Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: J Street

Showing posts with label J Street. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

"Pro-Israel" J-Street, without evidence, demands the US investigate Israel misuse of aid

You know the expression "where there's smoke, there's fire"?

Not when someone has a gigantic smoke machine. And that is exactly what J-Street builds.

From a J-Street mailing:

Let’s make sure US aid is being used for Israel’s defense, and not the demolition of Palestinian homes
Join us in backing a new effort in Congress to ensure that US military assistance is being used in compliance with current US law, for Israel’s defense and not in connection with the displacement of Palestinians.

....[W]e’re strongly backing a new congressional letter, initiated by Reps. Ro Khanna, Anna Eshoo and Steve Cohen, pushing for greater accountability in ensuring that US aid to Israel is only being used for legitimate defense purposes -- and that equipment purchased with our tax-payer dollars is not being used to displace Palestinians.

Over a dozen members have already joined the Khanna-Eshoo-Cohen letter, expressing concern over the dramatic rise in demolitions this year.

The members ask -- pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act -- for the administration to report back to Congress on whether US-supplied equipment has been used for such demolitions and whether such use constitutes a breach of any existing restrictions.

As I have reported previously, there already is an audit process in place to see where every dollar of US aid is spent in Israel.

Does J-Street have any evidence that Israel is somehow bypassing the existing controls and spending US money on other things? If you read the many reports from the Congressional Research Service about aid to Israel, there doesn't seem to be any. US aid is earmarked for specific, targeted programs from the F-35 fighter to anti-rocket defense systems.

In other words, the US government is clearly not giving Israel bulldozers., nor is it handing Israel any checks it can spend on bulldozers.

If there is zero evidence of misuse of funds, and an existing audit mechanism to ensure that there is no misuse of funds, why ask for an investigation into misuse of funds?

There is no fire, and there is no smoke, except from J-Street's massive smoke machine meant to obscure rather than reveal the truth.

And speaking of transparency - this new congressional letter J-Street refers to is not public. They are asking us to tell out members of Congress to sign a letter we are not privy to see ourselves!

You know who did see the letter? Al Monitor! For some reason, Arab news outlets have more visibility into a Congressional letter than US citizens.

And J-Street - supposedly agitating for more transparency in aid to Israel - is cool with telling people to support a letter sight unseen, except for Arab media.

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The slanderous J-Street straw man that Israel misuses US aid for settlements or "annexation"

Jeremy Ben Ami of J-Street said on Sunday night:

Clarify that US assistance to Israel is to be used solely for the country's defense and that the United States will not foot the bill for annexation or pay for... a one state outcome. An important conversation has been started in this campaign about American policy regarding the uses for which American assistance to Israel can be put. Already in this presidential campaign we are hearing real conversations, real proposals, from several leading candidates, around ensuring that our assistance isn't being put to uses that actually deepen Israel's security challenges, whether it's annexation or settlement expansion. Current law is actually explicit as to the purposes that US security assistance can and can't be put by recipient countries including Israel. Our aid is not intended to be a blank check. Congress and the next administration at a minimum should take the necessary steps to gain visibility into how our assistance is being used, how our dollars are being spent, and to ensure that all existing laws regarding those uses are being followed.

Ben Ami is right about one thing: existing US laws allow for only certain uses of foreign aid.

But what he is demanding - and what some candidates are happily parroting from him - already exists. There are already audits as to how American money is being spent.

The US looks closely at how its aid is used, and when it finds a violation, it calls it out. The last time this happened for Israel was in 2006 when, as a recent Congressional Research Service report says,

After Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, the State Department issued a preliminary report to Congress concluding that Israel may have violated the terms of agreements with the United States that restrict Israel’s use of U.S.-supplied cluster munitions to certain military targets in non-civilian areas.

No violations have been found since then.

In 2016 - during the Obama administration - some members of Congress formally asked for an investigation into whether Israel used American funds to allegedly extrajudically kill some specific Palestinians. The State Department investigated and found that no American money was involved in the incidents.

Similarly, the CRS report says that there is some aid to Israel that is specifically meant to be used within the Green Line - for immigrant absorption and for some binational foundations, such as the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and this is audited as well.

99.8% of US aid to Israel is earmarked for specific military purposes - the vast majority for missile defense systems, F-35s and anti-tunnel defense systems. None of that money can be repurposed. The remaining 0.2% goes to immigrant absorption and homeland security - research into technologies for first responders and early warning systems that can be used in the US.

This demand by J-Street to further investigate that which is already being carefully vetted is a straw man to imply that Israel has been misusing US aid. As such, it is a slander. It is also a slander against the US government by saying that the existing extensive audit mechanism is not adequate, and that Israel can somehow pull the wool over the eyes of the US.

If that is true, then aid to other countries really need to be looked at more closely as well. But J-Street doesn't care about whether US aid to Jordan or Egypt is audited and money secretly going to terrorists. They only accuse Israel of using American money to break the law.

This is reprehensible. But then again, this is J-Street.

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Yesterday at the J-Street conference Bermie Sanders said that as president he would tell Israel, “If you want military aid, you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship with the people of Gaza. In fact, I think it is fair to think that some of that $3.8 billion should go to humanitarian aid to Gaza.”

Others have already noted how crazy what he said was:

Just when you thought Bernie Sanders couldn’t get any more radical, he outdid himself. He wants to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists?? Unreal. Why isn’t every other Dem pres candidate saying he’s wrong?
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) October 29, 2019

But Sanders doesn't even have his facts about Gaza right.

Gaza is a hellhole, no doubt about it. But Israel has been working to help the innocent people of Gaza, a fact that the media largely ignores.

Israel decided this year to allow day laborers into Israel from Gaza. Nearly 4000 Gazans now have entry permits into Israel, and another thousand are approved.

The number of Gazans entering Israel every month is now nearly double what it was in 2018.

The number of Gazans entering Israel is more than double the number that enter Egypt.

Sanders claimed that many of the items denied by Israel into Gaza were items that could not be used for military purposes. This hasn't been true for many years. If Gazans can order the items and find a seller, they can get it.

Israel allows and promotes infrastructure projects in Gaza. The amount of waste Gaza spills into the sea is now half what it was in January. The desalination plant is up and running.

Surprisingly, Gaza now imports about twice as much fuel from Egypt as from Israel, almost certainly because the PA cannot tax the fuel from Egypt so Hamas can get it for cheaper.

(Most of these statistics come from the UN.)

Israel has worked closely with Qatar to bring in aid to Gaza. The relationship started when Egypt refused to allow Qatar to ship construction materials into Gaza through its border. It was Israel that agreed with an Arab country that is friendly with Hamas in order to help ordinary Gazans.

