Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: J Street

Showing posts with label J Street. Show all posts

Monday, March 30, 2015

The silence of Jeremy Ben Ami

J-Street never tires of claiming to be supportive of a two-state solution, a position that it falsely claims is not the position of American Zionist organizations.

On Friday, I posted a video showing that a speaker at the recent J-Street conference, during a panel discussion on the future of liberal Zionism, advocated for the ending of the Jewish state and instead saying that Jews should be a "protected minority" in their homeland.

The speaker, former MK Marcia Freedman, is a member of J-Street's advisory panel.

The moderator of the panel, J Street co-founder Daniel Levy, did not challenge Freedman for advocating what is in complete opposition to what J-Street claims its position is. None of the other panelists showed any anger at the idea of the destruction of Israel that Freedman was pushing.

Since then, over 12,000 people have viewed the video - far more people than attended the conference itself. Despite repeated tweets to J-Street leaders or other panelists like Peter Beinart, not one has distanced themselves from Freedman's statements. (J-Street's synopsis of the panel skips Freedman's participation altogether.)

For every statement made by real Zionists to defend Israel - whether it is from terror or Iran - J-Street has forcefully come out in opposition. But J-Street's media machine does not seem to spend any time defending Israel's existence from attacks by people like Freedman or groups like "Jewish Voice for Peace."

Why not?

Perhaps it is because J-Street's commitment to Israel's existence is far more tenuous than they pretend when they do their fundraising and lobbying. After all, this same Daniel Levy who moderated the panel is on the record as saying that if Arab states refuse to accept Israel, "then Israel really ain't a very good idea." Which sounds a lot like Marcia Freedman.

J-Street complains loudly that it is not being accepted by mainstream Jewish and Zionist organizations. This episode is one good example of why that is. J-Street, despite claiming to be pro-Israel, has yet to defend Israel's position against those that want to see it destroyed - even within its own conference. I have shown that founder Jeremy Ben-Ami's Twitter timeline has not once defended Israel's existence against attacks from its left.

Which means that its "pro-Israel" stance is really a cover for its truly anti-Israel message.

Over the past couple of months, we've heard more praise of Israel from the EU than from J-Street. That ought to tell you something.

J-Street speaker calls for destruction of Israel - to applause (update)

Here is Marcia Freedman, in a J-Street panel discussion on Liberal Zionism and sitting next to Peter Beinart, describing how she believes that the Jewish people should not have a state, and that instead they should live as a minority in an Arab Palestine as a "protected minority" - in other words, as dhimmis. I kept all the context (although I accidentally cut out the applause at the end:)

The entire session is here; her section begins at 1:02:45.

The moderator didn't challenge her, and as far as I could tell neither did any other panelists.

Isn't it interesting that at a conference that claims to be "pro-Israel, pro-peace" and that hammers away at how it wants a two state solution, there is no objection to this one-state solution where Jews are "protected" by people who want to kill them?

J-Street refuses to let Alan Dershowitz, an advocate of a two-state solution since the 1970s, speak. But this crazy lady who thinks that Israel treats Arab citizens worse than Arabs would treat Jews is given a platform, without a single dissenting voice that I could find, either at the session or on Twitter afterwards, from J-Street members or attendees..

In fact, J-Street U tweeted her remarks seemingly admiringly:

Marcia Freedman believes that the idea that a jewish homeland requires a Jewish majority needs to be examined more closely. #JSt2015
— J Street U Carleton (@CarlJStreetU) March 22, 2015

I am reminded of a series of tweets a few days ago by a BDS supporter and anti-Zionist who said that J-Street was her "gateway drug" to hating Israel:

J-Street has an open tent policy for people who want Israel to disappear, and spends most of its time attacking Jews who passionately love Israel.

Worse than that is that despite its avowed purpose, the organization cannot and does not defend Israel's existence against its critics - instead, it gives its critics a platform where they can spout their hate unopposed.

My test for whether people are really "pro-Israel" stands, and J-Street has flunked.

This is not exactly pro-Israel, or pro-peace.

UPDATE: Freedman's opinions are not anathema to J-Street, despite that organization's press releases. She is a member of their advisory council! (h/t nursemedic)

Walking down J-Street (part 4)

The final report from Messy57 ((parts 1, 2, 3)

On the last day of the conference, I started out with a panel on “What’s Next for the Palestinians Leadership?” Which sounded like a very interesting one, especially since I really didn’t know very much about it. Who is running the Palestinian Authority besides Abbas, and what are they going to do when the old man dies?

The answer was clear as mud. The didn’t really talk about who the major politicians or factions were, but they did mention that there were free local elections in ’12, (so much for Palestinians not being able to vote) except for, naturally, Gaza, and that the “Palestinian State” that was sitting in the UN General Assembly was NOT the Palestinian Authority, but the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
These are important facts that aren’t known to many people. There is also a move afoot by some groups to permit political parties to exist. That would be nice. But they didn’t really say much beyond that. I should have gone to the “Rise of anti-Semitism in Europe” panel.

But the really big show was the morning plenum, and that was the one where Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, would be giving a major speech. Everyone wanted to see that, as did I, and I was thrilled to hear they were letting the press early….only to discover that they gave us seats in the back and the side with a lousy view of the preceedings….

The opening speaker (not counting the introduction by some committee member) was Stav Shaffir, who is still the youngest member of the Knesset and the most popular member of the Zionist Union. She repeated her CV, how she spent a couple of terms in the Army, then tried to find a decent job while living in a crappy Tel Aviv apartment and starting what was the equivalent of the “Occupy Movement” in 2011 before becoming a professional politician in ’13. She then went on saying that Israel was a great country and would be far better if Bibi was no longer there. The youth in the audience loved her, as did I. (we had had a conversation the previous day)

Then…something happened that shocked the living daylights out of me.

They announced that there would be a televised message from the President of Israel. I hadn’t expected that. Considering that Reuven Rivlin is a dyed-in-the-wool Likudnik, and considering how J-street and Likud aren’t exactly lovey-dovey with each other, I hadn’t even considered he would do that. But there he was on the big screen (which I could see), giving a platitudinous greeting and wishing everyone in the audience well. A majority was enthusiastic, but some weren’t, I wasn’t surprised more weren’t.

Then came Denis McDonough, the second most powerful person in Washington. “…an occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end!” Mr. McDonough thundered, “Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,”

That got a standing ovation. It was easy to see why.

