Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter touched off a row within the Israel-focused Jewish political groups in America two weeks ago by describing the left-wing J Street lobby as a “cancer within the Jewish community.”
He was referring more broadly to a particular trend of American Jews going beyond self-criticism and into territory in which they seek to serve as human shields for anti-Zionists who delegitimize Israel. Nonetheless, it was inflammatory phrasing and Leiter soon toned down his rhetoric while expanding his critique of the progressive group.
Enabling an arms embargo against the Jewish state while at war, he said, isn’t “pro-Israel,” nor was the group’s amplification of Nick Kristof’s now-infamous dog-rape blood libel.
This spurred a brief debate over whether J Street is, as it claims to be, “pro-Israel.”
Meanwhile yesterday J Street announced it would oppose a section of the new U.S. defense bill that would increase military-to-military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, which is being debated in Congress today.
And that perfectly sums up why it’s so absurd for anyone to claim J Street is pro-Israel. Not because of one position on one bill or one vote, but because it was an example of what J Street does. And an organization is what it does.
We all know well-meaning people with terrible opinions but plenty of redeeming qualities as humans. That does not describe J Street because J Street is not a human. It is an organization designed to do certain things, and those specific activities make up its identity.
That is, we do not say “J Street supports a bad bill but is kind to its mother.” We don’t have fond memories of J Street helping us move apartments on a hot summer day, or staying on the phone with us on a long drive to keep us awake, or making a beautiful toast at our wedding.
Likewise, we don’t make excuses for J Street by saying it just fell in with a bad crowd, or is going through a rough patch and maybe isn’t making the best decisions right now.
We don’t anthropomorphize a lobby organization even as we recognize its employees are just as human as the rest of us. Are there people at J Street for whom Israel’s long-term survival is important? Surely. But so what? Our assessment of the organization is based on what it does.
And it does not behave according to any commonsense definition of “pro-Israel.”
“The war in Gaza, rising extremist Jewish terror in the West Bank and the US-Israel war with Iran have highlighted the need for a fundamental reassessment of the US-Israel security relationship,” J Street said.
And note that this provision to which J Street objects is the result of a movement away from U.S. military aid to Israel. J Street, of course, supports phasing out aid to Israel, because Democrats support ending or reconditioning aid to Israel. It just doesn’t support shifting from an aid model to a mutual-production model.
You can support ending aid to Israel for various reasons. J Street’s problem with U.S. aid to Israel is the “Israel” part, not the “aid” part.
The Israel provision in the defense bill shifts the model of cooperation because some claimed to object to the model. We’re quickly finding out just how often that argument was used as a pretext to try to sabotage the alliance.
J Street is free to lobby for downgrading the alliance and weakening both the U.S. and Israel. I wouldn’t expect anything different, because that is what the organization does. And therefore that is what the organization is. I’d rather they be honest about their own motivations, but they shouldn’t begrudge the honesty of their critics.
Source:
www.commentary.org
