LA JOLLA, California — As an Israeli who has resided in the United States for the last 18 years, I have been frustrated by the language dominating U.S. electoral politics. Predominant are the hawkish voices that avoid any criticism of the Israeli government policy and purport to represent my country’s interests while playing on rhetoric of fear.
Such messages undermine the Zionistic ideology advocated by Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, and on which I was raised: Israel as a Jewish, democratic state in which human rights are an essential and respected value. I have always felt that these voices failed to represent the views of the majority of the American Jews and the views of the mainstream Israelis.
Since the U.S. election this November the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued to generate headlines, starting with the Israel-Gaza Strip military escalation and the cease-fire; and the approval of Palestine as an observer state by the U.N General Assembly followed by the retaliatory measures inflicted by the Israeli government and the attempts to expel the PLO Mission from D.C. As the conflict drags on, I believe that it is important to examine the trends in the Jewish electoral vote that emerged in November’s election, and the new landscape in the Senate and House with respect to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
In contrast to the heated and often hawkish rhetoric around Israel during the election campaign, I was glad to realize that my own views are indeed considered mainstream among American Jews. According to a poll of the American Jewish voters by Gerstein | Bocian | Agne Strategies, 82% of American Jewish voters support a two-state solution that declares an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, resulting in all Arab countries establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel and creating an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. 79% of American Jewish voters support such a two-state solution even if it means that East Jerusalem will become the capital of the Palestinian state. 76% of Jewish voters would support the United States putting forth its own peace plan for resolving the conflict between the parties.
The poll was commissioned by J Street, a Washington-based advocacy group whose stated aim is to promote American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically through a two-state solution. J Street unequivocally supports the existence of the State of Israel and is working to secure Israel’s future as a democracy and national home for the Jewish people. J Street holds an unwavering position stating that the best way to guarantee Israel’s future is through the realization of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and through a comprehensive regional peace agreement.
This election cycle, through its Political Action Committee (PAC), J Street distributed over $1.8 million in support of 71 federal candidates who are committed to active diplomacy to promote the vision of a secure and democratic Jewish state and a peaceful middle-east. 70 of these candidates were elected, representing a remarkable rate of success for a pro-Israel PAC. J-Street endorsed 7 Senate candidates and all were elected, including California Democratic incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein.
In Congress J Street PAC endorsed 49 incumbent candidates who were all reelected including our local San Diego Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA- District 53). The success gets even sweeter as at least six members of the House of Representative who hold extreme hawkish policy positions on Israel will no longer serve in the House.
Israel’s health and future as a democratic and Jewish nation may well be dependent upon transforming the political climate around Israel in the U.S. which is blocking meaningful American efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
Here in San Diego, J Street launched a local chapter in July 2012. The local chapter has enjoyed broad support and enthusiasm from the community. In addition it receives the backing of Congresswoman Susan Davis and San Diego Mayor Bob Filner.
J Street has been gaining national recognition and has become the new moderate voice for the majority of mainstream American Jews with respect to American policy in Israel. I hope that this momentum will inspire a new, more constructive political language that will eventually influence diplomacy in the Middle East and breathe new hope into my Zionistic dream.
Eylon Shamir is a Water Resources Specialist who lives in La Jolla and can be reached at eylon.shamir@gmail.com (858 205 8803)
You guys crack me up. Meshaal of Hamas–!–for the past four years said he would begin negotiations with Israel at its 1967 borders. That was the minimum and he was impliedly recognizing Israel whether he continued to deny it or not. After four years of games, lies and bombings from Netanyahu, Meshaal is back to saying he will never recognize Israel and never negotiate. Great job, Bibi.
Yes, we know about rockets and we know about Hamas’ inconsistency in stopping splinter groups from firing those rockets from Gaza into Israel–and when it expressly endorses such actions (Note I supported the 2008 Israeli response and supported it generally this time, though I remain troubled by the timing and the fact that the Hamas leader killed was literally reviewing a long term truce document previously negotiated with Israeli leaders). However, the talking among the Israelis and Palestinian leaders should have been jump started in these past four years, as even Olmert and Livni recognize. Rahm Emmanuel recognized it, tried to get things started, and Obama has been flogged ever since for it, even after Emmanuel left the administration and Obama followed AIPAC desires.
As for the politics of J Street, I suppose I should wish (but I don’t) that J Street could dictate politicians the way AIPAC does. Anyone without an ax to grind on behalf of AIPAC knows how AIPAC works, and it has most Congress members scared out of their wits on Capitol Hill. AIPAC is very effective, and yet, it does not speak for many Jews in the US.
I don’t know yet how J Street will work out. It might become a powerful voice of the American Jewish Diaspora. It might not. It’s early in this saga called the democratic discourse.