It was something EVERYONE can agree with. Not even Bennett thinks the present state of affairs is something that most Israelis want to maintain indefinitely. Everyone at the conference was unified on the basic concept of the Two-state solution, but nobody agreed on the details.

The panel discussion afterwards led by Ethan Bronner wasn’t at all edifying, although someone mentioned Abbas’ threat to dissolve the PA because they’re running out of money. That was it.

There was going to be a gala, the press was told they would be provided pizza and seats in the back for James Baker’s speech, but that meant I’d miss my flight.

I almost did, but that’s another story….

Walking down J-Street (part 3)

Another report from Messy57 (parts 1, 2)

"One thing you must understand is that when you support the BDS movement, you actually are helping Netanyahu, because Netanyahu is playing on that fear, that almost every Israeli Jewish citizen is feeling, that there is a possibility that the world will just turn against us,"— Stav Shaffir, ZU member of the Knesset.

That was a primary theme of the J-Street convention. I heard this over and over again. The vast majority of the attendees weren’t anti-Israel, they were anti-Bibi, and that was the general consensus: Israel good, Bibi bad. Another consensus was the necessity of a two state solution. What wasn’t agreed to is what shape of the borders for the two (three?) states are going to be.

The first session I attended the first morning was on “Israel as a neighbor”, which was presented by the New Israel fund. The speakers all were in favor of land swaps to keep most of the settlements intact. , it was the same with the main “plenary session”, called “The Choices Ahead, ” which had seven members of the Knesset (by my count, nearly a fifth of the entire Israeli parliamentary opposition was there) talking, and they all were very “hawkish” on security and lamented they didn’t get that message across.

Nobody was in favor of the green line as a permanent border. Not even the Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who specifically stated that Israel needed secure borders. However, no speaker that I heard, and I missed quite a few panels so I can’t be certain about this, came out in favor of the Hamas plan or going back to Folk Bernadotte’s “1935 borders.”

What everyone did come out against a ONE state solution that the Arabs and the BDS crowd (and Bennett) are in favor of. Nobody came out in favor of a binational state of Palestine from the river to the sea (although Noam Sheizaf, the guy from +972, came close.)

The panels that I was most interested were the Arab-centric ones. The panel entitled “Gaza: The Human and Political Costs of Deprivation and Disunity” is a case in point. Yes, the situation in Gaza is horrific, and yes, most of the people on the panel blamed Israel (Howard Sulka, who ran an NGO there, gave the case why HAMAS started the last war but came to the conclusion that “we can’t be sure”), but nobody had a nice word to say about Hamas’ government of the area. Even Maha Mehanna, who is Gazan and has to go back, didn’t say anything good about them (She explained that Hamas was elected because the Fatah regime was so corrupt).

However, they did explain how they had to go through diplomatic hoops because Hamas is a terrorist organization that may not be talked to. The holes in the narrative were amazing to behold.

I attended the Iran panel, which was both fascinating and unedifying to the mx, before going to the next plenum: “Does Liberal Zionism Have a Future?”

This is an excellent question, DOES IT?

The panel, led by Peter Beinart, wasn’t very optimistic, and they rightly blamed Netanyahu, Leiberman and Bennet. Which brings everyone back to which two-state solution is the best one? That particular question wasn’t actually addressed, what WAS, was the status quo, which everyone considers untenable.

The villains were fingered as not just Bibi, Bennett et al, but the Republicans as well, who are working to alienate Liberals/Progressives from the entire Zionist project and declare the 69 percent of the Jewish vote that voted for Obama “self-hating Jews” and guilty of treason. Some of the issues were clearly articulated but not all.

A walk down J-Street, part 2

Messy57 is continuing his report from the J-Street Conference.

With dozens of panels to choose from, it was difficult to choose which ones to go to, and as with a lot of these things, there were scheduling conflicts galore. So I decided to go to the major ones (and those I could find). But first, I needed a cup of coffee…

There was a buffet with bagels and cream cheese. Grabbing some of that and a cup, I went down to the lobby where they had the “huckster room” as these areas are generally known, and looked at the booths set up by various groups.

What I found was mostly innocuous, but what really piqued my interest were all the maps….

Now I love maps, I’ve got a huge collection and there in front of me was a gold mine. Most countries have at least two sets, one for the tourists and international community and one for the nationalists and internal use. Such is the case with Israel.

From Jewschool

J Street itself was giving out maps. These were big and were relatively detailed and had the green line easily visible in, what else?, green. Now Israeli maps don’t show the green line. While most showed the Gaza strip and some showed “Areas A and B”, not a single one shows the Green line. J Street was giving these out to be posted in synagogues and Hillels and the like because it’s important to understanding what the situation is. Maps are good for things like that.

Other groups were also giving out maps. For example The New Israel fund had one showing all it’s current projects, such as promoting healthcare for the poor and the rights of Reform and Conservative Rabbis, fighting growing inequality between rich and poor in the land of the Kibbutz and the like, and the most interesting was their blurb supporting “the women of the wall” movement. I say it’s strange because they show the Old City in Israel and don’t mention, as the BDS movement (which NIF claims to be very much against) likes to, that the Kotel is in “illegally occupied Palestinian territory”.

(On a side note, when I asked them about their participation in the lawsuit against the PLO, they said the their witness for the terrorists, Michael Sfard, was actually a ringer who’s testimony deliberately helped the plaintiff.)

“Americans for Peace Now” has a slick, two-sided map with “East Jerusalem“ on one side and the West Bank on the other, which shows the where all the “settlements” are. It also shows the Barrier wall. The Jerusalem side attacks “Ideological tourism projects” that threaten to transform the conflict into a religious conflict where no compromise is possible” I thought that was pretty funny.

The best of the bunch (on a technical level at least) was B’Tselem’s. It was detailed and easily color-coded. You can see the facts on the ground much better than on the other maps. They weren’t there,

Only the “Open Hillel” table seemed to be genuinely pro-BDS. The guy was really defensive. So was one fellow who said that Hamas was merely elected to the “municipal administration” of the district and wasn’t really the government. (You can’t really argue with these people without being tempted to punch them in the face).

The “Kumbaya” people were promoting neighborliness and understanding between Jewish and Muslim Israelis for the most part and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. However they generally make excuses for the Palestinians, such as Bikom, which does some amazing maps, who tried to explain why the Arab Jerusalemites, who can vote, don’t (they don’t want to look like they accept Israeli sovereignty).

