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.