Richard Baehr on why J street so dangerous

The J Street Challenge'

A new documentary, "The J Street Challenge," is being shown in a series of cities in North America, including Chicago, where I attended a screening this past weekend. The movie focuses on the left-wing Obama-supporting group that was founded in 2008 by Jeremy Ben-Ami, and that has successfully marketed itself as a pro-Israel, pro-peace organization, or merely pro-peace (when pro-Israel is less readily saleable on some college campuses).

As the film convincingly demonstrates, J Street has been anything but a pro-Israel group, and has been unremittingly hostile to the current government of Israel on pretty much every issue -- from opposing sanctions (and even the threat of military action by either the United States or Iran) in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, to exclusively blaming settlements in Judea and Samaria for the absence of peace, to advancing the Goldstone Report in Congress, to demanding that pressure be applied by the United States on Israel to accept the negotiating demands of the Palestinian Authority.

J Street has attracted a large number of members in its first few years, and has established branches or chapters in many cities and college campuses. It has been heavily funded in its first few years by anti-Zionist hedge fund billionaire George Soros (a fact denied by Ben-Ami for several years, until tax filings revealed his lies), some donors who may be fronting for Soros (including a woman from Hong Kong no one knows who gave close to $1 million), and a leading figure in a front group for the Iranian regime, the National Iranian American Council. It is an unusual collection of people who in any case would never be described as pro-Israel. Jeremy Ben-Ami himself came to J Street after a career in public relations, with firms that have represented the government of Saudi Arabia, among others.

In the case of Soros, he has never been a shrinking violet on the subject of Israel. He has been a consistent critic, and has always wanted the United States to follow the lead of the European nations in distancing itself from Israel. So far, America has resisted this path, though President Barack Obama almost certainly would prefer to follow the European approach -- which involves pressuring Israel to make the concessions necessary to achieve a two-state solution, assuming there are any concessions that would ever get the Palestinians to say yes to a deal that would end the conflict (with no more claims) and leave Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Most importantly, J Street has provided a vehicle to begin the work on changing the narrative on Israel within the Jewish community -- in synagogues, Jewish federations, and Hillels, and more broadly, in colleges, the media, and Congress.

It is no secret that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has had a long successful history of lobbying members of Congress to support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. Given that Israeli governments move from Right to Left and back again (and are therefore at times more willing and at other times less willing to be accommodating with negotiating concessions), and American presidents have also been more or less supportive of Israel (Obama, Jimmy Carter, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush among the less friendly; Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush among the more supportive), it has been easier for AIPAC to focus on members of Congress, rather than the executive branch, to shape a consistent bipartisan agenda on Israel.

J Street is in business in large part to weaken AIPAC and to pull away Democrats, especially leftist Democrats, from the bipartisan consensus on Israel in Congress. In an era where for the last 20 years the relations between members of the two parties in Congress has frayed, as a growing percentage of members from both parties have become more ideological and less willing to compromise, support for Israel has been one of the very few issues where members from the two parties joined together. J Street has worked to make those in Congress who are further to the Left adopt the positions of their ideological twins outside of Congress, who have pretty much all turned on Israel -- whether in the universities, the media, or synagogues.

AIPAC adopted a strategic posture of ignoring J Street. And to date, J Street has been unsuccessful in creating a new group within the Democratic Party in Congress that will challenge AIPAC. However, Obama has applied pressure on Democrats in Congress, particularly in the Senate, where Democrats still have the majority, to stand down from challenging him on issues, such as approving new sanctions on Iran if the current negotiating framework breaks down. Forced to choose between their leader and AIPAC, Obama won and AIPAC retreated and pulled the sanctions bill, a victory that J Street trumpeted as its own victory, as it of course had parroted whatever Obama called for from the beginning of his presidency (his "blocking back," as Ben-Ami has called it).

Truth be told, the consensus on Israel in Congress today represents a pretty low bar for achievement -- voting for foreign aid, signing onto some nonbinding resolutions, and cheering for Israel's prime minister when he speaks to Congress. For sure, there are real champions for the U.S.-Israel relationship in Congress, and they still come from both parties (Senators Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, members of Congress Peter Roskam, Eliot Engel and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), though many more these days are Republicans. However, it is easy to see how this dynamic could change in the future, and J Street is investing to make this happen.

On college campuses, future American leaders and political figures are being exposed to the progressive narrative that groups matter more than nations or individuals. You are defined by your membership in a racial/religious/ethnic group, and that is what has shaped your privilege or lack thereof, and your worldview. Morality is defined as supporting underdogs and the weaker party in conflicts, and achieving a redistribution of power and wealth/income to achieve more fairness in individual societies and in the world.

