Sabbah Report » J Street

Overcoming AIPAC is not enough

Lawrence Davidson — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 07:01:03 +0000

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two stories have recently appeared, each discussing a different approach to overcoming the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby that presently has enough clout to substitute its own parochial interests for the national interest. As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, demonstrated there is a direct connection between AIPAC's level of influence in Congress and the White House and the recent disasters that have befallen the U.S. in the Middle East. Indeed, the connection is one of sufficient intensity to have led to the creation in 2008 of a new "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby called J Street. J Street calls for Israel to accept, "borders based on the 1967 line with reciprocally agreed land swaps," thus allowing for a two state formula settlement. The optimistic view here is that in the relatively near future J Street will become strong enough to displace AIPAC and its hard line "we must keep it all" stance on the Occupied Territories. While this prognosis might be a tad premature, the situation has progressed enough that folks involved in this effort are now discussing tactics and approaches that might speed up AIPAC's demise. And so, our two stories.

The first story appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on September 26, 2010 and is entitled "Billionaire George Soros Revealed as Mystery J Street Donor." It is now public information that Mr. Soros sees AIPAC as "too hawkish" and so he and his family have thrown their weight behind the more compromising, "dovish" J Street. They have done so to the tune of 245,000 dollars a year. Soros has in fact been making these contributions since J Street's founding in 2008. This is certainly not all the money the Washington based lobby obtains per year. J Street has about 10,000 donors and they provide about 11 million dollars annually.

What is important is that a man like George Soros, who is dedicated to using some of his fortune to move the world in what he feels is a progressive direction, has put his money behind the traditional approach to influencing American policy formulation. He appears to accept as a working assumption that interest group politics plays a central role in both domestic and foreign policy making. Thus, if you want to change policy you have to out-lobby the fellow who is helping to shape the one now in place. In the case of J Street this means the organization must not only be able to win the politicians' allegiance through reasoned argument, but be capable of providing them with enough money to counter any AIPAC effort to unseat them in an election. Soros knows this and his aim is to help J Street achieve this status.

The second story comes in the form of a short essay by the Irish writer Maidhc O'Cathail that appeared in the Salem-News.com. It is entitled "The Truth Will Set U.S. Free: Breaking Israel's Stranglehold over American Foreign Policy." O'Cathail quotes Philip Giraldi, who is executive director of the Council for the National Interest (an organization critical of the American-Israel alliance), a former CIA officer and also a contributer to The American Conservative. Giraldi's position is that overcoming AIPAC "must be done from the bottom up as Israel cannot be challenged in the mainstream media, Congress, and in the White House." The tactic here is to convince enough American voters that "Israel is and always has been a strategic liability that has done immense damage to the United States and its worldwide interests" so they will be led to demand that the Congress and political parties abandon AIPAC. This has proven anything but easy. According to Jeff Gates, a former counsel for the Senate Committee on Finance, the present lack of transparency on the various sources of lobby money means that "the American public is ignorant of Israel's all-pervasive influence."

However, this opaqueness might also be slowly dissipating. A multiplicity of advocacy groups, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have grown up in the last ten years to publicize the brutal policies of the Israelis and U.S. complicity in them. Despite Giraldi's opinion that challenge in the mainstream media is impossible, there has been movement even in this unlikely arena. For instance, consider the relatively wide coverage of Israel's recent decision not to extend its settlement freeze and thereby threaten an end to the Obama administration's efforts at peace talks. So, unlike ten years ago, one now can find articles and op-ed pieces critical of Israel and, by extension, AIPAC as well. And, while they do not yet appear frequently enough to create a tipping point in public awareness they are beginning to contribute to a slow but perceptible shift in public opinion. Even a recent poll conducted by the American Jewish organization, The Israel Project, suggests a steady decline in the number of American citizens who feel that the U.S. must continue to support Israel.

The truth is that the two approaches, one centered on the national capital and the other centered on main street, have to be pursued simultaneously. And, there is now movement at both levels. Yet the pace of change is agonizingly slow. And that fact raises the question of just how much of Palestine will be left when AIPAC's influence is finally overcome? If the Israelis have their way what will be left is an emaciated Gaza and a rump area of the West Bank. Even though the Obama administration has promoted talks and called, unsuccessfully, for a continued settlement freeze, one suspects that it, and other foreseeable U.S. administrations, would be accepting of such a final outcome. It should be pretty clear to anyone who cares to see, that ruination is the preferred fate for any Middle East country that challenges either the U.S. or Israel. It is the adage "bomb them back to the stone age" made real. If you do not believe that, just ask an Iraqi refugee about what is left of their homeland now that the Americans have redone the landscape. Ask someone familiar with the present state of affairs in Gaza as well as the West Bank. Perpetual weakness and poverty is the fait accompli that Israel has in mind for Palestine on the day when AIPAC goes by the board. On that day they plan to have taken all that they desire and so even if Washington is persuaded to change its policies, it will no longer matter in Jerusalem.