The shortages of medicine and power in Gaza are usually more the fault of the Palestinian Authority which has been trying to use economic warfare against Hamas, collectively punishing all Gazans. When was the last time you heard the word "collective punishment" used against Palestinians that was not blaming Israel?

Israel has done other things but reserves the right to modify them (like how far Gaza fishermen can go into the Mediterranean) when there are rockets or other attacks from Gaza. Lately, things have been quieter and as a result things are getting slowly better for Gazans.

In many ways, Israel is helping Gazans more than any Arab country (including the PA) outside of Qatar. (Iran, meanwhile, payrolls Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, a small fact that wouldn't be mentioned at J-Street either.)

So what would Bernie propose, specifically, that Israel do more than it already is? Gaza's problems are a result of Hamas and Palestinian Authority infighting, Hamas prioritizing terror over governance, and Arabs at large sick and tired of supporting the Palestinian issue.

It isn't the blockade. It's not as if Gaza is exporting goods to Egypt. Nothing is stopping that - except Egypt doesn't want to buy. Would Bernie force Israel to buy Gaza goods it doesn't want?

Living in Gaza is awful. Israel is doing a great deal that the media (and of course J-Street panelists and speakers) do not report on, because demonizing Israel is the order of the day.

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J-Street's session on "The Trump Legacy on Israel/Palestine"

On Sunday, the J-Street conference hosted a panel session entitled "Scorched Earth: The Trump Legacy on Israel/Palestine."

The participants were:

Debra Shushan, Director of Policy and Government Relations, Americans for Peace Now (Moderator)
Khaled Elgindy, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program, Center
for a New American Security
Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, Political Analyst, Public Opinion Expert
Daniel Seidemann, Founder and Director, Terrestrial Jerusalem

Shushan gave a monologue at the beginning. She reviewed most of Donald Trump's moves, all of which she considered to be awful, and she wanted her panelists to describe how all of them can be rolled back in a future Democratic administration.

She called the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem "the hostile takeover of the consulate in Jerusalem by [David] Friedman's embassy."

She also encouraged the audience to boo Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel. It is axiomatic at J-Street that certain government officials must be treated with utmost disrespect, something Democrats complained bitterly about - rightly - when Obama was president.

In addition, Shushan sarcastically said that Israeli claims that annexation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank would be legal based on the principle that one can annex land won in a defensive war was a brand new, legally untenable position. While most modern legal scholars agree with Shushan that land cannot be legally annexed in any circumstances, it is not unanimous nor has it been uniformly applied since the UN Charter, as Eugene Kontorovich has demonstrated.

Daniel Seidemann described how he gave a tour of Jerusalem to Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. He told them that Arabs in Jerusalem east of the Green Line "are not entitled to receive citizenship" in Israel.

He is lying and he knows he is lying. (He is an expert on Jerusalem so it is disappointing when he knowingly pushes lies.) The process has been difficult but thousands have become citizens and many more are on their way; Israel is trying to streamline the process.

Khaled Elgindy said during his main talk that Clinton and Obama tried to make peace - but for some reason never mentions that Palestinian rejectionism was what stopped the initiatives. Later on someone asked him bout whether Arafat missed the boat in rejecting the Clinton peace plan and Elgindy denied that Arafat did that, saying that both Barak and Arafat accepted the plan. He later tweeted me his proof:

I responded that Clinton had no desire to sabotage any chance for peace while he was in office by insulting Arafat but not long after he left office he made it clear that Arafat was the rejectionist and Barak was ready to give major concessions:

And this as well:

While I agree that technically both Arafat and Barak accepted the plan with reservations, Clinton showed afterwards that Barak was the only one serious about it and Arafat was playing games (which Barak elaborates on in great detail.)

The bigger point is that Jews have been accepting and proposing peace offers since before 1948 and each of them has been consistently rejected by the Palestinian Arabs. That is a key point in any discussion on peace, which J-Street claims it cares about, yet only Israel is blamed for the lack of peace. This is a major blind spot in the liberal world which then leaks into a blind spot for everyone who does not spend serious time researching the topic.

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J-Street's panel on antisemitism excused - and even allowed - antisemitism

J-Street's conference had a panel on "Fighting Anti-Semitism and its Weaponization in American Politics."

Already by equating antisemitism with its supposed "weaponization" (which exists but is not nearly as big an issue,) the panel was doomed from the start from seriously looking at the problem.

The panelists were:

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights (Moderator)
Peter Beinart, Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York
Maya Berry, Executive Director, Arab American Institute
Haile Soifer, Executive Director, Jewish Democratic Council of America
Eric Ward, Executive Director, Western States Center

The entire discussion was naturally about antisemitism on the Right. It is a real problem, but not the way it was framed here. Haile Soifer wasted no time in attacking Donald Trump, the only president who has a Jewish daughter and grandchildren. She claimed falsely that he excused the white supremacists in Charlottesville, and she claimed that he failed to condemn antisemitism ever (although she accidentally said "condone.") She also claimed that the white nationalists who have attacked blacks and Jews in the US all were aligned with Trump, when they almost all hated him because he was too philosemitic.

I do not disagree that Trump has said things that embolden racists in the US. There is plenty to criticize him for in dividing the nation. (It is not so clear that the number of racist incidents increased under Trump, when the 2018 FBI hate crimes statistics are released we'll have a better idea. 2017 showed a marked increase but also many more agencies were added to the reporting compared to 2016, so the data sets may not be comparable.) But when you criticize him, do it accurately.

Peter Beinart said "I agree with everything [Haile] said." So, truth is certainly not something that this J-Street panel prizes.

Beinart also said, to applause, that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, but his reasoning was quite bizarre:

"The vast majority of Palestinians are anti-Zionist...The Palestinian experience with Zionism has been a very bitter, painful, traumatic experience. You do not have to be an antisemite...to be in solidarity with the Palestinian experience...Any definition of antisemitism that dehumanizes and silences Palestinians is not a response to bigotry - it is an expression of bigotry."

Would Beinart say that Jews who say that there is no room for Palestinians to have any political power in the region are not bigots? Of course not. But Palestinians who say that Jews have no right to live in the region as anything but second class citizens - which is the standard and mainstream Palestinian position - cannot be called antisemitic because that would "silence" them!

Sorry, Peter, antisemitism's definition is not dependent on whose feelings it might hurt. Arab and Muslim antisemitism is a thing, as much as you don't want to admit it. Saying that the Jews are not a people - the official PLO position! - is antisemitic. Saying that they do not have the right for self-determination in their historic homeland is antisemitic. And having a different standard for what Jews can say about Palestinians and what Palestinians can say about Jews in the area is itself an example of bigotry.

Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute categorically rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism with no dissent from the Jewish panelists:

"The reality is that the definition of antisemitism that was developed for use overseas that has been adopted by some here in the United States ...that they are attempting to use that definition on our college campuses, that is not an acceptable definition of antisemitism. As a result, we're entering in this sort of grey space...[During a time of worries about white supremacist violence] we're trying to decide how much I can criticize the State of Israel before I get labeled a certain thing. I think that's crazy. "

So now we are told by a Muslim that Jews cannot define what antisemitism is because she demands the right to compare Israel to Nazis or say Israeli Jews love to kill children and poison the wells. IHRA has no problem with criticism of Israel, and Berry knows that - but she wants the right to demonize any Jew who supports Israel or to demonize the Jewish state for actions that would be considered nothing in every single Arab state.

(I have yet to see a critic of the IHRA definition say which specific examples given there of anti-Zionist antisemitism they do not agree with. Because they know that double standards for Israel is in fact antisemitism.)

She also said, "I think one of the biggest mistakes J-Street makes is the position its taken on BDS. [Applause!] Because if you equate the entire movement with antisemitism then the logical conclusion is Rashida [Tlaib] is an antisemite. And that is a problem we should all be very concerned about."

This is after she noted that Jews never considered the previous Muslim members of Congress to be antisemitic, and it is only because Tlaib and Ilhan Omar support BDS that they are considered as such.

This is a mirror of Beinart's argument that if a definition of antisemitism ends up calling someone you like an antisemite, it must be wrong. That is not how definitions work.

(Also, J-Street does not say that BDS is antisemitic.)

Perhaps the most offensive part of the session was a question from a J-Street board member, Victor Kovner, that was itself antisemitic:

"I'd like to ask an easy question about whether white nationalism is rising within the Jewish community....Is it true, that because of policies about Israel, that white nationalism is rising among particularly the ultra-observant community? Is that true? And is it also rising in the Israeli settler movement?"

In other words, are religious Jews the disgusting racists I think they are?

Of course no one called Kovner out for his fairly clear bigotry. Beinart tackled the question but watered it down for public consumption, saying that some Zionists naturally will ally with like-minded political groups, as if Jews are willing to accept right-wing Tree of Life-level Jew-hatred for Israel. But the question revealed much more about how the (mostly elderly) leftist J-Street attendees really think.

In short, it was an antisemitic question that was tolerated at a panel supposedly about antisemitism.

Kovner, a major J-Street fundraiser, described J-Street's goal in a 2008 New York Times article this way: "Candidates would also be able to use the group’s endorsements as a shield against accusations that they were anti-Israel."

Does this sound like someone who loves either Israel or Jews?

This panel was a disgrace for a supposedly Jewish, pro-Israel organization that pretends to care about antisemitism.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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J-Street likes to pretend that it is pro-Israel and that the people on the Right who claim to be pro-Israel are really anti-Israel by considering parts of the West Bank to be part of Israel in any final status agreement.

But as this excerpt from the J-Street Conference indicates, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times thinks that any Democratic candidates who are "too" pro-Israel are also "far-Right."

"What I think is interesting is that this is going to be...the first presidential primary where some candidates will pay a price for being too pro-Israel, and that was never a thing before. That could potentially change politics if there is a price to be paid too far-Right as well as being too far-Left."

Even subconsciously, she associates being pro-Israel with the political right and being anti-Israel with the political Left, at an unabashedly anti-Right conference that claims to be "pro-Israel."

And yes, she actually implied that some Democratic candidates were so pro-Israel as to be considered "far Right."

(I have no idea what candidate she has in mind who could remotely be considered "too" pro-Israel to the extent that it would hurt him or her. I certainly haven't seen anyone in the Democratic presidential field who remotely qualifies as such.)

She did preface this by saying that most of the candidates were still sticking to the old "pro-Israel" playbook of supporting our only democratic ally in the Middle East, which (in my impression of what she means) sounded like everyone knows this is just something they have to say even if they don't believe it. I was honestly expecting her to finish that statement with "blah, blah, blah."

The entire video is filled with smug, "we know better than Israel" comments. Similarly, tossing around idiotic statements like the US and Israel are turning "fascist" is regarded as accepted wisdom. J-Streeters position themselves as messianic figures who are the only ones who see the truth and everyone else is simply too dense to recognize their brilliance.

The smugness inspired me to tweet this morning, "Telling Arabs how to act morally is condescending and colonialist. Telling Israelis how to act morally without bothering to ask their side of the story is woke."

The J-Street Conference also includes PLO speakers. Jeremy Ben Ami defended that, and I responded:

I read the PLO positions in the original Arabic. I know very well how they really think. If you think that what they say to a @jstreetdotorg conference is remotely accurate compared to how they speak in Arabic, you are a complete fool. And you are willing to push their lies.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 25, 2019

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"Pro-Israel" J-Street releases another poll with laughably biased questions

J-Street released a really unprofessional survey on Democratic voters' attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.

The questions are so biased as to be laughable.

For example:

People often talk about being pro-Israel. Do you think someone can be critical of Israeli
government policies and still be pro-Israel?
Total
Yes.........................................................................................81
No ..........................................................................................13
(Don't know/refused) ..............................................................5

I'm actually surprised at the 13%. Every thinking person, right or left, agrees that someone can be critical of Israeli policies and still pro-Israel. J-Street, of course, is critical of virtually every Israeli government policy. If they would have asked "Do you think someone can have thousands of anti-Israel tweets and not a single pro-Israel tweet, and still be pro-Israel?" then the answer would not have pleased them, because that is what J-Street is.

Similarly, J-Street worded this question not to illuminate but to pretend that their opinions are mainstream, asking whether voters would be more likely to choose "A candidate who says he or she strongly supports Israel, and the United States must stand behind all of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies." Who thinks that?

Here's another loaded question that proves that J-Street themselves have no idea why anyone should support Israel:

Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view, even if neither is exactly right.
1.The United States should act as a fair and impartial broker in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
2. The United States should side with Israel during peace negotiations because Israel is our democratic ally and needs our support against a world that isolates them.

Is that the only reason why Americans support Israel?

Why didn't J-Street try this statement?

The United States should side with Israel because Israel shares American liberal values, giving rights to minorities, women and LGBT who are oppressed in Arab countries. Israel has offered to live in peace with its Arab neighbors multiple times yet the Palestinians have rejected every single plan. An "even handed" approach rewards Palestinian intransigence.

