10 thoughts on “Israel Lobby Loonies Stalk J Street – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Itamar Marcus, now there’s a blast from the past! It was good old Itamar who created a website devoted to some of the most dishonest bull**** known to man about the allegedly horribly anti-Semitic Palestinian textbooks. A group of us regularly shredded him on it. Don’t remember the name of the site now, and don’t know whether it is still up – probably is – but it was pretty brazen to say the least.

      1. Yes, that’s it. The incredibly weirdly and deceptively named Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace. Sounds impressive, but what does it even mean? It was an amazing collection of unattributed quotes and gross mistranslations from mostly unnamed alleged Palestinian textbooks. Made MEMRI look fair, balanced, and honest.

    1. It must be the one I mentioned, Palestine Media Watch I think it’s called. Awful stuff. Did you know that he & Hillary Clinton did a joint press conference in Congress a few yrs ago on that very subject. I wrote about it too here.

      1. I recall Hillary doing something in which she spouted some completely uninformed, richly hasbaristic nonsense about hate being taught in the Palestinian schools or something like that. Actually, I completely lost what little interest I had in her when she bowed to pressure from Jewish groups and made a PR event out of returning Muslim contributions to her senatorial campaign, publicly spitting in the face of supporters simply because they happened to be the wrong religion. I wouldn’t vote for her for anything ever. I’d stay home first.

  2. I lived and worked in Philadelphia, Mort Klein’s home turf for more than 20 years. One of the most disturbing aspects is that he works together with the mainstream – as you point you the right wing event is co-sponsored by Hilel – while the “liberals” in the mainstream are prepared to let the progressive folk be marginalized. Here in Jerusalem as everyone is so shocked by the vicious attack on the New Israel Fund, it is pretty depressing to hear that the right wing in the States has so much money and support in the mainstream Jewish community.

    New Israel Fund and J Street are hardly radical organizations.

  3. J-Street, AIPAC, ZOA, Z-Street. Call them what you will, but in the end they are all for segregation. J-Street just feels guiltier about it.

    1. Alan, I have to agree with you. For the most part J-Street exemplifies the nice, liberal American Zionist mindset. They are fully indoctrinated in the Zionist ideology, and yet unlike right wingers, capable of feeling guilt, and desperate to make themselves feel better about their inability to relinquish the ideology that has caused so much tragedy and trouble for so many. They are the political activist counterparts of the nice, humanitarian Zionists who salve their consciences by patronizingly “dialoging with Arabs”, which really means trying to educate Arabs to simultaneously understand Jewish superiority and angst with the goal of getting them to see eye-to-eye with them on the innate goodness of Zionism and Israel.

      1. I understand where those feelings come from and I have my own set of disagreements with J Street. But I think you’re being unduly harsh. Not because I don’t think criticism of J St. is waranted (I’ve levelled my share of criticism myself). It’s just that working fr. within the Jewish community, one has a clearer sense of what is possible and what will label you as beyond the Pale. I think Jews who are progressive on the IP issue are always walking a tightrope. Yes, one can locate oneself outside the Jewish community & have a position that is ideologically pure and have no impact on that community. Or one can identity with the community while maintaining one’s differences with it. That’s very hard to do.

  4. The ZOA’s rhetorical question, “is J Street bad for Israel?” may even deserved to be asked – as long as the premise is that not everyone is talking about the same “Israel”. J Street is (hopefully) bad for the ZOA’s Israel and the Israel as it really exists right now, and why shouldn’t it be? What is bad for Israel is good for Israel, that’s simply the nature of dialectics.

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