After filling up my knapsack with give-aways and my face with food and coffee, I went to listen to the speeches….

Walking down J-Street, part 1 (guest post)

EoZ reader Messy57 is at the J-Street conference in Washington. Here is his report from Saturday night:

I got an email a couple of weeks back informing me that the J Street “Progressive Zionist” organization, sort of like AIPAC’s evil twin (or good, depending on how you view things) was having it’s annual jamboree at the Walter Washington convention center in DC, and would I like to pay a ton of money to go?

I would not.( Pay the ton of money that is.)
.
So, as I do on occasion, I filled out the press form and sent a bunch of digital clippings. They gave me a ticket. Even better, KAYAK was able to get me a $150 round trip flight to DC. Another sixty bucks for two nights at the youth hostel next to the Convention center and off I went….

Day One

“Do you have a card” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “why?”

“If you’re a journalist I need to see your business card in order to talk to you.”

She was a student, you see. She had taken a training course before she came here and was told to be suspicious of skeevy old men with press badges and was told to get the business card and give it to the secret police (or whatever J street calls them). I said there was no reason, because I was only making conversation.

She gave me a very dirty look. I could understand, sort of. Netanyahu had just won the election and everyone was to some extent angry and depressed. However they did try to look cheerful. The opening ceremonies were starting soon and I headed up to take my seat.

The first two rows of seats in the grand ballroom were in fact circular tables. I searched around for a while and got a seat with a decent view. The rest of the people around my table were middle aged, behind us were the kids, allegedly there were about a thousand of them from all around the country, and Toronto, Canada, and tonight, they were the stars of the show. Lights! Music!!!!! Here we go….

Onstage comes J-Street Morton Halperin, who gets a standing ovation. He thanks the crowd, and starts on a short and forgettable speech. He then starts talking about “J Street U”, which is their version of Hillel. There’s a fanfare and football music, a bunch of squeaky clean college students enter stage right looking like something out of the Brady Bunch, and in their peppiest voices they start the roll call of the universities. I’m not sure if it’s more of a high school pep rally or a political convention. Clearly this was the latter and goes on and on and on. . Then they announce the Hillels who decided to attend. Apparently the BDSers have somehow managed to split the movement, and the two organizations are actively feuding.

J Street, no matter what else you may have heard, is currently anti-BDS, they think it makes Bibi and his ilk look like victims and it leads to anti-Semitism., both of which are true.

There’s more football music and cheering as President Jeremy Ben Ami is introduced. He’s a thin and wiry gent, with a crooked smile and glasses, kind of nerdy. He starts thanking people like in an awards show, all the kids in general, and the senior staff in particular before he sheds his kindly persona and starts attacking Bibi before going after the rest of Likud, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a whole bunch of other people and organizations.

The crowd loved it.

Then there was the “Kumbaya” story of two grandmas, one Jewish and one Palestinian, and how they called each other by phone as their governments bombed each other. Very sweet.

Finally there was Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union Reform Judaism. who gave an astoundingly good speech. He hit all the right points, wasn’t radical at all, and was almost thrilling. The crowd loved that too. Then came the cake.

We’d get to the really important stuff the following day.

A simple test to see if "progressives" are really "Pro-Israel" (poster)

This should be self-evident.

If you are a prolific tweeter, and yet cannot find the time to tweet a single defense of the nation you claim to love against its many critics, then you cannot claim to be "pro-Israel."

If you cannot write a single tweet saying pointing out the absurdity of Israel-haters calling Israel an "apartheid state," then you cannot claim to be "pro-Israel."

If you cannot compose a single tweet about Israel's beauty, culture, history, or accomplishments - then you cannot claim to be "pro-Israel."

So if you aren't pro-Israel and every single one of your Israel-related tweets is critical, what are you?

Guess who is speaking at the annual J-Street conference?

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat!

Yes, the same Saeb Erekat who recently compared Israel to ISIS.

The same Saeb Erekat who routinely accuses Israel of "genocide."

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that 96% of those killed in Gaza were civilians.

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that his family had been in Palestine for 9000 years (they came from Jordan in the 19th century.)

The same Saeb Erekat who compares Mahmoud Abbas to Mother Teresa and Thomas Jefferson.

The same Saeb Erekat who believes that Jews cannot live in "Palestine."

The same Saeb Erekat who once accused Qatar of investing in Jewish settlements.

The same Saeb Erekat who once said "Everybody should be aware that the only threat in the region is Israel’s occupation and not Iran."

Yup - he's a perfect fit for "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J-Street.

(Eric Fingerhut, the president of Hillel International, withdrew from speaking at J Street’s conference when he found out Erekat was a featured speaker.)

J-Street Follies

J-Street has been running a Twitter campaign asking people to say that "BibiDoesn'tSpeakForMe." As evidence, a couple of days ago, J-Street retweeted this:

Where did these numbers come from that J-Street interprets as meaning that Jewish Americans are out of step with Netanyahu?

It came from a poll that J-Street commissioned last October. Here was the question:

The question was asking whether people would support a solution that ensured that Iran could never, ever build nuclear weapons.

Guess what? Bibi Netanyahu would support that too!

When J-Street pretends that Netanyahu doesn't want to see a negotiated solution and wants to start a war for no good reason, they reveal not only their own contempt for the intelligence of Americans, but also their willingness to twist facts for their own political ambitions.

In that same poll, J-Street asked Americans how warmly they would rate a series of individuals and parties.

Guess who came out most favorably?

Yup - it was Netanyahu! Higher than Obama, higher than Hillary, higher even than Jon Stewart!

It's too bad that J-Street's founde wasn't listed on this survey, because it would show exactly how much more aligned liberal American Jews are with Binyamin Netanyahu than they are with the anti-democratic, dishonest Jeremy Ben-Ami.

It might be time for a new ad campaign.

Is J-Street engaging in email fraud?

I have signed up for J-Street emails under a fake name in order to see what they are up to.

Yesterday I received an email urging me to contact my representative to tell him or her to sign a letter from Reps. Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen and Maxine Waters urging john Boehner to "postpone" his invitation for Netanyahu to speak to Congress.

Here is the end of the email from J-Street:

In normal email etiquette, what should happen when you click on "Contact Rep. XXXX right now"? At the very least I would expect it to take me to a webpage where I can see the language of the email or petition being sent to my representative in my name, and I would have the choice to sign it, edit it before signing or choose not to do anything.