How would liberals answer that one? After all, only one side has liberal values and has shown a real desire for peace - but J-Street will never point that out.

The fact is that J-Street knows that most respondents don't know squat about the Middle East so it phrases questions to lead the ignorant to the conclusions they want.

While 61% of the respondents said that they followed news about Israel "very" or "somewhat" closely, only 9% said that they were very familiar with what BDS was about. If you don't know what BDS is, you aren't following the news. Meaning that the vast majority of Democratic voters do not follow the Middle East closely at all, but they think they know what they are talking about.

J-Street uses this ignorance to create a poll that provides the answers they pre-determine within the questions themselves.

Professional pollster Steve Miller called this "shitty polling and incoherent questions."

In the annals of shitty polling and incoherent questions lies this slide https://t.co/pvYnJGrsoN
— Steve Miller (@SteveMiller202) October 22, 2019

Why did J-Street release this poll, taken in May, now? Because it wants to use the results to pretend that it is mainstream ahead of its conference next week. The poll is meant to do one thing only: to make J-Street look good.

Anyone who reports on the poll as if it actually reflects reality is ignorant or knowingly deceptive.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The peace loving fools

Last week I tweeted:

Hey, @jstreetdotorg and @peacenowisrael:

You claim, with great confidence, that if only there was a Palestinian state, then things would be much more peaceful in Israel..

What do you base that assumption on? What evidence is there are the result wouldn't be the opposite?
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) September 12, 2019

Peace Now responded:

2ss would save our democracy by avoiding undemocratic 1-state rule first and foremost. And a peace with deterrence would has worked in both cases where we made peace with Arab neighbors. There are different circumstances, but then there are more aggressive security measures.
— Peace Now (@peacenowisrael) September 12, 2019

I find it interesting that Peace Now does not choose to use "peace" as its primary reason for a two state solution, but an appeal to democracy - "first and foremost." Maybe it should change its name to Democracy Now - oh, wait, that's already taken.

Of course, Israeli leftists said that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and from Areas A and B would not hurt security either because Israel could use deterrence - but new Gaza wars every few years indicates that deterrence is not all it is cracked up to be.

Assuming "if Israel does X, then then Arabs will do Y" is a fallacy.

The other major difference between Palestinians and Egypt/Jordan is that those two countries do not have (serious) territorial claims on all of Israel but the Palestinians do. As I recently pointed out, most Palestinians want the conflict to keep going even after a "peace" agreement that still allows Israel to exist.

I responded to Peace Now, "So your vision of democracy is worth the potential deaths of thousands of people?"

It turns out that Dennis Prager described the Peace Now/J-Street mentality perfectly in his column last week:

The problem with communists and with leftists who don’t consider themselves communists is not that none of them mean well. It’s that they lack wisdom. There are wise and foolish liberals, wise and foolish conservatives; but all leftists are fools. Every one of the Democrats running for president is a fool. This is not, however, a description of their totality as a human being. Fools may be personally kind and generous, may be loyal friends and devoted spouses, and of course, they may be well-intentioned. But in terms of making the world worse, there is little difference between a well-meaning fool and an evil human being. Tens of millions of well-intentioned Westerners supported Stalin. The Westerners who supplied Stalin the secrets to the atom bomb were not motivated by evil. They were simply fools. But few evil people did as much to hurt the world as they did.

They are fools partly because they believe good intentions are all that matter. Therefore, they never ask perhaps the most important moral question one can ask: What will happen if my policy is enacted? Leftist supporters of communism never asked.
...
On every issue in which the left differs from conservatives (and often from liberals), they are fools. They push for a Palestinian state although even Israelis on the left know this would mean a Hamas-Hezbollah state on the Israeli border. But they know they mean well.

They want peace! How can that be bad? But it can be, because they do not think through the potential downsides of what they call "peace." They pretend that their desired outcome is the only possible outcome, and if they are wrong, oh well - there are no consequences to them personally.

This is why they are fools.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

J-Street brings a delegation of Democratic Congressional aides to visit the PLO, listen to lies and ignore open PLO hatred of Jews

You won't find these photos on J-Street's Twitter account, but the PLO is very proud to have met with a delegation of Congressional aides who visited under the auspices of J-Street.

Saeb Erekat told these aides that Israel is entirely at fault for there being no peace in the region and that the PLO desires a two-state solution.

On the same PLO page header, you can see its logo, which shows exactly how interested the PLO is in a two-state solution.

I doubt any of the delegation bothered asking about that.

Similarly, today, the website of the PLO's Department of Public Diplomacy and Policy includes explicitly antisemitic content. It features this description of Jews (archived here) in a page dedicated to the major Zionists that they blame for the "Naqba" with antisemitic Quranic allusions:

انهم علو في الارض يذبحون ابناءنا ويستحيون نسائنا وما كيد يهود الا في ضلال ،الاجرام صفتهم والقتل لغتهم وهدم البيوت عرفهم وقلع الاشجار عادتهم، شخصيات يهود تجسد الاجرام والعتو ،لكن في هذه البوابة سنعرفهم عن قرب.

They acted with arrogance on earth, slaughtering our sons and leaving our women alive, and the plotting of the Jews is just delusions. Crime is their quality/attribute, killing is their language, destroying homes is their custom, uprooting trees is their habit. Jewish personalities epitomize crime and arrogance, but in this web portal we will get to know them from up close.

Is this anomalous? Of course not. Official Palestinian TV, effectively run by the PLO, has dozens of examples of explicit antisemitism - often from PLO leaders themselves - every year.

The Fatah platform of 2009 remains in force, and it says that terrorism ("armed struggle") is their right, never abandoned and allowed, they claim, under international law. It also explicitly says it wants "preserve the refugee camps as a political witness" even on its own territory, a conscious decision to keep their own people miserable as political capital against Israel.

J-Street would never mention these facts. In fact, it would do everything it could to hide it.

J-Street pretends to be even-handed in these sorts of trips. They probably had the aides visit some dovish Israeli MKs. But their website, words and actions prove that they will bend over backwards to believe every lie the Palestinian leaders say and to be critical of every word the Israeli government says. There is nothing remotely balanced about them, and the congressional aides who attended these sessions weren't learning anything but curated anti-Israel propaganda.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

J Street doesn't love Israel. (Zvi)

From Zvi:

______________________________________

J Street doesn't love Israel. Neither does Jeremy.

It is important to understand the difference between the ends and the means.

