Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Jeffrey Goldberg: in his Israel lobby element

If you’re one of the supposed hard-core haters of Zion who’s attempting to turn J Street into a Manchurian Candidate of anti-Zionism, I’ve got news for you.  Jeffrey Goldberg has your number:

…The group [J Street] runs the risk of being hijacked by haters of Israel. I don’t doubt that most people who join J Street are motivated by love for the Jewish state, as a Jewish state, and anguish over its government’s decisions. But there are those who would like to use J Street to weaken the bonds between the U.S. and Israel. The challenge to Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street, over the next year, is to keep the group pro-Israel in the face of concerted efforts to move it in the direction of the hardcore anti-Zionist left.

The level of paranoia in this statement reminds me of the fear with which anti-Communist liberals greeted the New Left during the 1960s.  They seemed to be fighting the battles of the 1930s to avoid allowing such groups to be hijacked by the Communist Party.  Instead of reacting to contemporary reality, they were acting out an old script.  Goldberg too seems to see enemies of Israel everywhere, even hiding out in the dark corners at the J Street conference.

I don’t know what Goldberg is nattering about.  Who’s trying to hijack J Street?  All of those so-called radicals, even some who attended the conference, are expressing skepticism about J Street.  They’re not attempting to bore their way in and take over from the inside.  Specifically, those bloggers at our I-P session who he’s attacked so intemperately have no desire to fulfill Goldberg’s paranoiac nightmare scenario.

I fear that Jeffrey Goldberg, along with J.J. Goldberg and other Jewish liberals like them are sinking further and further into dyspeptic irrelevance.