What does all this mean for those involved in the fight against AIPAC's influence in American foreign affairs? It means that the goal of displacing the Israel lobby is really not sufficient. The J Street people and those who are presently campaigning at the grass roots have argue the fate of U.S. national interests in broader terms. For instance,

1. It must be made clear that a rejuvenation of American interests in the Middle East and Muslim world is linked much more directly to the fate of Palestine than to Israel. If any final settlement fails to insure the creation of a viable Palestinian state, the U.S. will be blamed and our interests will continue to suffer whether we are still allied to Israel or not. It must be made clear that, as an advocate for the destruction of Palestine, AIPAC advocates the destruction of U.S. interests as well.

2. Why is this so? This is the way it is because the issue of justice is first and foremost in the minds of a billion Muslims and that at the core of this issue stands Palestine (and not head scarfs). If U.S. interests are to be forwarded in the lands with Muslim majorities, then the question of Palestine must be faced honestly and objectively. This simply cannot happen as long as a Zionist lobby has the power to monopolize policy formulation. The problem is not Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran. The problem is Israel and its American agents. They are the ones complicit in past disastrous policy decisions and they are the ones pushing for equally disastrous future ones.

3. In the face of these truths, J Street presently operates as if it is afraid of its own shadow. If J Street feels it cannot directly advocate for justice for Palestinians, then it should do so indirectly. That is, the organization should get specific about the fact that the Israel AIPAC so strongly defends is in the hands of leaders who represent a harshly anti-American ethic. Men like Avigdor Lieberman and the leaders of the Shas party are racists who want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from as much territory as they can. For these Israeli leaders this is not a matter of security, it is a matter of religious purity. This is an utterly un-American goal. This has to be said loudly to both the American public and the Congress.

So you see that as we move ahead we must meld the liberation of the United States from AIPAC's wholly negative influence with the revival of U.S. national interests in the broader Middle East and Muslim world, and that in turn with the viable future of Palestine. All three must be promoted as an interlinked package. If they are not, Washington will certainly some day be free of AIPAC, but Palestine will left under the pernicious shadow of Israel. For this we will always be blamed and our interests will always suffer.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

More pointless talks with Israel?

Stuart Littlewood — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:14:56 +0000

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Send in the clowns

The Palestinians' champion - their White Knight - is preparing to ride forth next week and do battle at the negotiating table with the racist regime's Black Knight and his minder, the Great Satan.

The rules of chivalry don't apply, so the outcome is not in doubt.

However, the White Knight is not quite as white or brave as he seems. Eager to do his lord's bidding, Mahmoud Abbas is a willing fall guy. On this occasion Obama has imperiously snapped his fingers and announced he wants direct talks started "well before" the Black Knight (aka Israeli prime minister Netanyahu) ends the partial freeze on illegal settlements in a month's time.

And, by the way, US mid-term elections are coming up in two months' time and Obama has to look good.

So Abbas jumped.

And Abbas is at least 18 months past the pack-your-bags date when he should have stepped down from his presidential position. He has twice unilaterally extended his stay and called off scheduled elections. He has no popular mandate and continues to blot the Palestinian escutcheon, staining the only democracy in the Middle East (Israel being altogether something else: an ethnocracy).

In the excitement everyone has forgotten that Hamas are the democratically elected power in Palestine even though they have been forced by Abbas and his US-armed gang and their Israeli back-up into confinement in the Gaza Strip. Hamas are not invited to the peace table, so what legitimacy can the encounter possibly have, anyway?

No preconditions except Israel's

The talks are being held while Israel continues to pound Palestinian civilians in Gaza, maintains the cruel land and sea blockade and murders any unarmed humanitarians sailing to break it, disallows exports, severely restricts travel within the Occupied Territories, carries on with house demolitions, denies access to universities and places of worship, and generally behaves in a brutal and barbaric manner.