J Street's tag line is, "the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans". In other words, J Street is intended to be a political magnet for a certain category of Americans: those who are "pro Israel pro peace". (The whole "pro Israel pro peace" thing is nonsense anyway. Nobody who supports Israel opposes peace; what they oppose is buying short-term peace by agreeing to commit suicide. The term "pro Israel pro peace" implies that pro-Israel Jews who don't support J Street are war-mongers, which is a blood libel of sorts. But let's skip that for now.)

For J Street, the highest priority is most definitely NOT a safe, strong Israel; strong, flourishing Jewish communities; or safe, flourishing Jews. None of J Street's words or activities encourage or support any of these goals.

For J Street, the highest priority is to support "progressive" Democratic Party candidates in the US. The MEANS by which they achieve this end involve appealing to "progressive" American Jews by referencing their hot-button issue of Israel in ways that J Street thinks will harness their support for "progressive" Democrats.

Unfortunately, J Street views Israel's politics as an extension of US politics. It views events in Israel exclusively through the lens of "progressive" American politics, forgetting that Israel is a distinct country with distinct dangers, a distinct culture, a distinct history, a distinct political system and a distinct future.

On Israel, J Street is the political home of people who are mentally trapped in the early 1990s, people who view the Ashkenazi Israeli left – which has been eviscerated by its own naïve failure to predict or address the murderous backstabbing of Arafat and his successors – as a kind of extension of the Democratic Party in the US. These are people who don't see any differences between the situation of African Americans in US culture and Ethiopian Jews in Israeli culture. They are people who don't see why Israelis should be allowed to have needs that are different from their own.

J Street and its supporters do not understand Israelis, their culture or their concerns. They do not bother to try to understand these things, because what Israelis want, what Israelis have learned through personal experience, and what Israelis find dubious or ridiculous are simply not important to J Street and its supporters. It's all very patronizing.

J Street has treated successive Israeli governments and politicians like political opponents rather than legitimate friends and allies of world Jewry and of the United States. J Street views all non-leftist Israeli parties – and thus much of the Israeli mainstream – as "far-right" extensions of the US's Republican Party. J Street is not interested in listening to the majority of Israelis because it is not interested in listening to its political opponents. It views them as foils that it can attack in order to rally the troops at home to its real cause, which is the election of "progressive" candidates.

J Street has become so trapped by this mindset that it aligns itself with people who oppose Israel's right to exist and harbor deeply antisemitic sentiments; it continues to oppose efforts to fight BDS effectively, or to prevent other attacks on Israel and on Jews around the world.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

J. Lo vs. J-Street

Last week Jennifer Lopez and her fiancee Alex Rodriguez visited Israel last week and seemed to have a fantastic time.

Although she only tweeted about her visit a couple of times and he added a few more, it occurred to me that they had far more pro-Israel tweets in one week than the purportedly "pro-Israel" J-Street has had in eleven years on Twitter.

Amazing energy in Tel Aviv last night!! Over 50,000 strong!!! I love you so much 🌟🌟🌟🌟💕💕💕💕 The party continues... #ItsMyPartyTour pic.twitter.com/oRe21nHHI9
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) August 2, 2019

Mediterranean 🌊 pic.twitter.com/HbTHV9Bh1B
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) August 3, 2019

So excited to be in Israel for the first time for @JLo’s show!

How many of you living here are big baseball fans? What would you like to see @mlb do more of? Let me know!!
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 31, 2019

What an amazing time we are having on my first trip to Tel Aviv! The people have been wonderful and have such energy. I will definitely be back and recommend visiting this incredible country! ❤️

How many of you have been here and how was your experience? pic.twitter.com/tlKeB4In9X
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) July 31, 2019

This beats NYC traffic any day. #israel #scooter #mynewride pic.twitter.com/038hMzIiOv
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) August 1, 2019

Jerusalem, you are unforgettable. What a perfect finale to our first trip to this beautiful land. pic.twitter.com/XSqbdv2JIE
— Alex Rodriguez (@AROD) August 2, 2019

In contrast, I just searched through all of J-Street's tweets that mention "love" or "beautiful." Not one is aimed at Israel without qualification (there are many that claim that people who love Israel criticize it, not one that just says how much they love Israel itself or that Israel is beautiful.)

So J. Lo and AROD have shut-out J-Street and Jeremy Ben Ami in terms of who really loves Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

"Pro-peace" J-Street remains silent on Israel's closer ties with the Arab world

For a purportedly "pro-peace" organization, J-Street has been quite silent on actual progress towards peace between Israel and the Arab world.

Since Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz met the foreign minister of Bahrain in public on Friday, J-Street has been silent.

When Katz visited Abu Dhabi and met with at least one senior UAE official, J-Street was silent.

This has been a consistent pattern with J-Street. No matter what the diplomatic achievements of Israel in the Middle East and Africa and with majority Muslim nations worldwide, J-Street cannot find a nice thing to say.

When Netanyahu sat down with foreign ministers from United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain in Warsaw, and even when he flew to Oman to meet the Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, J-Street had nothing to say - except a link to a Foreign Policy article complaining about how the Arab world was abandoning the Palestinians.

Benjamin Netanyahu has made more progress for peace between Israel and the Arab world than Rabin, more than Begin, more than Peres, more than any other Israeli leader. Even the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan never resulted in smiling photo-ops between Arab and Israeli leaders of the type we have seen so many of in recent months.

J-Street claims to be pro-Israel - even though it cannot say a good word about Israel in any tweets or articles.

Its claim to be pro-peace are just as specious.

But it is definitely telling the truth when it says it is pro-Palestinian.

One out of three ain't bad, is it?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

What you need to know about J-Street's "Birthright" style trip (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The Birthright program is often in the news, mainly because of the tremendous work it does to strengthen the Jewish sense of identity of young Jews by creating the opportunity for them to visit Israel for free.

The Birthright trips have expanded over the years and now you can choose your own theme/itinerary:

o Active: Dive-in to the ultimate outdoor adventure and get ready to hike, bike, and climb your way through Israel
o Professional: Delve deeper into your professional industry by experiencing the best of Israel through an occupational lens
o Culinary: Savor the flavor of Mediterranean cuisine and develop your palate and culinary skills alongside some of Israel's finest chefs
o Spiritual: Embark on a meaningful quest through mystical Israel. Connect with the land, the people and yourself
o Cultural: Get lost in Israel's thriving city centers and explore music, theatre and award-winning film
o LGBTQ: Join like-minded peers on a curated tour of Israel's thriving LGBTQ culture
Study Abroad: Make the country your classroom and travel Israel for 12-14 days. You will experience all the best parts of our Classic trip and master a topic of your choosing earning 3 credits in the process

The goal of Birthright is

Birthright Israel seeks to ensure the future of the Jewish people by strengthening Jewish identity, Jewish communities, and connection with Israel via a trip to Israel for the majority of Jewish young adults from around the world.