However, to say, as Mr. Surbeck does, that J Street is “clearly one of the most anti-Israel group(s) around” is hyperbole wrapped in delusion. J Street supports the 2 State Solution, which has been what AIPAC used to support, but now frequently attempts to fudge, with some of its influential members expressly denying. This means that J Street may end up filling the vacuum AIPAC is leaving open, as most American Jews support the 2 State solution.
So gentlemen, the argument has begun and we will see how effective J Street can be and whether the American Jewish Diaspora will begin to be heard more clearly, too. Call me names along the way, but I think you guys need to realize there are lots of folks for whom you do not speak.
J Street exists to push their political agenda, even if it doesn’t coincide with the American government’s support of Israel as the Netanyahu government tries to re-start negotiations with the PA without pre-conditions. AIPAC, on the other hand, exists to build American governmental support for the positions represented by the democratically-elected government of Israel, regardless who was in power.
J Street has every right to exist and even to be listened to, but they cannot be credible unless they answer Mr. Surbeck’s statement: “The basic fact remains that it takes two to tango, and the Palestinians, any which way you look at it, are NOT interested in a two-state solution. They are interested only in a ONE-state solution, one where there will be no place for Jews: among many other questions, hasn’t it even occurred to Mr. Shamir to ask why 1.4 million Arabs can live in Israel with the same rights as other Israelis, while Mahmood Abbas has declared publicly that not one Jew will be allowed to live in “Palestine”? Two States living at peace next to each other is a sweet idea, but if one of them has a 20% minority of Arabs and there is no reciprocity in the other, what kind of lopsided agreement is that? No lasting peace can be built on such a double standard. “
Bruce, read Bronfman’s well-forwarded op ed from July about how much Obama has supported AIPAC’s agenda on Israel. It was only in the beginning of Obama’s administration, when he was listening to Rahm Emmanuel, who is both Jewish and has strong ties to Israel, that Obama was pushing hard for Israel to sit down with Abbas–not Hamas.
J Street is predominantly supporting Democrats because Democrats are more willing to buck the Likudnik sensibility that is isolating Israel further and further. When Republicans decide to be more willing to embrace the two state solution, then J Street will endorse more Republicans than Boustany in Louisiana, who is a Republican.
And finally, I’m old enough to recall how AIPAC was not supportive of Rabin in the early to mid-1990s to the point where Rabin was harshly castigating them behind closed doors, and through strategic leaks.
If there is any sophistry going on, it’s with you and Surbeck. You guys just don’t like J Street. We get it.
Mr. Freedman, thank you for your enlightening contribution, which demonstrates perfectly the nature of the problem with J Street. You allege first that “Democrats are more willing to buck the Likudnik sensibility that is isolating Israel further and further.” That is exactly the problem: what you’re saying is that Democrats are more willing to ignore the voice of the Israeli electorate which put the Likud in power. The inescapable conclusion is that the kind of Democrats you are referring to (they of the “bucking the Likudnik sensibility” sort), which I assume must include yourself, are in fact in essence the most anti-democratic element there is on the American political scene, and that should be very worrisome for everyone, Democrats or Republicans. You clearly are not willing to honor and respect Israeli democracy in action. As to whether that same “Likudnik sensibility is isolating Israel further and further”, I would suggest that you are barking up the wrong tree. Talk to your Palestinian friends instead. You might want to consider also that what one factor contributing to Israel’s increasing isolation is the activities of groups like J Street who spend all their time criticizing and blaming Israel, giving her adversaries no incentive of any sort to make compromises. Once again, instead of being “pro-Israel” as you claim, you are clearly one of the most anti-Israel group around. That’s not something I’d brag too much about. But that’s not all. You add “When Republicans decide to be more willing to embrace the two state solution, then J Street will endorse more Republicans than Boustany in Louisiana, who is a Republican.” Since when did J Street become the kingmaker of American politics? And why should Republicans and Democrats alike submit to its diktat in order to gain its support, i.e. approve an antiquated and discredited model for solving the Middle East conflict, or else? To conclude, yes, you’re perceptive: we don’t like J Street. But it’s not just for the fun of it. It’s because we have very good reasons to dislike it. It is a fundamentally dishonest organization that claims to be pro-Israel when it is anything but. You are free to support it even if its dictatorial reasoning doesn’t hurt your Democratic sensibilities as it should, but don’t ask anyone else to be as blind.
I’d like to respond to Mr. Surbeck’s distorted portrayal of J Street. As Eylon Shamir’s piece makes clear, J Street is focused on influencing the political conversation in America because we are Americans. It is the right and duty of citizens in any democracy to speak out honestly about how they want their government to represent them, and this is especially critical when the issue is as important and deeply felt as our support for Israel. Surbeck’s suggestion that Americans should instead spend money to directly influence Israel’s democratic process is puzzling, and is certainly not on J Street’s agenda. J Street wishes to promote honest and constructive dialogue across the spectrum of the American Jewish Community who support Israel. We hope TEAM, and other local pro-Israel groups, will recognize that this is our aim and work together with us.