However, clicking on that link sent me to a "Thank You" page and triggered an immediate follow-up email saying "Thanks for taking action."

What? Clicking on a link that says "Contact XXXX" sends him or her an email under my name that I don't even get a chance to read???

I of course immediately emailed my representative urging him or her to welcome Netanyahu to Washington despite J-Street's deceptive practices.

Just as J-Street is committed to disparaging Israeli democracy by trying to pressure the US to do the opposite of what Israeli voters want, it shows no respect for its supporters to even be able to choose how to write their own emails to their representatives - or to choose not to.

It is the same mentality: J-Street is telling people to trust that it knows better than you, just as it pretends to know better than the Israeis who have to live with the consequences of J-Street's anti-democratic policies.

Moreover, they are sending emails to elected representatives under false pretenses. I believe that this qualifies as email fraud, and Jeremy Ben-Ami needs to address why his organization is using underhanded tactics to inflate the number of names apparently supporting his position.

J-Street supports pol who gave award to friends of Hamas

The "Free Gaza" movement and Hamas have been great friends for years. Here is Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh with a large group of Free Gaza members he had just given awards to:

Here's free Gaza co-founder Paul Larudee, one of the awardees above (seated second from the left,) shaking hands with this same terrorist leader:

Now, here is Larudee and other Free Gaza co-founders Kathy Sheetz and Greta Berlin being given another award from the "The San Jose Peace and Justice Center."

Concurrent with this presentation, Congressman Mike Honda sent Certificates of Special Congressional Recognition to each of these terror supporters as well as a letter of commendation recognizing the award recipients for their "peace" work in campaigning tirelessly against Israel.

Guess who wants you to give money to Mike Honda's campaign?

Yes, that "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group J-Street:

J-Street has an interesting definition of "pro-Israel." To them, it means "supporting those who hate Israel."

(Honda's opponent, also a Democrat, doesn't seem to push any particular foreign policy line.)

See also "J-Street endorses candidates who voted against Iron Dome funding."

By the way, the San Jose Peace and Justice Center once hosted an author who defended prominent people against charges of terrorism. They included Hamas leader Khaled Meshal - and Syrian president Bashar Assad!

(h/t Anarcho-Zionist)

J-Street's Ben-Ami explicitly equates murdered teens with combatants

We mentioned the implicit moral equivalence by Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times between the (then) kidnapping of Naftali Frankel, a boy who was simply trying to get home, and the IDF killing rock-throwing teen combatant Mohammed Dudeen, who sneaked out of his house just to attack Israeli soldiers.

Rudoren denied that she was making any moral equivalence, but the article was written in such a way that it is impossible to get any other impression.

Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street, the purportedly "pro-peace, pro-Israel" organization, went much further in a stomach-turning post on his site:

The New York Times this week ran a moving, but difficult, article about two mothers, Rachel Fraenkel and Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen. It was written before the discovery of the body of Rachel’s 16-year-old son, Naftali, one of the three murdered teenagers. “I was praying maybe he did something stupid and irresponsible,” Ms. Fraenkel recalled thinking when police came to her door at 4 a.m., “but I know my boy isn’t stupid, and he isn’t irresponsible.”

A few miles away in the West Bank town of Dura, Aida also tried to stop her 15-year-old Mohammed from doing something stupid and irresponsible. She locked the door of the family home to stop him from going out to confront Israeli soldiers after days or house searches and arrests. He got out anyway by jumping out the window and was shot dead, with the key still under Aida's pillow, when soldiers opened fire on a group of young Palestinians hurling stones at them.

Ben-Ami, in his zeal to say that a boy trying to get a ride home is the same as a terrorist-in-training who goes out of his way to perform acts of violence, loses his reading comprehension skills. Rachel Fraenkel knew her son wasn't irresponsible; Aida Dudeen knew her son was irresponsible.

To moral midgets like Ben Ami, their deaths are equivalent.

Ben Ami is equating a properly raised boy who was killed because he was a Jew to a wannabe terrorist who turned himself into a combatant, going out of his way to attack an army. To him, both are equally tragic. And this is after he already knew that Frankel had been brutally murdered.

He then approvingly goes on to further prove that he is a morally corrupt person:

Times correspondent Jodi Rudoren succinctly summed up the gulf between the sides in the way they look at these twin tragedies. “Most Israelis see the missing teenagers as innocent civilians captured on their way home from school, and the Palestinians who were killed as having provoked soldiers. Palestinians, though, see the very act of attending yeshiva in a West Bank settlement as provocation, and complain that the crackdown is collective punishment against a people under illegal occupation.”

As President Obama memorably said in his speech to young Israelis in Jerusalem last year, we must try to see the world through the eyes of the other side.

There is a difference between being able to see the world through the eyes of the other side and approving of it. A wife-beater has a viewpoint but that doesn't give it validity. Ben-Ami cannot make the simple moral distinction between aggressor and victim, between moral claims and immoral ones. To Ben-Ami and his J-Street acolytes, the Palestinian Arab narrative of no compromise, no agreement without crippling the security of Israel, of denying Jews the right to a homeland, of explicitly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their historic homeland, of honoring terrorists and raising children to want to blow themselves up as long as they kill some Jews - all of that is morally equivalent to the Jewish longing to live in the Jewish national home in peace and security.

How sick is that?

This is the mentality that Ben-Ami brings to the table as he zealously tries to reduce US support for Israel - that Arab attackers are as innocent as kids who were killed for the crime of being Jewish.

J-Street, like "Jewish Voice for Peace," exists to provide a pseudo-Jewish cover for decidedly anti-Jewish opinions, allowing people who hate the idea of Jewish nationalism to point to people like Ben-Ami and their indefensible anti-Israel opinions and say, "See? Even Jews agree with me!"

Why J-Street should not be admitted to the Conference of Presidents

The Forward writes:

Several large, mainstream Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, have to decided to vote in favor of admitting the dovish Israel lobby J Street into organized Jewry’s primary umbrella group on Israel. Others, like the Jewish Federations of North America, are leaning towards voting that way, according to informed sources.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which is scheduled to vote Wednesday on J Street’s request for admission, is conducting its process under a shroud of secrecy. The decision will be made in a closed-envelope ballot, and most of the member organizations remained tight-lipped regarding their expected vote.