Our hope is that our trips motivate young people to continue to explore their Jewish identity and support for Israel and maintain long-lasting connections with the Israelis they meet on their trip. We encourage our alumni to take active roles in Jewish organizations and to participate in follow-up activities worldwide.

But Birthright also gets into the news because of the attempt by left-wing groups to politicize what the program does. These groups offer suggestions -- if not outright demands -- that the Birthright 10-day program includes a 'balanced' introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

J Street is among those left-wing Jewish groups, under J Street U, that want to tinker with the program

The J Street U campaign emphasizes that it is important for American Jewish students to be well-informed and to receive a full and nuanced picture of the challenges facing Israel today, including the threat that the occupation presents to its long-term future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people. The petitions warn against the damaging consequences of excluding and omitting Palestinian voices and narratives from the conversation.

So now J Street has started its own alternative to Birthright trips.

Why is this a concern?

Because of J Street's controversial agenda to use the US to impose its politics on Israel.

As J Street puts it:

Israel’s supporters have the right and the obligation to speak out when the policies or the actions of the Israeli government are hurting the long-term interests of Israel and the Jewish people.

J Street presents itself as a more liberal alternative to AIPAC. But it is more than that. Unlike AIPAC, which advocates for Israeli policy independent of politics and who leads the Israeli government, J Street actively pushes its own agenda in the US in order to influence the policy in Israel. For example, unlike AIPAC, J Street actively involves itself in US elections and supports only Democratic candidates. Considering how Democratic candidates are moving the left and are less supportive of Israel, that is a major concern that needs to be addressed.

As the J StreetPAC site puts it on their About Us page:

While J Street notes the overwhelming Jewish support for the Democratic party, that does not explain J Street support for anti-Israel Democrats.

o On its website, J Street supports Representative Mark Pocan, who in 2017 anonymously reserved official Capitol Hill space for an anti-Israel forum organized by pro-BDS groups.
o  J Street supports Representative Hank Johnson, who referred to Israelis living in Judea and Samaria as 'termites'.
o  J Street also supports Dan Kildee, who along with Pocan and Johnson met with Shawan Jabarin, a member of the terrorist group PFLP.
o  Just last year, J Street endorsed Rashida Tlaib, despite her support for Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh and criticism of Kamala Harris for discussing cooperation between California and Israel on water management, agriculture, and cyber security. J Street did eventually withdraw its support for Tlaib -- but only because Tlaib withdrew her support for a two-state solution.
o  All this is consistent with past J Street activities, such as actively supporting the biased Goldstone Report, working for the Iran deal alongside the pro-Iranian group NIAC and bringing "Breaking the Silence" to speak at Princeton in 2017 during Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut.

While J Street U has put together its own "Birthright trip, this is not the first time J Street has tried this.

The blog Mystical Politics has a copy of the original press release from J-Street posted by J Street U director Daniel May on January 25, 2011, announcing a trip in conjunction with Birthright. (The press release has been removed from the J Street site):

J Street U is very happy to announce that we will be leading a free, ten-day Taglit-Birthright trip this summer titled, "Explore Israel: Progressive Zionism and Social Justice."

This trip is an incredible opportunity to connect with the Israel that isn't on the front page or in the guide books. Move beyond the headlines, and see what's really happening on the ground.

If you're Jewish, age 18 - 25, and have yet to take a peer group trip to Israel, we strongly encourage you to sign up and be the first to know when registration opens.

The trip is a chance to appreciate the vibrancy of Israel's history, culture and landscape from a perspective that acknowledges your Jewish and progressive values.

The best way to discover the richness of Israeli society and the full contours of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to travel around Israel and meet people from the diverse groups of the region. There is simply no substitute for seeing the land and connecting with the people.

On the trip, we'll speak with members of Israeli civil society working to advance the goals of democracy and human rights. Our itinerary will provide a cross-section of Israeli opinion.

This trip is a gift of Taglit-Birthright Israel and will be provided by The Israel Experience, Ltd. [emphasis added]

The intended focus of the trip was political -- from a 'progressive' perspective, focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and meeting representatives of human rights groups -- as opposed to Jewish identity and connection to Israel. That was, and is, their prerogative. However, the description does not seem like it would mesh with the Birthright goals of identity and connection

And mesh it didn't.

The blog FresnoZionism sounded the alarm: Action alert: Don’t let J Street exploit Birthright:

In other words, the phony ‘pro-Israel’ organization J Street, a group that takes money from people associated with Saudi Arabia, the Arab-American institute, Iranian interests, anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, a mysterious woman associated with the guy who beat the Hong Kong horse-racing track, and the Turkish producer of anti-Israel propaganda films; whose co-founder [Daniel Levy] called the creation of Israel ‘an act that was wrong’; and which facilitated meetings between members of Congress and Judge Richard Goldstone, author of the notorious Goldstone report that accused Israel of deliberately murdering civilians in the Gaza war — this organization has the chutzpah to use funds provided by Taglit-Birthright to sabotage its purpose!

He contacted Birthright and encouraged others to as well, and in the end, the Birthright trip was canceled.

Moriel Rothman, President of the J Street U student board, issued a statement which read in part:

J Street U had planned our trip in order to forge an avenue through which liberal-minded college students – who may otherwise not engage – could develop a deep and lasting relationship with the Jewish homeland. The trip was to include the traditional highlights of a Taglit-Birthright experience – visits to Masada, the Kotel, and Yad Va’Shem – as well as opportunities for students to engage with Israeli human rights advocates, journalists, and politicians involved in the struggle to preserve the democratic future of the Jewish homeland.