Mr. Mukamel talks of distorted portrayal, but shamelessly goes on stating some far worse distortions than the ones he accuses me of. To wit: “J Street is focused on influencing the political conversation in America because we are Americans.”…. and?….. Why do I have the feeling that there is something missing here? Such as “in order to…. [fill in the blanks…]”. Let me try: “J Street is focused on influencing the political conversation in America because we are Americans and we know better than anyone else, especially the Israelis themselves, what is best for Israel”. So then it turns out in this light that the so-called “political conversation in America among us good people of America” is not just about nothing or anything. It is a political conversation in America among Americans of what J Street has decided needs to be done in Israel, whether the Israelis themselves agree or not. By omitting to define exactly what he means to say, Mr. Mukamel shows a rather unpleasant contempt for his readers’ intelligence. In other words, who do you think you’re fooling, Evan? Next Mr. Mukamel pretends to have misunderstood what I wrote previously and regurgitated it thusly: “Surbeck’s suggestion that Americans should instead spend money to directly influence Israel’s democratic process is puzzling, and is certainly not on J Street’s agenda”. Of course that’s not what I wrote. So let me try again: what I wrote was that instead of spending money in America to force Israel to do what J Street thinks it should do (something that neither J Street nor any other group has any right to do), it would be more credible if it developed its activities in Israel proper rather than in the US. In other words, if you don’t like Israeli policies, don’t bother US representatives with it! Instead, go to Israel itself, live there (if only to gain the right to say anything about its policies) and try to get the type of government that is more to your liking over there, not here! But Mr. Mukamel and I know all too well that this is not going to happen, because the ridiculous and antiquated ideas that J Street still advocates have already been completely discredited in Israel, courtesy of your friends the Palestinians. Maybe it is time to remind self-righteous but inexperienced youngsters like Mr. Mukamel that despite four wars of aggression on the part of the Arabs and countless terrorist actions by Palestinian terrorists, a large majority of Isrealis were, up to and including the Oslo Accords (1993), of the same political persuasion as J Street is today. They were willing to make – and they did – unending concessions to the Palestinians based on the delusional assumption that the Palestinians would in turn reciprocate, and – Kumbaya moment – everybody would fall into each other’s arms and peace would come. Oops… It didn’t quite work out that way. The question is why? And the answer to this why is simply that the Palestinians never bothered to honor the first iota of the Oslo Accords and, ten years later, of the Road Map. As a result, the Israeli electorate shifted to the right when they finally realized that the policies of their leftists leaders got them nothing but grief, thousands of dead and wounded, and an unending stream of rockets. As such, J Street’s stand that more concessions are needed marks it positively as a political dinosaur far removed from the realities of Israeli life, which is kind of ironic for an organization that fancies itself as totally hip. It would if it was sensible. But all may not be lost: if there are two places where J Street could prove really useful, it would be by spending its time, money, resources and personnel in Gaza and in the West Bank, where the Palestinians in both places need serious nudging towards credible efforts in peacemaking (such as abandoning their losing policies of firing rockets and still supporting terrorism, as well as their thriving culture of hate). If you can do something on that front, I would support you. But of course we know that I’m just dreaming. It is so much easier and risk-free to pressure Israel than the Palestinians, even though the result is guaranteed: none of the lofty goals you claim to want to achieve are ever going to happen, because you’re ignoring the central obstacle to peace, which is the absolute refusal of the Palestinians to make peace. As long as there is no change there, anything you do or think you can do will remain a waste of time.
Mr. Freedman, there are two core distinctions that your sophistic question misses:
AIPAC exists for the US to support Israel, regardless of the political administration in the US or in Israel; J Street exists to have the left wing of the US Democrat Party muscle the government of Israel to adopt policies that only a small minority of vocal leftist Israelis want, which furthermore are based on preposterous ambitions repeatedly proven wrong in practice.
Second, AIPAC supports politicians of both US political parties, while J Street Democrat ones aside from acting as a front for excusing President Obama’s actions hostile toward or undermining Israel.
Mr. Surbeck writes: “If Mr. Shamir and his friends at J Street had any integrity, they wouldn’t be spending their money on supporting US candidates to their liking, but on Israeli ones instead!”
A question to Mr. Surbeck, have you publicly told AIPAC to do the same, and if so, when?
Mr. Freedman, as Bruce Kesler pointed out in his comment, there are a couple of very big differences between J Street and AIPAC.
