Apparently, the Israeli embassy has moved slightly off its position rejecting an invitation from J Street to the ambassador to attend the group’s national conference later this month. Nathan Guttman reports in The Forward that “Jewish groups” have exerted great pressure on Michael Oren not to attend the event allegedly because J Street has “attacked” them. Of course, this is totally untrue and J Street’s opponents never present any evidence of specific individuals associated with the organization doing or saying anything in the way of attacking another Jewish group. Besides, it’s quite laughable for these groups to be so sullen towards the progressive Jewish lobby by claiming it doesn’t “play well with others.” In truth, it is the Israel lobby itself that feels its turf encroached on by the new kid on the block. It is they who don’t like the competition and want to shut the new guy out. It’s classic commercial behavior. Reminds me, in fact, of a N.Y. Times story of how NYC food vendors go out of their way to sabotage the competition when it attempts to encroach on their traditional selling locations.
I have learned through a reliable source that the lobbying against J Street is coming from none other than Aipac. It should surprise no one that this is the case. Josh Block, if you’re reading this, call me to deny this and I’ll be happy to print your denial. But I think most of the rest of us know different. This surreptitious behavior follows the Aipac M.O. They want to wound their perceived enemies but refuse to leave their fingerprints on the weapon.
[UPDATE: Josh Block must use Google Alert because I received an e mail from him like clockwork. It was not only a denial it was a very convincing, strenuously demonstrative denial:
What you write is an absolute, flat out lie. It can only be based in your or someone else’s fantasy, or perhaps paranoia.
If you care at all about accuracy or choosing fact over fiction, you will take it down or remove any reference to AIPAC.
Aipac’s denial is duly noted.]
Guttman quotes the embassy spokesperson relaying the Israeli government’s slightly more nuanced position toward the conference:
“We decided to move ahead in a measured and cautious way,” the spokesman said, adding that the embassy has yet to make a final decision on whether Oren will speak at the upcoming J Street conference.
One can only hope that petulance will not vanquish common sense on this matter. Oren and his boss, Bibi, don’t have to like J Street. But they have to accord them a minimal level of respect unless they want to brand themselves as ideological extremists before the entire American Jewish community. Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street is playing this very well having extended a respectful personal invitation to Oren both by letter and in the pages of the rightist Jerusalem Post. The ball’s in Oren’s court. I hope he doesn’t muff it. Letting Howard Kohr determine the Israeli government’s position toward J Street is preposterous. I hope it won’t happen.
Eric Alterman has an excellent op ed in today’s Times. The money quote is this:
Commentary’s Noah Pollak called J Street contemptible, dishonest and anti-Israel; James Kirchick of The New Republic called it the Surrender Lobby; Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard said it was obsequious to terrorists and hostile to Israel. Perhaps, but it is at least equally plausible to view the intemperance of their language as evidence of panic. The days of right-ruled American Jewish debate appear to be numbered, and with good reason.
…So the paradox is that while American Jews remain committed liberals — they voted overwhelming for Barack Obama…— they fund and support a neoconservative-dominated lobby when it comes to the Middle East.
Jerry Haber and I will be hosting a progressive blogger session at the J Street conference on Monday, October 26th at 12:30PM. If you’d like to hear me, Jerry, Phil Weiss, Kung Fu Jew, Matt Duss, Helena Cobban, Ray Hanania and Laila el-Haddad talk on the issues facing Israel-Palestine bloggers, come by and join us. Our event is NOT officially sponsored by J Street nor is anything said by the bloggers endorsed by it. We are all independent.
• It must have been an unenviable challenge for the Israel Foreign Ministry to endeavour to try to discredit the report of the eminent South African Jurist, Judge Goldstone, who has an impeccable record in the field of human and civil rights, both at home and abroad. The first insuperable problem was that he is not only a recognized authority on international human rights legislation and convention, but he is Jewish! So the standard allegation of anti-Semitism, was impossible. They could not attack his professional record, which was impeccable. So what action could be taken in damage limitation?
• The matter has suddenly become urgent. If the world fully accepts the report, then Israel is branded a human rights violator and a perpetrator of war crime. The international community has been shocked at the allegations of gratuitous killing of hundreds of innocent children and over a hundred women in three weeks of unchecked violence, together with the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure including ‘houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings’.
• The Report alleges ‘an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population.’ That, the Report states, ‘could lead a competent court to find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, has been commited.’
• The Israeli Government is in deep trouble as the allegations become more widely known, because there are few who now believe its denials and fewer still, its continuing propaganda. And there is a palpable sense of shock as the evidence unfolds as to what transpired in those three weeks of state-sponsored killing and destruction, under the pretext of self-defence.
Alterman: “So the paradox is that while American Jews remain committed liberals — they voted overwhelming for Barack Obama…— they fund and support a neoconservative-dominated lobby when it comes to the Middle East.”
I don’t call it paradoxical; I call it hypocrisy of the highest order.
These Jews [not all Jews], the Jews Alterman is referring to, speak out about food deprivation everywhere on the planet from Darfur to Denver, everywhere that is, except Palestine.
They condemn human rights violations everywhere except Palestine.
They are in favor of justice everywhere except Palestine.
They are ‘tribal’ Jews, the ones who ask first, “Is it good for Israel? Is it good for the Jews?”
Bertoll Ollmann speaks of there being two kinds of Jews after the Holocaust: those who said ‘This must never happen to Jews again’ and those who said, “This must never happen to anyone again’.
So the Jews of which Alterman speaks are NOT ‘committed liberals’. They are conditional liberals – advocates of liberal values as long as it doesn’t touch on Israel.
They turn my stomach.
As we used to say in the civil rights era, give me an out-and-out reactionary any day over a “liberal”. At least with the former one knows where one stands.
Or, check out Phil Ochs song, “Love me love me I’m a liberal”, for an accurate, if dated, description of a liberal.
btw, for Philip Weiss’s comments on the subject:
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/06/rabbi-rosen-cant-stand-the-hypocrisy-of-criticizing-persecution-everywhere-and-ignoring-israel.html
The Alterman piece didn’t appear in the dead tree edition of the NYT, which is sort of funny, when you consider the readership would likely be interested in it.
It’s in what the website calls the “global” edition of the NYT, as opposed to the US edition.
Thanks Donald, I get the dead tree version and did not see it.
“Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street is playing this very well….”
I heard him on the radio not long ago ( On Point/Tom Ashbrook/WBUR- Sept 16th) in a back and forth with Marty Peretz. Ben Ami was quite admirably self-contained all through as Peretz seemed to lose it- insisting he had the “correct” viewpoint and that J Street was an “epi-phenomenon”. This exchange should have been proof enough for listeners that day of the bullying, brainwashing and hijacking of Jewish opinion and it’s representation.
OH Lord, CBN is reporting that Congress members are deciding not to attend the “anti-Israel JStreet conference”.
It has been announced that General Jones will be a keynote speaker.
If you want to get an idea of what he may be saying in his keynote speech, go to the website for the American Task Force for Palestine.
His keynote speech from the gala last night is posted there.
This whole effort to derail the conference is looking like the Keystone Cops running around. No one needs to answer me when I wonder why AIPAC is doing this. The answer is, because they can. The next best answer is “because”. The real answer is “desperation”