...Despite their initial approval for a trip that would provide just such an experience, Birthright’s leadership has now decided that it is inappropriate for JStreetU to organize a trip because we are politically oriented. Nonetheless, comparable organizations with different politics than ours participate and help organize trips every year. For instance, AIPAC’s “Capital to Capital” Birthright trip is designed for Jewish political activists who are “significantly involved in the American political process.” Given that other such trips are regularly offered, we were surprised and saddened that our trip was suddenly deemed inappropriate. [emphasis added]

Again, there are politics and there are politics. FresnoZionism in the same post makes reference to the politics of Moriel Rothman:

What is J Street U? Its National Board President U is a Middlebury College student named Moriel Rothman. Here is how he explains the controversy around the Sheik Jarrah / Shimon haTzadik neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Pay attention not only to his words, but his tone:

…the Jerusalem municipality has been bending to the will of fanatic Jewish settlers, and producing - based on archaic documents from the Ottoman period and manufactured Israeli law - eviction notices to a number of Palestinian families, and in some cases - such as with three families in Sheikh Jarrah- acting on those eviction notices by force and removing those Palestinian families from their homes. The municipality’s actions are hugely problematic from a moral standpoint: not only are Jews buying up and/or stealing Arab land in East Jerusalem, but Arabs are moreover unable to buy land in the primarily Jewish West Jerusalem… These policies are also hugely problematic from the standpoint of peace, as East Jerusalem must be the capital of the future Palestinian state, and the Clinton Parameters, which state that Palestine will get control of Arab neighborhoods and Israel will control Jewish neighborhoods, are made harder and harder to implement with each infiltration of Jewish settlers into Arab neighborhoods like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah. [emphasis in the original]

This is the example set by a head of J Street U at the time.

In the end, it appeared that the provider J Street U was working with, Israel Experience, did not clear the arrangement with Birthright in advance.

J Street U's statement gave a hint of things to come:

J Street U students are petitioning Birthright CEO Gidi Mark to “provide more Birthright trips that speak to the values of social justice, democracy, and peace that are so important to young, progressive Jews. [emphasis added]

An article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time explained the Birthright position on politically oriented trips and why trips coordinated with AIPAC are different from what J Street proposed:

“We said such a trip, as described in a brief conversation with the Israel Experience, would likely be out of keeping with our longstanding policy of not conducting trips with a political orientation,” Birthright said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Birthright subsequently confirmed that the policy was adopted in 2009, when the organization decided not to partner any longer with groups that are “overtly political.”

Prior to 2009, Birthright trips were run in conjunction with the Zionist Organization of America and the Union for Progressive Zionists, the precursor to J Street U.

Birthright continues to partner with AIPAC, though references to the pro-Israel lobby group were scrubbed recently from the website of the Israel Experience. Birthright said AIPAC did not fall under the 2009 policy change because the organization does not generally seek to influence Israeli policy. [emphasis added]

Birthright further explained the

For years, we have run a Capital-to-Capital trip through another trip provider, which focuses on the Israeli political system. The provider has been running this trip, with input from AIPAC, a mainstream Israel advocacy group, long before JStreet was established. It focuses on Israel’s political structure, with an approach similar to a political science class; the trip has never been tilted to one side of the political spectrum. [emphasis added]

In the end, J Street went on the trip on their own.

How did it go?

In a J-Street U mailing no longer online, Daniel May, Director, J Street U, wrote on June 21, 201:1

I can tell that these two weeks are making a life-long impact on the participants. And amidst the painful stories of this conflict, that fact is giving me tremendous hope. But I don't want you to hear it from me. I want you to hear it directly from the students...

Simone Zimmerman, Berkeley ‘13 – Read her whole post here.

As aspiring peacebuilders, we have already been given so much to challenge us, and we have barely chipped the surface. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility already, and a tremendous amount of privilege for being able to participate in this journey with J Street U. I’ve been to Israel many times in many different capacities, but this is my first trip where I am finding that I can, without contradiction, bring together my deep love for this country with my deep commitment to exploring the toughest challenges facing Israel today. [emphasis added]

Here is a picture of Simone Zimmerman from during the J Street U trip

From J Street U Facebook Page

Zimmerman has since made a name for herself in expressing that "deep love" and "commitment":

Bernie Sanders staffer fired for anti-Netanyahu rant hired to run B’Tselem USA

After Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, was hired by the Sanders campaign, it was discovered she previously wrote on Facebook, “Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.

She continued: “F— you, Bibi, for daring to insist that you legitimately represent even a fraction of the Jews in this world, for your consistent fear-mongering, for pushing Israel in word and deed, farther and farther away from the international community, and most importantly, for trying to derail a potentially historic diplomatic deal with Iran and thus trying to distract the world from the fact that you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.”

She edited the post on March 3, 2015, changing “asshole” to “politician” and the second expletive to “shame on you.” She was dismissed by the Sanders campaign after being its Jewish outreach coordinator for only two days.

Simone Zimmerman. Screengrab from Haaretz video on YouTube

Considering the example of J Street's past activities against Israel, the attitude demonstrated in the past by J Street U leaders like Moriel Rothman and the activities of the products of J Street U leadership such as Simone Zimmerman -- who is one of the founders of the virulently anti-Israel If Not Now -- suspicions of J Street "Birthright-style" trips are natural.

According to the itinerary of the current 9-day J Street trip:

Day 6: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Occupation 101
Morning: Settlement Tour and Palestinian Village
Afternoon: Hebron
Evening: Group conversation
Overnight: Jerusalem

Day 7: Israel and Palestinian Perspectives Over the Green Line
Morning: Ramallah–Palestinian self-rule under occupation.
Afternoon: Conversation with Settlers
Evening: Israeli and Palestinian Peace Activists
Overnight: Ein Gedi

There is nothing wrong with criticism of Israel.

The issue is not criticism but rather J Street's record of undercutting Israel and its subversion of support for it.

o  We see it reflected in J Street statements
o  We see it reflected in J Street's actions.
o  We see it reflected in J Street's support for anti-Israel Democratic candidates
o We see it reflected in J Street 'graduates'

J Street is a special interest group with its own agenda.

It is a political agenda that contrasts with AIPAC, just as its politicized idea of an Israel trip contrasts with Birthright trips that encourage Jewish identity and connection with Israel.

Neither AIPAC nor Birthright have a particular agenda that it imposes or politics it is trying to push onto others.

The same is not true of J Street.
The goal of its trip is just one more way for J Street to push its agenda.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

To counter Bahrain economic conference, J-Street chooses a BDS supporter

Next week, J-Street will hold an online event to counter the Bahrain economic conference for helping Palestinians, featuring Palestinian/American businessman Sam Bahour to describe why Kushner's vision for economic prosperity for Palestinians is wrong and his is correct:

This Tuesday, as the Kushner workshop gets underway in Bahrain, Palestinian-American businessman and economic advocate Sam Bahour will join J Street members for an online briefing, directly from the West Bank. He’ll speak about his analysis of the Bahrain workshop and Trump administration policy, the barriers to business thrown up by the occupation and how the US can more constructively engage with the Palestinian economy to help lay the groundwork for peace.

J-Street claims that it is "pro-Israel, pro-peace." It claims that it is against BDS.

But when it wants to create counterprogramming to an American initiative to discuss helping Palestinians economically, it turns to a BDS supporter.