1. J Street claims to know what is best for Israel even if the democratically elected Israeli government has a different opinion. That’s why they have the nerve to call themselves “pro-Israel” when in fact that’s a flat-out lie. What they actually support is not Israel itself, but THEIR own idea of what Israel should be like, and as long as the only Jewish state in the world doesn’t comply with that idea, they will do their utmost to have the US government do their bidding and force Israel to do so. In contrast, AIPAC is pro-Israel as Israelis see it and as they have voted for it, not as they want it to be. In other words, AIPAC shows respect for the democratic process in Israel while J Street only shows contempt for it.
2. That fundamental difference in outlook, behavior, attitude and strategy stems from the fact that J Street couldn’t care less what Israeli voters think and chose. As Daniel Gordis eloquently diagnosed some time ago, J Street arrogantly gave itself the right to tell the nationals of a country where its members and activists don’t even live how to conduct themselves. AIPAC does nothing of the sort. No matter who is voted in to lead the Israeli government, and no matter what policies it chooses to follow, AIPAC will support it because it is the Israeli government, period, not because of their political preferences. Whether it chooses policies that AIPAC approves or not is irrelevant. The point is to make sure that the US government follows the same attitude of supporting Israel no matter which government leads it. This is of course anathema for the J Street ideologues, for whom the safety of Israel doesn’t matter as much as its political leanings. As a result, while they keep trying to convince everyone that they are “pro-Israel”, the truth of the matter is that J Street is the closest thing there is to an anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian organization, except for the fact that it is itself Jewish. Instead of being supported by naive would-be do-gooders, it should be shunned to the same degree as the fraudulently named “Jewish Voices for Peace”.
Bottom line: if you are genuinely pro-Israel, you cannot support J Street. On the contrary, you want to stay as far away from them as you can. I’m not suggesting that anyone should join and support AIPAC if they don’t want to, but you could do a lot worse, in particular by supporting the false friends of Israel that J Street is.
From J.J. Surbeck, executive director, T.E.A.M (Training and Education About the Middle East) San Diego:
“There are only two not so minor problems with Mr. Shamir’s idyllic and rosy picture of a future Middle East at peace at last thanks to the acceptance by all parties (and not just Israel) of the much-hyped “Two State Solution”. The first problem is that his descriptions completely and utterly flies in the face of reality. I know it’s a cliché, but the basic fact remains that it takes two to tango, and the Palestinians, any which way you look at it, are NOT interested in a two-state solution. They are interested only in a ONE-state solution, one where there will be no place for Jews: among many other questions, hasn’t it even occurred to Mr. Shamir to ask why 1.4 million Arabs can live in Israel with the same rights as other Israelis, while Mahmood Abbas has declared publicly that not one Jew will be allowed to live in “Palestine”? Two States living at peace next to each other is a sweet idea, but if one of them has a 20% minority of Arabs and there is no reciprocity in the other, what kind of lopsided agreement is that? No lasting peace can be built on such a double standard. The second big problem with Mr. Shamir’s picture is the one he doesn’t mention: like J Street itself, he doesn’t like the policies of the Israeli government. Fine, that’s his right. What is deeply troubling in his and J Street’s approach is that they consciously choose to ignore the fact that the current Israeli government is the one that the Israeli electorate elected. If anyone claims to save Israel from itself, in particular its democracy, as J Street does, how about starting by respecting the outcome of Israeli elections? As everyone knows, Israel is the only truly functional democracy in the entire Middle East, but because they don’t like the results of this very same democracy in action, J Street and its supporters choose instead to demonize it. Worse yet, their approach to ignore the voice of the Israeli electorate is to actively lobby in the US to have the full weight of the US government lean heavily on the Israeli government to adopt the policies THEY (J Street, that is) deem more appropriate for Israel. In effect, what they’re saying to the Israeli people is “We don’t give a damn about the choices you made in exercising your democratic rights, WE know better than you do what’s good for you”. If Mr. Shamir and his friends at J Street had any integrity, they wouldn’t be spending their money on supporting US candidates to their liking, but on Israeli ones instead! If you want to change the political map in Israel, go do it in Israel, not here! This long-distance effort to impose on Israel values that the Israeli electorate has obviously rejected is deeply disturbing and should give pause to anyone led to believe, mistakenly, that J Street and the likes of Mr. Shamir really show Israel’s democracy the respect it deserves from true friends and true allies. I don’t care how many times someone tells me that he knows better than I do what is good for me (except my doctor), if he or she tries to twist my arm into it, he or she is anything but my friend. He/she can try to convince me, but if that doesn’t work, he/she should respect my position and my views. That’s what real friends are like. J Street is the worst friend Israel could ever dream to have. It is time to reject the intellectual and moral fraud that it is.”