The left-wing J Street lobby came into existence in order to support Obama administration pressure on Israel. But with the president shelving any talk about twisting Israel’s arm to make concessions to the Palestinians while he’s running for re-election, the group is instead doing its best to muster support for his weak position on Iran. As an article on the subject published in Foreign Policy by Dylan J. Williams (J Street’s government affairs director) shows, like the president, the group says it is against Iranian nukes, but their priority is opposing the idea of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Williams’ argument employs the sort of upside down logic that characterizes much of the group’s thinking about the Palestinians. He claims that although diplomacy has already been repeatedly tried and failed, the West should continue to talk with the Iranians despite all the evidence that points to the conclusion that Tehran has no intention of abandoning its nuclear goal. Most of all, he deprecates even the thought of using force, because he claims that strengthens the Islamist regime. In doing so, the group is setting the stage for what will likely be the focus of debate on the issue should the president be re-elected. With Obama’s belated policy of sanctions and diplomacy unlikely to resolve the situation, there will be little doubt that as time runs out until the Iranians get their nuke (the head of British intelligence said it would happen within two years), that defending Obama’s refusal to act to avert the threat may be the priority for his Jewish cheerleaders. But while this may bring them closer to the president after he abandoned their positions on the peace process, it will continue to place them outside of the pro-Israel mainstream.
The romance between J Street and Obama has not been as smooth as the group’s leaders once thought. When the president took office, J Street thought its role as his Jewish surrogate would lead them to supplant AIPAC in influence. But after three years of loyally supporting the president’s desire to distance the United States from the Jewish state and to hammer its government on settlements, borders and the division of Jerusalem, they have been sidelined by the administration’s Jewish charm offensive in 2012. J Street commands little support and less respect among the majority of American Jews, and the president’s speech to the AIPAC conference (the group that J Street once hoped to supplant) this year abandoned the stands J Street applauded.
Despite its pretense to mainstream status, Iran is just another issue about which J Street has carved out a position with which they have demonstrated how out of touch they are with both Israeli and American Jewish opinion. For most of the last four years, J Street refused to support tough sanctions on Iran. But now that the administration belatedly embraced this tactic, J Street is a true believer in sanctions.
Williams accepts at face value the predictions that a strike on Iran would only delay rather than end the Iranian threat. Even if that were true, a delay would be to Israel and the West’s advantage, but it’s far more likely that an unpopular regime under economic pressure would not have the resources or the will to reconstruct its nuclear project.
Even more absurd is Williams’ argument that the threat of force will deepen the Iranians’ resolve to go nuclear. The problem with the diplomatic track is that the opposite is true. After years of Western “engagement” and feckless diplomatic entreaties (a policy that was, to be fair, begun under George W. Bush but enthusiastically continued by Obama), the Iranians think they have nothing to fear from Washington. Their model is that of North Korea, which defied the West and eventually went nuclear despite the diplomatic breakthroughs American administrations thought they had achieved.
All this sets the stage for the next real debate about Iran that will follow after the November election. Though the president has said all the right things about wanting to stop the Iranians, the failure of his initiatives will leave him with two choices: use force or pretend diplomacy is still an action and keep talking until Tehran gets its nukes. The second option is something Israel rightly fears, but that may be exactly what J Street wants a re-elected Obama to do. Like its foolish calls for pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian Authority that doesn’t want to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, such a stand is neither “pro-Israel,” nor “pro-peace.”
The worst thing about J Street isn't it's positions, but it's very existence. It's only purpose is to divide and weaken the pro-Israel camp.
J street, J for Judas – what else is there to say?
I know very little about the positions of J Street, but from what I have heard, they seem largely to echo the position of Meretz, the left-wing party in Israel. Meretz has very little effect on Israel's foreign policy, so I suspect J Street's impact will be minimal at best. Most likely the Obama administration will continue to maintain a public position counseling against a military strike on Iran while continuing to build up Israel's military strength and to support Israel's covert actions in Iran such as working with Iranian dissidents and anti-government agents, while developing smarter and better cyber war technology.
As Tehran now is involved in proxy wars with the Sunni emirates and is backing Alawite slaughter of the faithful there isn't much pressure for a full-on cave. O's weakness on national security is the wild card–if he follows the promptings of his inner anti-colonialist and guts the Defense Department budget the relief for Iran's pursuit of nuclear hegemony would be just one of many looming calamities.
Iran is only Israel's current fixation. America's entire electoral system has been corrupted by Netanyahu's Israel, AIPAC, Israel Firsters and ingenious distribution of enormous amounts of Jewish money. Our representative democracy is nearly defeated and the destruction of America as we know it well underway. Termination of the criminal treachery and treason demands immediate priority. The Government of the United States must again serve American interests, not the Jewish state's relentless pursuit of invulnerability, territorial conquest and apartheid supremacist empire in, and beyond, the Mideast.
Wrong. Anti-Semites such as yourself are preoccupied with the fantastic ephemera of satanic jewish zion neocon corruption of American political institutions by those devil jooz with our money, not excluding spit-flecked personal threats to kill us, if I read correctly. n nBut no Johnie, the Arabs living in the Middle East, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, through the Sunni crescent of Turkey and not excluding Hamas and Fatah in Palestinian areas are reassessing, fundamentally, their relations with Iran and the Gulf emirates in particular have long urged America to resist Iranian hegemony.
You might tell that to the Saudis and various other Arab countries, who have told the US privately that they consider a nuclear armed Iran a much bigger threat than they consider Israel. n nAnd also what Besht2003 said. But I expect that you are merely trolling here and will go back to Stormfront or wherever you came from.
However did we get it all so backwards? As a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty, Iran has an internationally recognized right to develop and implement nuclear technology. Israel rejected the NPT and has no such right. Yet, the Jewish state has ICBM nukes and openly threatens Iran; actually campaigns for war against Iran. Israel, not Iran, should be sanctioned and forced to reveal its nuclear machinations to IAEA inspection. However did we get it all so backwards?
No, Iran does not have the right to break out of NPT restrictions and set up unmonitored and secret enrichment facilities as it has done or, don't be silly, use NPT as a cover to develop nuclear warheads. Joining the treaty is not permission to violate it and proliferate. No, the Sunni Arabs, who have in the past initiated diplomatic campaigns to de-nuclearize Israel are fighting actual wars with Iran in Bahrain and Damascus and place Iranian efforts to coerce an Iranian-led Shia hegemony above and beyond the Israeli nuclear status–which they can live with. n nAssad, Jr. screwed the proverbial pooch and Iran has some awkward repositioning to do. In the meantime the porous cordon sanitaire will continue. n nBut really, those Israeli-Firsters and Israeli-Birthers are so talmudic cost-conscious clever. Maybe they put one over on everyone and there isn't even an Israeli bomb, another pernicious myth like the so-called Holocaust planted in the compliant subservient media to terrify the unwary. Heck, maybe there isn't even an Israel-its all just in your head.