Meaning that Bahour is not going to present any ideas where Israel and Palestinians cooperate on peace or economic prosperity. He can't - he wants Palestinians to boycott Israel. And like all BDS leaders, whether he says it out loud or not, his endgame is to destroy Israel.

This is who J-Street wants to cozy up to.

In any conceivable peace plan or two state plan, Palestinians will have to cooperate with Israel economically. J-Street is against that.

Clearly, J-Street is not as against BDS as they claim to be.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

J Street uncovers a secret about Netanyahu and Trump (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I think my interest in J Street could once have been called “obsessive.” I wrote numerous blog posts a few years ago, pointing out that the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization received financing from George Soros, mysterious billionaires in Hong Kong, and people associated with Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab-American Institute. I noted – along with then Ambassador Michael Oren – that it consistently (one could say always) took positions opposed to almost any reasonable interpretation of Israel’s interests. I objected to its guiding principle, which seemed to be that it knew what was good for Israel far better than Israelis did, especially since following its recommendations would negatively impact Israel’s security. I wondered at the close coordination between J Street and the Obama Administration, which tried to anoint it as the voice of American Jewry toward Israel. And more.

Since I moved back to Israel in 2014, I’ve been less concerned with J Street, which is, after all, an American phenomenon. We have plenty of “interesting” politics right here. But recently I became aware of a new J Street initiative, targeting PM Netanyahu, just before the election:

WASHINGTON, DC — The pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street launched a new series of videos today highlighting the dangerously similar rhetoric and ideology shared by President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. Released as targeted digital ads just a week before the two leaders are expected to meet in Washington, DC on the sidelines of the AIPAC conference, the videos urge pro-Israel Americans who are opposed to Trump to also speak out against Netanyahu’s similar bigotry and anti-democratic tendencies.

“By attacking democratic institutions and targeting vulnerable minorities, Trump and Netanyahu are borrowing from the same far-right playbook — undermining the core values and interests of both the US and Israel,” said J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Patriotic Americans have mobilized impressively against Trump here at home. Those of us who care about Israel’s future need to speak out against Netanyahu’s destructive leadership as well.”

Over the past two years, both the president and the prime minister have incited against vulnerable minorities, attacked the free press and de-legitimized the judiciary and the rule of law. Both face serious investigations into alleged criminal conduct. …

There’s no doubt that liberal and progressive American Jews hate Trump passionately, and there’s no better way to attack Netanyahu among that group than by associating him with their bête noire. The first J Street video is here. It’s very professional and probably didn’t come cheap. The question is, why did J Street spend a considerable sum of money on such a campaign? Americans don’t vote in Israeli elections (although J Street probably wishes they did). Why attack Netanyahu in the USA?

It’s not a simple question and I don’t have a simple answer. Unfortunately, the position papers of J Street’s psychological warfare experts aren’t public. But I have some ideas.

J Street’s primary goal, like that of the numerous other anti-Israel organizations in the US, including the nominally “Jewish” If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as explicitly antisemitic ones like If America Knew, is to create antipathy and distrust for Israel, so that Americans will oppose pro-Israel actions by the US government – for example, the recognition of Israel’s possession of the Golan Heights that is rumored to be on the table now.

In the event of war, they want to prime Americans to believe Palestinian atrocity propaganda against Israel, to make it more difficult for a pro-Israel administration to support Israel, or easier for an anti-Israel one to criticize her or even cut off critical supplies – as Obama did during the 2014 Gaza war.

How does attacking PM Netanyahu accomplish this? The answer has several parts.

First, J Street presents Netanyahu as anti-democratic and dictatorial, as if he is entirely responsible for Israeli policy; so it becomes possible for an American Jew who still feels some loyalty to Israel to separate the country from its Prime Minister, and blame him for supposedly anti-democratic or racist policies, without being forced to make the jump to disliking Israel the nation.

Second, and conversely, Netanyahu has been PM since 2009 and – at least as of today – it is likely that he will receive yet another term. He is Israel in the minds of many Americans, just as Stalin was the Soviet Union and Hitler the Nazi regime. An attack on Netanyahu as racist and anti-minority, and in other ways that particularly resonate in America, also creates negative perceptions of the state of Israel herself.

Third, attitudes in America, as expressed in the media, do have some influence on Israeli elections. There is no doubt that the forces behind J Street would like to see Netanyahu defeated in the coming election. Netanyahu’s political opponents can point to anti-Netanyahu expressions in the US and say, “look, Netanyahu has wrecked our relationship with the US.” J Street’s theme that Netanyahu and Trump are both corrupt, anti-democratic racists will find a fertile field in the progressive media such as NPR and the NY Times that are favored by J Street’s constituency. Because the campaign bashes both Trump and Netanyahu, it will certainly be amplified in those media, which are always ready to take a swipe at Trump.

Fourth, closely associating Trump with Netanyahu minimizes the significance of Trump’s pro-Israel actions like moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funds to the Palestinian Authority, downgrading the East Jerusalem consulate, and – I devoutly hope – recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

J Street’s attack on both Trump and Netanyahu is couched in the universalist, anti-nationalistic (and therefore anti-Zionist) language that finds favor with the progressive Left:

The politics of these two leaders is part of a broader global challenge to liberal democracies rooted in respect for civil society and tolerance of ethnic diversity. Now, the world faces a wave of rising right-wing ethnonationalism with anti-democratic tendencies.

The xenophobia and authoritarianism that the two leaders are fanning is anathema to millions of Americans and American Jews. “While Netanyahu, Trump and their allies may get standing ovations at AIPAC, their views and actions couldn’t be more out of touch with most of the American Jewish community,” Ben-Ami said.

This exposes the true agenda behind J Street, which is actually only one piece of a much larger enterprise opposing nationalism and ethnic particularism, favoring open borders and multiculturalism, and proudly trumpeting extreme cultural relativism. If you think that agenda is a positive one for civilization, look at the ongoing destruction of native European societies like Sweden, for example.

Netanyahu – and Israel, an ethnic nation-state – represent the precise opposite of the agenda, and as such have drawn down upon themselves the wrath of J Street and other such groups, which tendentiously accuse them of being “undemocratic,” “authoritarian,” “racist,” and more. But in fact the “ethnonationalism” that J Street so decries stands opposed to a non-ethnic but much more vicious Islamofascism, which is far less democratic, more authoritarian, and viciously bigoted along religious lines.

The “global challenge to liberal democracies” does not come from nationalism, either in Israel or Eastern Europe, or from Americans who support Trump. It comes from Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood, and so on. Netanyahu has a sense of history, and understands all this. And I think that Trump, for all his flaws, does too.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.