Jeffrey Goldberg is sad. He tries to explain J Street’s compulsive lying (my comments in brackets):
On one level, I understand what is happening here: J Street is made up of liberal Zionists, as well as non-Zionists, and even a few anti-Zionists [how does he know there are just a few?], and it has been difficult for it to please its differing constituencies. This is why Ben-Ami, its president, might have felt the need to cover-up the involvement of George Soros, because liberal supporters of Israel know that Soros is unfriendly to the Jewish state, and some, presumably, would not want to be part of a group that counted Soros as a prominent supporter. [He felt it necessary to lie so folks wouldn't get the idea that anti-Zionists were in their midst.] But on another level, what is going on here is inexplicable, and terribly dispiriting to people [like Goldberg, who was taken in with not even a dolphin show] who thought that J Street was going to make a useful contribution to the debate over the future of Israel.
This speaks volumes about why liberals turned a blind eye to J Street’s outrageous conduct and pulled their punches when earlier signs popped up that J Street was anything but pro-Israel (pairing up with NIAC would have been a clue; so would the Gaza 54 letter). They so wanted to believe there was a lefty pro-Zionist movement in America, an alternative to the AIPAC-Hoenlein-ECI-CUFI alliance. But there is no there there. It turns out that the left is in bed with the Israel-haters (or, more precisely, are themselves Israel-haters) and there is no real market for an alternative to the genuine pro-Israel groups.
Just as the dreaded neocons said from the beginning. So liberals are bummed that J Street is a fraud – and furious that we on the right had it pegged all along.
