Even J Street critics were baffled last January when the group’s founder and President Jeremy Ben-Ami more or less randomly decided to defend “Israel-Firster” rhetoric against pro-Israel Americans. The term was condemned as anti-Semitic by the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and its use by Center for American Progress contributors eventually caused the White House to distance itself from the organization. Self-professed pro-J Street blogger Jeffrey Goldberg expressed himself “surprised” by Ben-Ami’s stance.
The mystery became somewhat less mysterious after Alana pointed out a potential financial incentive behind J Street’s position, connecting J Street with groups that use the term. The link helps explain why mere hours after publicly walking back Ben-Ami’s statements, J Street took to Facebook to blast Sheldon Adelson as an “Israel-Firster” and to push a piece attacking anti-Semitism watchdogs for “Likudnik Paranoia.”
Given where the organization ended up — not only smearing Jewish groups as feverish Israel Lobby mouthpieces, but actively throwing around anti-Semitic language — it’s no wonder that the upcoming 2012 J Street Conference is stacked with defenders of those kinds of conspiracy theories and that kind of rhetoric.
Sarah Posner and Sarah Wildman, who each attacked anti-Semitism concerns in print and then on a bloggheads.tv episode, are on the speakers’ list. Ditto for Eric Alterman, who declared himself “uncomfortable” with anti-Semitic language but insisted that conspiracy theories about dual loyalists are true of a “great many people.” Ditto for Ari Rabin-Havt, who considers concerns about the term to be right-wing trolling. Ditto for Geneive Abdo, whose feverish conspiracy theories are frankly weird. And so on.
All of which is by way of saying: lots of people have pointed out how risible it is for J Street to claim to speak for a silent majority of Jewish Americans, given that their conference will promote Peter Beinart’s work in the face of an impressively broad beat-down. But let’s not forget that J Street also promotes plenty of other disgraceful positions that are also also rejected by huge majorities in the American-Jewish community.
If J-Street were really pro-Israel, it would not be condeming Sheldon Adelson for being an "Israel-firster", but would critisize him for not being pro-Israel "properly"
If J-Street were really pro-Israel, they would have crossed party lines to support Newt Gingrich when he said that the Palestinians are a terrorist organization and the idea of a Palestinian people was invented to promote the war against Israel.
J-Street is "pro-Israel" in the same way that Jewish apostates who condemned Jews and the Talmud in Church-sponsored "disputations" were "pro-Israel"–the Israel they refer to is a carefully cultivated garden of private meanings inherently toxic to communal values as understood by thousands of years of generations of Jews. Messianic Jews are at least coming from a shared conversion experience with internal spiritual substance. With this crowd, led by bagmen, a zillionaire speculator, punk arrivistes, and a displaced Israeli "prince", who knows, they could eventually adopt full-blown renunciation and denunciation of Judaism pure and simple, dropping the pretense of a progressive remnant of some higher prophetic enunciation of the ancestral faith. Rancid wine in old wineskins may seek its way out.
last year at the "Israeli independence" celebration at the Jewish community center in our town, there were tables set up with literature and things for sale and J-Street had gotten a table! (I was with my 19-year-old daughter who had just come back from her Birthright trip.) n n I went up to the two staffers at the table (typical Ann Arbor AARP hippies with long gray ponytails and Birkenstocks) and said "I don't even think you should be ALLOWED to be here! how are you pro-Israel?" their arguments were unconvincing, to say the least–even if I'd given them more than 60 seconds to make them. n nI'm beginning to believe that this whole self-hating thing–of which J Street is just a symptom–is somehow connected with the Stockholm Syndrome. Groucho Marx wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member–that's it exactly! we, the Jews, are so odious that it only makes sense people don't like us. n nand since we are people too, well, even WE don't like us. and voila–there's J Street.