CloseUp: Is "J Street" really pro-Israel?

J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami

J Street's dangerous detour to the White House -Lenny Ben David

Yasser Arafat sought peace with Israel, Jeremiah was a bullfrog, the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, Brutus was an honorable man and J Street is a pro-Israel organization. Not.

I am fascinated by J Street and grateful for The Jerusalem Post's recent expose "Muslims, Arabs among J Street donors," which raises questions about the group:

How can J Street call itself "pro-Israel" while advocating positions that are at odds with the traditional pro-Israel agenda. Who stands behind the organization? Why hasn't the organization drawn the attention of investigative reporters, or is the press reluctant to challenge an organization that has emerged as US President Barack Obama's "toy Jews"? How did an upstart organization get an invitation to a White House meeting with the president just one year after its founding?

[J Street's] donors also include the Saudi Embassy's lawyer, Arab American leaders, student leaders at Islamic centers around the US, board members of the de facto Iranian lobby in the US and Arabist American foreign service officers. Among the organization's advisory council are former US diplomats and public officials who later became foreign agents in the pay of the Saudis, Egyptians and Tunisians.

[D]o the Arab-American and pro-Iranian donors give because they perceive that the goals of J Street match their goals: to weaken the State of Israel and undermine the US-Israel relationship?

In Jewish law there is a concept of gneyvat da'at - knowingly misrepresenting oneself. Of that, J Street is guilty.
[Jerusalem Post]


J Street: An Anti-Israel Group -Noah Pollak

Rabbi Eric Yoffie is president of the Union for Reform Judaism, and is a very liberal fellow. Yet even for him, J Street's campaign to undermine and discredit Israeli self-defense has gone too far.

Taking J Street out to the woodshed over its statements on Gaza, Yoffie says that the group "could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and Palestinian militants, who have launched more than 5,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in the past three years, and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south."

It is time that thinking people started calling J Street what it actually is - an anti-Israel group.

[Commentary Magazine]
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