Israel loses in this equation, since it is viewed by the Left as a colonial power created by the West that drove out an indigenous people and that is now preventing Palestinians from achieving the self-determination to which they are entitled. This almost entirely false narrative is backed by nasty anti-Semitic groups that are largely Muslim (such as Students for Justice in Palestine) or anti-Zionist (Jewish groups such as Jewish Voices for Peace). When these groups battle pro-Israel groups to pass boycotts/divestments/sanctions measures in student governments, J Street has more often than not been arm-in-arm with, or in some cases, more quietly behind the groups that are pushing BDS resolutions and trashing Israel.

The vote last week by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations not to add J Street to their membership ranks was less a reflection of J Street's alleged pro-peace politics (there are existing pro-peace groups within the conference) but anger at J Street's aggressiveness in working to splinter the consensus among Jewish organizations on issues like Iran or the peace process and undermine or harm existing members of the conference to make them less effective.

J Street would be happy if, over time, it became the group that Democrats in Congress lined up behind, and AIPAC was left for the Republicans, which would of course mean the end of a bipartisan consensus in Congress on anything impacting Israel, since J Street can be defined by its opposition to AIPAC's agenda. In essence, J Street's goal is to make Israel a Democrats versus Republicans issue, as is the case for so much else in Congress and America, especially since the Left believes that demographic changes in America will soon make the Democrats the dominant political party. Soon it hopes that hostility to Israel will be as much a mainstream Democratic Party issue as global-warming hysteria, affirmative action, immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, and raising tax rates on the wealthy.

"The J Street Challenge" is an attempt to offer a clear-eyed view of the real J Street agenda -- especially its goal to destroy the bipartisan consensus on Israel, so that its soft, mushy PR campaign of presenting itself as the group representing the pro-peace, pro-Israel majority in America can be seen for what and who is really behind the propaganda campaign.

Explosion in Iran nuclear plant

Birthday candle for Israel? Report just in http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/180340#.U2lqe_ldVwQ"immense explosion has been heard throughout the northern Iranian city of Qazvin, semi-official Fars news agency reported, and many casualties are expected from the blast.

The blast may be related to nuclear development in Iran, according to the Los Angeles Times. Iranian officials in the past have strongly denied claims by Mujahedin Khalq Organization, or MKO, a cult-like Iranian exile group, that it has a secret nuclear enrichment facility in Abyek, near the major city, according to the daily.

Why J Street should have been denied membership Jewu

Omer-the 49 day period between Passover and Shavuot Jewu 36

Greek political anti-Semitsm

Greek's Jewish community has attacked an Athens municipal coalition backed by the country's ruling New Democracy Party for fielding a candidate they say is an anti-Semite in the upcoming elections.

The candidate, Thanos Plevris, is a candidate for the Athens, You Can coalition, which is hoping to win back city hall in local elections later this month. Plevris was previously a member of parliament with the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (Laos) party.

In a joint statement, the Central Board of Greek Jews and the Jewish Community of Athens said that Plevris had never "repudiated and condemned the disgraceful things said about the Jews in the book 'Jews: The Whole Truth,' which is a monument to anti-Semitism and hatred."

The book was written by Plevris' father, Kostas, a self-declared racist and Nazi. In 2007, he became the first person to be convicted under a 1979 anti-racism law. The conviction was later overturned on appeal, with the judges accepting the argument that his book only referred to "Zionist Jews" and not Jews in general.

The community said that Thanos Plevris had defended the book's author when he was a Laos MP. His excuse that he was simply acting as a lawyer for his father did not prevent him from condemning the book and its contents after the trial, the statement continued.

It also noted that, in recent tweets, Plevris had avoided identifying the Jews as the main victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

"Our position is well known … Attitudes towards the Holocaust, fascism and Nazism, anti-Semitism and intolerance need to be clear and conscious and should not be used for short-term political expediency," the statement said.

The left-wing coalition Syriza blamed New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, the current prime minister, for his party’s "rich collection of right-wing extremists and Holocaust deniers

The Middle East conflict, simply put

Case of J Street: How 600 rabbis can be wrong

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, Executive Director of the Rabbinical assembly, the Conservative Movement's rabbinic arm, wrote a piece decrying the vote to DENY J Street membership in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish organizations. She says almost 600 rabbis are on the J Street Rabbinic board. Its not enough that under her leadership the Conservative Movement continues to slide dramatically down in affiliation, down to 11% for Jews under 20, now she and the United synagogue vote to give J Street a bigger voice? Thank God wiser heads prevailed.

      J Street is a dangerous group, whose polices weaken and endanger Israel and embolden Israel's enemies. The Executive Director of the Conservative rabbis group Rabbinical Assembly, who has overseen a sharp and dramatic decline in the movement under her reign) wrote a piece condemning that vote. This position is to be expected from the Reform Movement, but Conservative? Of course leaders are saying they do not necessarily agree with the J street positions, but they should have  seat at the table. Should Hamas? Iran? You think that's an absurd question? See how close J Street positions are to some radical anti Israel groups and find out where their funding comes from?

