On the weekend of June 7-8, J Street—“the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans”—held a “summit” in San Francisco, attended by about 600 people.
J Street, a lobbying organization dedicated to the two-state solution in order “to preserve the Jewish and democratic nature of the state of Israel,” was founded in 2008 by Jeremy Ben-Ami with start-up funds from George Soros. Ben-Ami’s biography includes both Israeli and American elements. His family goes back 130 years in Palestine; his grandparents helped found Tel Aviv; his father fought with the Irgun, a pre-state right-wing militia. Ben-Ami, who is in his early fifties, was educated in the U.S., served in the Clinton administration (domestic policy), and has since had a Democratic Party-aligned kind of inside-the-beltway career, mostly doing consulting for political campaigns and NGOs. In the late 1990s, he lived three years in Israel and started a consulting company there. No bio I have found makes clear whether he is Israeli- or American-born, how—since his family is so deeply rooted in Israel—they (or he) came to live in the U.S., and what citizenship(s) he currently holds.
One question about J Street that I and others have is this: since the West Bank settlement project began in 1967, the moment the territory was conquered, and since, if one definitive statement can be made about it, it’s that the more time passes the less likely it can be stopped, then why, if Ben-Ami cares so much to preserve “the Jewish and democratic nature of the State of Israel,” did he wait until 2008 to found his organization?
The answer provided by a suspicious and cynical left is that J Street is a response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which was founded in 2005 and has been gaining ground ever since with rather astounding rapidity. In other words, the left sees J Street as the kinder gentler face of AIPAC, designed to keep liberal American Jews within the fold; to make them feel like they’re doing something without doing anything really; and to keep them from bolting into truly threatening organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace or, on college campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine, both of which support the BDS campaign.
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