There is no problem with "dovish" organizations being members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

There is a problem with admitting a member that consistently misrepresents itself as being "pro-Israel."

J-Street pretends that it is being vilified because it supports a two-state solution, and that is its constant refrain, in its press releases and on its website.

But the State of Israel also accepts a two-state solution.

Yet on every substantive issue where there is a disagreement between Israel and the PLO, J-Street sides with the PLO. In no universe can that be considered "pro-Israel."

As if that weren't bad enough, J-Street demands that Americans lobby their elected representatives to pressure Israel, and only Israel, to make concessions - to those who happily admit that they consider Israel their enemy.

J-Street has no respect for Israeli democracy. It wants third parties to force a solution on Israel that most Israelis have proven - with their votes - that they do not support.

The only reason that J-Street has any traction is its deception in pretending that it is merely interested in two states. But the two states it wants would involve the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Jews, it would create a situation where Jewish holy places are off limits to Jews, it would create borders that are indefensible. And it would empower people who brag in Arabic that their state is merely a stage to destroying Israel.

If that is what Israelis want, that would be fine. But they don't.

Why would the Conference of Presidents want to admit a deceptive, anti-Israel organization?

Even though Americans for Peace Now is already a member, and they also lobby US officials to pressure Israel, at least their parent organization tries to work within Israel's democracy to some extent. J-Street is beyond the pale.

Although the vote will be secret (which is outrageous - members of the organizations deserve to know how their leaders vote!) you can still write to the member organizations of the Conference and let them know why they should vote against J-Street's admission on Wednesday.

And demand that they make their vote public.

Brandeis using J StreetU to repair relations with Al Quds U

I had to check the calendar, but no, Purim was a month ago and we are past April Fools as well.

From Free Beacon:

Two student leaders of J Street who recently came under fire for heckling an Israeli soldier have been selected by Brandeis University to help repair the school’s relationship with the Palestinian Al Quds University, which has hosted several anti-Israel terror rallies on its campus.

Brandeis was forced to sever its long-term partnership with Al Quds after it hosted a military rally last year that featured masked men performing the traditional Nazi salute. A second Hamas rally was held in late March.

Two leaders of J Street’s campus group, J Street U, were recently given a $10,000 grant to travel to Al Quds and spearhead a “student dialogue initiative” aimed at repairing relations between the two universities.

The students—Eli Philip and Catriona Stewart—serve as the copresidents of Brandeis’s J Street U group. They most recently drew headlines for heckling a former IDF soldier who was speaking on campus.

The Al Quds dialogue initiative comes at a critical time for Brandeis, which is facing a fierce backlash for rescinding an honorary degree from the Islamic human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The J Street leaders were awarded the $10,000 as part of Brandeis’s Davis Projects for Peace program, which encourages students to “design grassroots projects for peace.”

...Al Quds students associated with Islamic Jihad’s campus faction donning black military gear and mock automatic weapons. They then marched across the school’s campus flashing the traditional Nazi salute.

J Street leaders Philip and Stewart say that the Nazi rally inspired them to pursue the new partnership, which will allow a delegation of Brandeis students to spend a week at Al Quds.

...The students claim that Brandeis’s decision to cut ties with Al Quds “lacked appreciation for [former Al Quds University head Sari] Nusseibeh’s desire to uphold the values of free speech and respect, as well as for the realities of life in the West Bank.”

J Street U sparked a row on Brandeis’s campus late last year, when Philip and others were reported to have been “disruptive and rude” during a speech by former IDF spokesman Barak Raz.

“Philip and his [J Street U] colleagues were so disruptive during Raz’s talk that there were calls for him to resign his student leadership position for having embarrassed the Brandeis community,” the Jewish Press reported at the time.

Raz later responded to the incident by stating that Philip “walked in [to the event], over an hour late, and aside from the disruptive chatter, missed the points that were made.”

“The behavior you displayed was quite sub-par,” Raz wrote, adding that “should you desire to continue this conversation, it’s probably best done in a way that reflects a little more integrity. I’m surprised that while you came to learn and listen, you refused to do that.”

Here's part of the grant proposal.

Brandeis seems to be teaching the philosophy that the worse people act, the more important it is to reward them.

(h/t Daniel Mael)

Dershowitz eviscerates Jeremy Ben Ami, who sputters in response

From Haaretz:

J Street’s hypocrisy must be exposed

J Street’s 'Big Tent’ is open only to one side - the anti-Israel and BDS-supporting hard left of its own position; pro-Israel centrists are censored.

By Alan M. Dershowitz | Mar. 27, 2014 | 10:44 PM

J Street, the American organization that calls itself pro-Israel and pro peace but that always seems to be taking positions that are anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, is asking America’s Jewish leadership to have a big tent and to open its doors to J Street. While I generally support that position, it is imperative that J Street’s hypocrisy be exposed. J Street insists that all major pro-Israel organizations be open to speakers who favor opposing views—such as supporters of the BDS movements, supporters of the single secular binational state approach, and those who oppose Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In the abstract, this open tent policy seems commendable. We should be committed to the open marketplace of ideas in which views prevail on their merits not on the basis of exclusion.

Now let’s see how J Street itself fares with regard to an open tent policy. It has categorically refused to allow speakers like me, who oppose J Street’s policies on Iran and other security matters, to speak to its members at its conventions. I have repeatedly and persistently sought an opportunity to present my perspective—which is shared by many American supporters of Israel—at the J Street convention, or at other events officially sponsored by J Street. When J Street invites BDS supporters and those oppose Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people to speak at its events, it claims that it does not necessarily support these positions, but it believes in encouraging its members to hear views that are different from its official positions. That is total nonsense. J Street only wants people to hear views to the anti-Israel hard left of its position. It categorically refuses to allow its members to hear views that are more centrist and more pro-Israel, such as my own.

...
And there is a good reason why they have placed this cone of silence over its critics. J Street survives, and even expands, largely as the result of speaking out of two sides of its mouth. It seeks to attract centrist members by advocating the two-state solution, an aggressive stance towards peace negotiations and criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies. These are positions I fully support, and if they were J Street’s only positions, I would have joined that organization many years ago. But in an effort to expand leftward, particularly hard leftward, it has taken positions that undercut Israel’s security and that virtually no Israeli center-leftists support. It placed its imprimatur behind the despicable and mendacious Goldstone Report by bringing Richard Goldstone to Capitol Hill and introducing him to members of Congress. In doing so it undercuts the efforts of the Obama Administration, which was supportive of Israel’s self-defense efforts in Gaza and not supportive of the Goldstone Report.