This is the group she wants  admitted to the Conference..

Top ten+ traitorous, dangerously anti-Israel aspects of J street

1.     Follow the money J Street has accepted funding from sources—such as George Soros and many from the Arab world, including Iran, —who are openly anti-Israel, and have kept this fact secret so as not to alienate its centrist supporters. J Street officials got caught misleading reporters on overseas Arab and Muslim funding and then launched a clumsy spin campaign. Then they got caught misleading other reporters about Soros funding and launched another clumsy spin campaign. 

2.     J Street insists that all major pro-Israel organizations be open to speakers who favor the BDS movements, supporters of the single secular binational state approach, and those who oppose Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people J Street only wants people to hear views to the anti-Israel hard left of its position. It categorically refuses to allow its members to hear views that are more centrist and more pro-Israel, such as Prof. Alan Dershowitz.

3.      It has taken positions that undercut Israel’s security and that virtually no Israeli center-leftists support. It placed its imprimatur behind the despicable and mendacious Goldstone Report by bringing Richard Goldstone to Capitol Hill and introducing him to members of Congress. 

4.     March 21, 2014 In a development that is not sending shockwaves through the pro-Israel community, J Street has declared its support for the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. J Street’s belief is that the U.S should use its status as Israel’s only ally to pressure it to make concessions to a Palestinian Authority that has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. 

5.     Some of J Street U campus branches began to drop the “pro-Israel” clause of the organization’s slogan

6.     Iran sanctions:. Within hours of Netanyahu’s crystal clear speech that the deal between Iran and the west is a “bad deal, a very, very bad deal,” J J Street sent out the message through thousands of emails, and on its website, urging Americans to tell their senators to “take a time out from moving ahead with new sanctions. J Street throws its sheltering arms around the mullahs in Iran and tries to help browbeat members of the U.S. senate into easing Iran’s slide into the nuclear weapons club – a club whose doors should and must be shut to any nation that threatens to “exterminate” or “wipe off the face of the Earth” another nation, especially Israel – it makes it impossible to do anything but grimace at their tag line: “pro-Israel, pro-peace.”

7.     J Street shamelessly and relentlessly push the Palestinian Arab propaganda line which claims Jews living and breathing beyond an arbitrary armistice line is the primary cause of unrest in the Middle East.

8.     The self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” liberal advocacy group J Street is soliciting funds for congressional candidates who are openly hostile to Israel while simultaneously targeting for defeat explicitly pro-Israel lawmakers.

who do not agree with its radical Middle East agenda, according to aWashington Free Beacon analysis of J Street’s election year strategy.

Among the more than 50 candidates endorsed by J Street is a sizable delegation of lawmakers who have expressed hostility towards the Jewish state.

9.     J Street launched campaigns to defend anti-Israel media campaigns and anti-Israel art and anti-Israel artists. Its PR flak defended Mary Robinson. Itbrought into the fold an apologist for the Muslim students who went after Ambassador Oren at UC Irvine. A J Street delegation held meetings with Palestinian diplomats in Ramallah on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day over Israeli objections and then Ben-Ami bragged about the trip in the Jerusalem Post. One of their board members met with Hamas.

10.  Dershowitz called J Street’s branding of its message as pro-Israel “dishonest.” “It is a fraud in advertising to call J Street pro-Israel,” he said. “An organization that calls for the US to censure Israel at the UN is not pro-Israel. An organization that praises [judge Richard] Goldstone is not pro-Israel. An organization that calls for taking any military measure against Iran off the table is not pro-Israel. It should stop defrauding the public.”

11.  J Street was accused of collaborating with anti-Israel groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine.

12.  J Street has refused to condemn the Fatah-Hamas unity deal, claims it is no impediment to peace, refused to condemn Sec. State Kerry for using term apartheid regarding Israel or threatening a boycott etc .

 

"Commentary magazine "J Street’s suggestion that this is the moment for Kerry to put forward his own peace plan shows just how out of touch they are. Kerry may have been foolhardy enough to think the magic of his personality could achieve what all of his predecessors failed to accomplish, but he is not so stupid as to think he could persuade a Palestinian government that included Hamas would accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn. Nor would Obama risk his limited political capital in a midterm election year on a fight with Israel that would, like his previous squabbles with Netanyahu, do nothing to advance the cause. That’s why J Street, for all of President Obama’s sympathy for its goals, finds itself once again marginalized. "

 

What kind of radicals  are running our national organizations?  Received this from pro Israel activist
"If you are as horrified as I am by the reprehensible position of the United Synagogue and the RA, please, as I have done, contact your Rabbis and synagogue presidents and urge your synagogue’s resignation from the United Synagogue and your Rabbis’ resignation from the RA.  There is no place—none—at the pro-Israel table for J Street, and no place for our synagogues to be supporting it through our umbrella organizations. This was a very sad day for the Conservative Movement.  Please take action."