JStreet’s growth in the three years since its establishment is impressive. Its
“Giving Voice to Our Values” conference, taking place this weekend in
Washington, has drawn over 2,000 attendees, it says, compared to 1,500 a year
and a half ago when it held its first such national event. Thirty organizations
are participating (up from 20 in 2009), with over 500 students (up from 200 last
time) and over 50 members of Congress attending (compared to 44 last
time).
In theory, all lovers of democracy and diversity of opinion should
welcome J Street’s rise, as a mark of its success in fostering a fundamentally
pro-Israel stance even among younger American Jews who might feel alienated from
more mainstream organizations’ perceived “Israel right or wrong” position. In
practice, however, the concern is that J Street has been stretching too thin its
“big tent” of opinions, to incorporate elements of the extreme Left, risking in
the process leaving out in the cold American Jews with an unabashedly
pro-Zionist sensibility.
This seemed to be the message sent out Saturday
night by Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform Movement’s Religious
Action Center, in the conference’s opening speech. Though proclaiming himself to
be “among J Street’s most fervent fans,” Saperstein nevertheless expressed
concern over J Street’s recent attempt to block an American veto of a UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy beyond the
Green Line as “illegal.”
“If you alienate your mainstream support you
risk losing everything,” he noted.
In recent weeks J Street lost the
backing of a key politician, Rep. Gary Ackerman, the former chairman of the
House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, over its opposition to the
US veto. In a damning January 25 press release, Ackerman accused J Street of
being “so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains
have fallen out.”
THE CHOICE of speakers underlines the concerns. The
organization has invited Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice
for Peace and an adamant proponent of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions)
against Israel, to address the conference. In June of last year JVP campaigned
to get the US teachers’ pension giant TIAA-CREF to divest from numerous Israeli
companies, such as Bezeq and Elbit, that purportedly profit from the
“occupation.”
Formally, in an eminently reasonable position, J Street
opposes all forms of BDS. Instead, it focuses on “creating the political will
and atmosphere necessary in the US to promote strong leadership to achieve a
two-state resolution to the conflict.” But by associating with pro-BDS groups, J
Street undermines its own positive message.
Similarly, as regards another
speaker, why should J Street risk alienating its own core constituents by
associating itself with Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general and founder in 2002
together with the late Edward Said of the Palestinian National Initiative, an
organization created out of protest against the Oslo Accords? In October 2008
Barghouti, another BDS advocate, took part in a Free Gaza Flotilla that, after
initial resistance, was given permission by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to
anchor in Gaza.
A third speaker at the conference is Michael Sfard, an
attorney who advocates international “lawfare” against Israel. Sfard recently
told Amnesty International’s website that he was “lucky” to bring a lawsuit in
Canada against a Canadian firm for building in Modi’in Illit and hoped to pursue
similar cases in Spain, England and Belgium.
According to NGO Monitor,
Sfard also testified as a paid expert witness on behalf of the PLO in a lawsuit
brought in a US Federal Court in Miami by terror victims of the al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, a terrorist group indirectly tied to the PLO.
THE DANGER is
that, by some of the positions it takes and some of the company it keeps, J
Street risks sabotaging its laudable endeavor to present a viable left-wing
pro-Zionist alternative to American Jews. Ackerman, for one, has made up his
mind.
“America really does need a smart, credible, politically active
organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel,” he said in
his press release last month.
“Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”