...
J Street has also spoken out of both sides of its mouth on the issue of whether the Palestinian leadership should recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. While first appearing to oppose such recognition, it now seems to be saying that this issue should be left to final stage negotiations, but it leaves open the possibility that it will continue to oppose such recognition if and when such negotiations are reached.

Moreover, J Street has accepted funding from sources—such as George Soros—who are openly anti-Israel, and have kept this fact secret so as not to alienate its centrist supporters.

It is easy to understand therefore why J Street doesn’t want me, or others who hold positions like mine, to enter into its tent. It does not want its own members to be confronted with the reality of J Street’s double talk. If I speak at its convention, I will be speaking at the same time to those centrists it seeks to attract and to those hard leftists it wants within its tent. Both sides will be shocked by J Street’s duplicity in telling each what they want to hear.

So here is my challenge: at the next J Street convention, show the film The J Street Challenge: The Seductive Allure of Peace in Our Time to all of its members, invite me to speak to them, allow me to distribute its conflicting position papers and positions and let the marketplace of ideas remain open to its members. Only when J Street opens up its tent to views critical of its own should it be demanding that pro-Israel groups open its tent to them.

Now look at Ben-Ami's "response" where he doesn't respond at all:

...Instead of organizing to meet this existential threat, some on the far right of the American Jewish community are focusing their effort and their fire in a different direction – on members of their own community. In particular, there is a new well-funded and energetic campaign to defame and delegitimize J Street, centered on an hour-long attack-umentary called the “J Street Challenge.”

Sadly even a couple of mainstream, established Jewish organizations and figures are associating themselves with it - contrary to our community's firm commitment to civil debate on issues of legitimate disagreement.

Those who've made the film and are hawking it are, however, missing the real challenges that J Street is posing to the Jewish community. Here are a few of them:

• With the world losing patience with Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, will we rally to urge the national homeland of our people to change course before it loses its democracy or its Jewish character?

• As the BDS Movement against Israel gains traction, will we recognize that the best way to defeat it isn’t spending our energy on preventing its supporters from being heard, but on ending the conflict in two states for two peoples?

• If you recognize the existential necessity of a two-state solution for Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic homeland, isn’t it time to acknowledge the price that has to be paid to achieve it? How can we say we support a two-state solution but oppose establishing borders based on the pre-67 lines with swaps? How can we say we support two states and oppose a Palestinian capital in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem?

• Is it appropriate to call those who criticize Israeli government policy anti-Israel or anti-Semitic? Plenty of Israelis including security chiefs, former Prime Ministers and Members of the Knesset are critical of present policy, and they’re certainly not anti-Israel. In fact, using the anti-Semitism label to describe criticism of Israeli policy demeans the horror of real anti-Semitism.

• Is it right or smart to limit the right to speak in Jewish communal spaces to those with whom you agree? The more we limit admission to Jewish communal spaces by imposing ideological litmus tests regarding Israel, the smaller our Jewish community will be.

• Are we, as a people, treating the Palestinian people the way we ourselves want to be treated? Are we living up to the moral standards of our people and have we learned the lessons of our own oppression through the centuries and across the globe?

• Can we finally stop ignoring what is happening beyond the Green Line? The day-to-day maintenance of a 47-year occupation of another people runs counter to the interests and values of Israel and the Jewish people. It places all the wonder and accomplishment of the state of Israel at risk. It is time for the occupation to end.

We urge those attacking us to spend a little less time leveling baseless accusations against a now-established Jewish organization and a little more time addressing these fundamental challenges facing the Israel we love.
...
In Jewish communal venues here and across the globe, let’s call an end to the attack videos and mudslinging and let’s start discussing the significant challenges that really threaten not just Israel but the heart and the soul of the Jewish people.

Amazing, no?

Yeshiva U hosting J-Street's Ben Ami for a panel discussion

A YU/Stern College event next week:

Jeremy Ben Ami, of course, believes that Israeli democracy is worthless when he doesn't agree with who they elected. Therefore, he created an organization whose main purpose is to pressure the US into forcing Israel to do what he believes is right, not what the people whose lives are on the line believe.

Let's take a trip down memory lane with J-Street.

In March 2011, one of J-Street's co-founders mused that perhaps Israel wasn't such a good idea after all if the Arabs keep rejecting it.

That same month Ben Ami whined that Netanyahu refused to meet him. Well, he refused to meet me last time I was in Israel (I was hoping for an interview), but I'm not crying about it.

J-Street, which calls itself "pro-Israel," does nothing to counter campus "Israel Apartheid Week." Instead, they make wishy washy statements like they “share the concerns ... about the continuation of the occupation,” it does not believe that “characterizing Israel as an apartheid state is either accurate or productive towards a solution.” They have no stated opposition to the demonization of the state they pretend they support.

In 2012, after Israel killed 16 Gaza terrorists, J-Street issued a statement of concern which called them "civilians." Why check facts when you can slam Israel?

Also in 2012,a J-Street representative admitted on video that they attract more non-Jews than Jews, but they want to change the Jewish community's opinion of Israel. In public, they claim to represent the Jewish community.

J-Street says it doesn't support BDS, but it happily invites BDS supporters to speak at its annual conferences.

Last year a J-Street sponsored tour of the territories stopped to pay homage to at Yasir Arafat's gravesite.

Yeshiva University's Zionist clubs should not be giving Ben-Ami any credibility, even when his poison is "balanced" by Ayalon and HaKohen.

There are plenty of liberal, Zionist Jews who fervently want a two-state solution, who would be quite appropriate for a panel discussion like this.

Ben Ami is not one of them.

J-Street student trip pays respects to Arafat

A student took a J-Street sponsored tour of Jerusalem and Ramallah - and there was nothing remotely even-handed about it.

While the point of the article is about how her fellow college students were so lacking in critical thinking skills that they swallowed the lies they were given whole, one could not tell that this trip was organized by a supposedly Jewish, "pro-Israel/pro-peace" organization as opposed to an Arab propaganda outfit. And this J-Street trip winds up in a most sickening way:

We hopped on our charter bus and went to meet with a member of the PLO negotiating team on the well known Emek Refaim street in the German Colony. Not surprisingly, the man was filled with anger. He started off by saying how difficult it is to be a Palestinian in the German Colony seeing Israeli flags waving from houses that were once homes of Palestinians.

