to another mystery that many objective individuals find difficult to decipher. A good example is Human Rights Watch. A day or two after Israel strike on Gaza started, HRW started to claim human rights violation by Israel. They didn’t need any investigation, no independent observers, all reports came either from Hamas related sources or UNRWA – itself an extremely pro Hamas organization. Although Hamas has lobed 11,000 rockets at Israeli civilization since 2000, Human Right Watch has never found Hamas in any violation of anything. Well goose and gender do indeed have different rules.
All the human right organizations seem to do great work on all fronts, but always rush to judgment when the Palestinians are involved. Similarly, news organizations lose the little integrity they have left when they deal with Palestinians. Take for example AP’s headlines since the war in Gaza started. Every day two of the top five headlines were about the war, even after the cease fire. Some of those headlines are downright moronic. For instance the following one: “posters of the dead in Gaza sell well.” No doubt, the world is eager to know what Gazans buy or is interested in.

In this Palestinian-centric world were wars anywhere else are ignored, i.e. Palestinian dead are more equal the Sri Lankan dead, J Street feels that it needs to chime in the guise of a pro-Israeli organization with the behavior of an anti-Israeli one. It is highly possible that an internal fight between the anti and pro Israeli takes place somewhere inside J Street ideology. Sadly, it seems that the loyalty to the fake leftism wins every day of the week.