He then continued on for the next 40 minutes playing the blame game: “Why can’t there be peace? Because of Bibi. There are two things in this world that will never change – and that is Netanyahu and Allah.”

As he went on and on, I became lost in his web of contradictions and realized that this man has been in the peacemaking game too long. I found it odd that the students I was traveling with did not seem bothered by the bitterness of the PLO negotiator, nor did they mention how they wished we could have heard from an Israeli negotiator as well, which I believed would be beneficial to compare and contrast the two sides.

...Finally, we were on our way to Ramallah. I was searching for the images the media so often likes to portray – of a city destroyed by war, stricken with poverty. However, I noticed how modern and beautiful the city was, as we drove past sushi restaurants and five-star hotels. We went to the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and met with a man who was not of Israeli or Palestinian descent, but Asian. This man had no relation to Israel or Palestine – just your typical civil servant.

He spoke about human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories. He lamented over Israeli settlers cutting down trees of Arab farmers, vandalizing mosques and other actions of the sort. He completely glossed over the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel (because that isn’t a big deal, right?) and barely touched on the stone throwing by Palestinians at Israelis driving through the West Bank (which has killed many).

The fact that he bypassed these subjects so smoothly was the first thing that was of concern to me. The second thing of concern was that this man did not know a word of Arabic or Hebrew. I wondered, how is he supposed to gain a first-hand experience of the trials and tribulations of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel when he files reports from within his airconditioned building without speaking to anyone on the ground?

Probably the strangest part of the entire trip was going to the PLO headquarters to visit Yasser Arafat’s memorial. I felt we stood there for an uncomfortably long time. I did not want to be disrespectful, but I in no way wanted to be mistaken as honoring him. I felt chills as I stood at the monument of a man who was thought of as a hero by the suicide bombers who killed so many Israelis over the years.

Yes - J-Street takes students on a trip to pay homage to a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Jews on his hands!

(h/t Lauri)

J-Street seeking rabbinic cover for anti-Israel activities

J-Street is looking to hire a new Rabbinic Organizer:

J Street has a Rabbinic Cabinet of more than 650 rabbis, cantors and seminary students. Rabbinic leadership is vital to J Street’s advocacy work. Rabbis help on a local and national level to shape J Street policy, communicate J Street’s message publicly, lead rabbinic actions, organize events, and expand our rabbinic community, as well as serve as validators for the pro-Israel pro-peace movement.

J Street is seeking a rabbinic organizer to build and cultivate rabbinic leadership within the pro-Israel pro-peace movement. The rabbinic organizer will work with the JSEF Vice President, J Street’s rabbinic leaders and J Street’s field team to develop and implement a strategy for rabbinic outreach and organizing within J Street’s strategic framework.

Rabbis are being recruited to put the J in J-Street - to pretend that their anti-Israel advocacy has rabbinic certification. Since their positions are so evidently against what the Israeli public wants, and completely out of step with what most American Jews want, they are bending over backwards to pretend that there is something vaguely "Jewish" about J-Street.

This allows Jews who desperately want to believe that they are not abandoning the Jewish state when they join J-Street to feel better about themselves; if a supposed rabbi (or cantor! or seminary student!) agrees with J-Street, then critical thinking about the religious aspects of J-Street go out the window.

This also helps fool credulous low-level politicians who are not aware of how badly J-Street has already shown itself to be anything but pro-Israel.

After all, when it comes down to it, the entire purpose of J-Street is to put forth the pretense that there is a large number of American Jews who believe that the best thing for Israel is to abandon its democratically elected officials and to replace them with more liberal-friendly alternatives. They want to pretend that pro-Israel groups like AIPAC are not in sync with American Jewry - and J-Street is. How better to further the charade than to organize a tiny minority of rabbis for whom politics is more important than religion? What can be more effective than to give a kosher seal of approval to acts that make the average Israeli - and involved American Jew - blanch?

Do you want to know how J-Street is using its rabbis to prepare for giving up Judaism's holiest places? Read this sickening pseudo-d'var Torah on the J-Street site by Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum, Congregation String of Pearls, a Reconstructionist congregation in Princeton, NJ that hold services in a Unitarian church. This is the most intricate pilpul on J-Street's site:

[T]he Torah itself places our textual tradition squarely in the realm of a literary, rather than a literal, tradition. The need for a lively symbolism trumps the need for historical accuracy.

But throughout this literary masterpiece, perhaps most clearly in Deuteronomy, its fifth book, we can discern a political stance that takes the form of an arc toward justice, especially distributive justice. The Torah claims that justice and peace can not exist without economic parity. And we also find in it the radical notion... that land does not belong to any of us, that we are all its tenants. As the narrative’s protagonist, God, says in parshat Yitro: indeed all the earth is Mine, ki li kol ha’aretz.

...Right now we need to bring these resilient foundations of our tradition to bear on a seemingly intractable problem. Of course a sovereign state needs clear and verifiable boundaries, but let us remind ourselves that we come from a literary tradition in which land has long been revered for its symbolic value at least as much as its economic or strategic value; we do not come from a literal tradition. A literal interpretation would claim land ownership, down to the last hectare and dunam, based on our ancient ancestors’ understanding of what God wanted from them and from their descendants.

Yes - Reb Donna (which is what her temple's website calls her) takes God's words of "all the Earth is Mine" and applies it literally.

But the eighth verse in Deuteronomy, the book she praises for its political stance, says quite clearly: Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

That explicit promise, and many similar promises that God made to the Israelites in the Torah, we are told, are literary.

And Reb Donna is just the person to understand what parts of the Torah are literal - the ones she believes in - and which parts are disposable.

When God says to treat widows and orphans well, that is of course literal. When He says to circumcise Jewish males, well, we have to ask Reb Donna if it fits in with her personal political feelings at the moment to decide what exactly it is. Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it will change next year depending on the political climate or what Jeremy Ben Ami decides.

This is the type of rabbinic approval that J-Street needs so badly - personal interpretations of Torah texts by dilettante "rabbis" to give a sheen of quasi-Judaism to its thoroughly political, anti-Israel (and anti-religious) positions.

It is a well-paying job, commensurate with experience, as well it should be. Putting lipstick on a pig and declaring it kosher is no small accomplishment.

(h/t DJK and CHA)

Is J-Street aiding the PA in its September UN stunt?

From Aaron Klein at WorldNetDaily, July 13:

The left-wing Jewish lobby J Street has been aiding the Palestinian Authority in its bid to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations, according to PA officials speaking to WND.

The officials said J Street has been helping the PA to set up Capitol Hill meetings with mostly Democratic lawmakers in a search for diplomatic support for their U.N. statehood move. Israel strongly opposes the plan to unilaterally declare a state in September.

J Street did not return WND email and phone requests for comment.

Strangely, the J-Street site is silent on the matter. My request for them to clarify went unanswered.

However, in a fawning interview of Jeremy Ben Ami, Michael Omer-Man writes that J-Street opposes the unilateral statehood bid:

In addition to not involving itself in Israel’s internal politics, J Street also opposes outside pressure on the Jewish state to make peace. [!!!!! - EoZ] J Street, Ben-Ami said, also opposes the Palestinian bid for recognition of statehood in the United Nations this September. He described a scenario where Palestinians’ false expectations and ultimate let-down upon declaration of statehood could lead to renewed violence.

“We are not in favor of UN action, we’re trying to put it off,” he explained. “We’re trying to avoid [it] and we’re trying to advocate for the US to do things that will avoid [Palestinian statehood recognition] coming to a UN vote.”

That's not exactly a condemnation of the statehood bid - one that attempts to take the Temple Mount, Western Wall and the entire Old City out of Jewish hands. It sounds more like J-Street wants to fine-tune how and when the PLO should stake their claim.

But if we are to believe Jeremy Ben-Ami, the WND report is not true. I believe, however, that it is entirely possible that J-Street is consulting with the PLO on strategy, and that the PLO calls up J-Street to arrange meetings.

J-Street's official position on Jerusalem is that it should be negotiated - but J-Street does not advocate that it should be recognized today as Israel's capital.

(The worst part of the article was where Omer-Man claims, falsely, that J-Street's position is virtually identical to Kadima and Labor. It isn't, and the Palestine Papers show that Kadima was way to the right of J-Street.)

Lies, damn lies and J-Street surveys

Yesterday, J-Street came out with a poll saying that Jews are still more pro-Obama than leaning towards Republican candidates, even though that support has eroded.

The general outline of that result is probably mostly true, but another of the survey questions - regarding J-Street itself - shows how the wording of a question can influence the answer.

Here is how the press release described the poll result that J-Street clearly wanted to uncover:

Efforts to prevent Jewish critics of Israeli government policy from participating in Jewish community events directly contradict the beliefs and values of most American Jews. When asked if groups like the JCC or Jewish Federations should allow Jewish organizations that publicly criticize certain Israeli government policies to participate in events sponsored by the Jewish community, 79 percent responded that they should allow these groups to participate.

This belief holds steady (77 percent) when presented with J Street’s perspective about opposing policies like settlement expansion in the West Bank and with J Street’s critics’ perspective that J Street’s criticism undermines Israeli security and that “just calling itself pro Israel does not make J Street pro-Israel.” Notably, these results are very similar among Jews who belong to a synagogue (74 percent think J Street should be allowed to participate) and Jews who do not belong to a synagogue (79 percent think J Street should be allowed to participate).

Do 77% of Jews believe that J-Street belongs inside the "big tent" of Jewish organizations?

Here's how the general question was phrased:

Do you think Jewish community organizations such as local Jewish Federations and JCCs should allow or not allow Jewish organizations that publicly criticize some Israeli government policies to participate in events sponsored by Jewish community organizations?

Should allow 79%
Should not allow 21%

It is a generic question, designed to appeal to Jewish sense of fairness. Of course everyone supports multiple viewpoints and of course it is possible to be critical of specific Israeli policies while remaining inside the mainstream of the American Jewish community. But at some point, "criticism" goes beyond the pale - and the survey question does not attempt to identify where that line is.

On J-Street specifically, the question bias is stark:

As you may know, there is a Jewish organization called J Street which calls itself the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.

J Street supports Israel and its right to defend itself, and believes that it is acceptable to criticize some Israeli government policies, such as expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Opponents of J Street say that an organization which criticizes Israeli policy undermines Israeli security, and that just calling itself pro-Israel does not make J Street pro-Israel.

Do you think Jewish community organizations such as local Jewish Federations and JCCs should allow or not allow J Street to participate in events sponsored by Jewish community organizations?

Should allow 77%
Should not allow 23%

Keep in mind that most American Jews are not so involved in politics to have ever heard of J-Street, or to care too much about it. So the first sentence subconsciously defines J-Street for them by saying it is "pro-Israel, pro-peace" - concepts that everyone agrees with. That sentence frames the next two sentences.

The next sentence states, as a fact, that J-Street supports Israel and its right to defend itself - without defining what that means. They mention one specific Israeli policy they disagree with, but don't say (for example) that they support the US cutting aid to Israel based on that position.

The third sentence does not state anything as a fact - but as a claim. Opponents say something, but it is not established as fact the way the previous sentence described J-Street. So while J-Street is defined by the question itself as being pro-Israel, it says that its opponents only say that it is not.

Not only that, the characterization of what J-Street's opponents believe is framed as a generic attack against any organization that is even mildly critical of Israel, subtly putting J-Street in a broad category of a group of organizations that criticize some specific aspects of Israeli policy while inherently being broadly supportive of Israeli policy.

Now that the question has thoroughly defined the parameters, the person being surveyed is primed to answer the way J-Street desires.

To make it clearer, here is another way the question could have been phrased:

As you may know, there is a Jewish political organization called J-Street.

J-Street claims to support Israel and its right to defend itself and says that it only criticizes some Israeli government policies. It would like the US to reduce aid to Israel unless Israel adheres to this American political organization's concept of what Israel should do.

Opponents of J-Street note that J-Street has lobbied for the US not to veto anti-Israel UN resolutions, and that both the Israeli public and government are overwhelmingly against J-Street's political positions as being dangerous to Israeli security.

Do you think Jewish community organizations such as local Jewish Federations and JCCs should allow or not allow J-Street to participate in events sponsored by Jewish community organizations?

How do you think that American Jews would answer that question?

J-Street's biased question could even be used to describe "Jewish" groups that support boycotting Israel. Which shows even more starkly how badly that question was written, and how you cannot believe survey results based on press releases by the organizations that issued the survey to begin with.