Israel has failed to honour earlier peace pledges and gives every indication of wishing only to expand its borders further.

The idea that there can be meaningful talks under these conditions is an insult to the intelligence of the civilized world. Abbas said earlier that he didn't see much point in talking but he's been pressured to change his mind.

Netanyahu loudly insists there can be no pre-conditions while busily laying down pre-conditions of his own, in particular ruling out any return by Palestinians to East Jerusalem, which as everyone knows belongs to the Palestinians and is earmarked as their capital, and refusing to extend the temporary halt to settlement building on stolen land.

Palestine, as always, is led by losers. Abbas's senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, is described as a newspaper editor, but he doesn't seem very adept at bringing the Palestinian cause to media attention in the outside world.

His opening shots warn the Israelis that they must choose between "settlements or peace... they cannot have both". Is this Erekat's magic bullet for unseating the Black Knight?

Law and justice are not 'à la carte'

Netanyahu leads a fragile coalition of right wingers and religious nutters. He says that if he were to prolong the moratorium on settlements it could trigger the collapse of his government.

So he must continue in his criminal ways to survive.

To prove his playful sense of humour hasn't yet deserted him, he goes on to say: "We are coming to the talks with a genuine desire to reach a peace agreement between the two peoples that will protect Israel's national security interests, foremost of which is security."

The Palestinians' national security interests are, and always have been, irrelevant.

Haaretz reports that the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), in one of its wackiest statements to date, has called on the Palestinian Authority to "abandon its longstanding attempts to avoid making difficult choices at the negotiating table and cease incitement against Israel at home and abroad".

And you'll die laughing at this bit: "Now it is time for the Palestinians and the Arab States to grasp Israel's outstretched hand and match the Jewish state's unyielding commitment to peace with actions of their own."

Another pro-Israel group, J-Street, claims the talks could be the last opportunity to save the two-state solution. "The window of opportunity for progress is brief and closing. We believe Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic home, not to mention vital American interests in the region, hang in the balance," says J-Street's Vice President for Policy and Strategy, pretending that America's best interests are geared to the success of Israel's unlawful and racist expansionism.

From the way America conducts itself internationally, anyone would think that law and justice are some kind of à la carte menu items to be dispensed on a pick-and-choose basis, or not dispensed at all. Or something Americans can send back to the kitchen if their taste buds don't fancy it.

It is outrageous that Netanyahu should be encouraged to think compliance with the law is optional and in the meantime further concessions can be wrung, under duress, from people the Israelis have oppressed and cheated for 60 years.

The talking's all done

The talks of course have nothing to do with peace. They are about greed, dominance and more land theft. The plan is to get a weakling Palestinian leader into a corner and arm-twist more concessions from him, until there's nothing left.

Is this really a good time to bend the knee or tug the forelock to someone as unreliable as Obama or as criminal as Netanyahu?

It is surely an occasion to stand on principle and go over the heads of corrupt meddlers, making a strong Palestinian case anchored firmly in established law and justice so that there is no room to wriggle, and demand that same law and justice from the international community that endorsed it.

It would call for a carefully planned and professionally executed communications campaign to make the world listen, something the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, under Abbas, have fatally neglected.

But Abbas says it's his "national responsibility" to go along with the talks. Those in Ramallah who dared to disagree were quickly stamped on by his security goons.

Abbas and Erekat belong to the shabby failures of the past. For Palestine the future has to start somewhere. It might as well be here, and now.

America cannot - no, will not - uphold international law or UN resolutions. Like Israelis, the Americans have a cynical disregard for human rights except their own. It goes against all notions of fair play, therefore, to see America acting the host and pretending to be an honest broker.

Abbas should have none of it. If he cannot be persuaded to do the decent thing and go, he at least ought to take the line that the talking's all done. It was done in the UN. And the UN has treated Israel with gob-smacking generosity at Arab expense, first with its 1947 Partition gift and later by nodding OK to Israel's territorial gains represented by the Armistice 'Green Line'. The Israelis should accept this staggering munificence with proper humility, and be content.

Obama would do well to acknowledge that the decisions have already been made. They are enshrined in UN resolutions, in international law, in the Geneva Conventions and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They wait to be implemented by the nations that are party to those solemn undertakings, including the US.

So please, Mr Obama, no more talking. Cut the charade and do your duty.

Earn that peace prize. Or give it back.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Max Ajl – J Street conference only step one

SR Editor — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:03:10 +0000

By Max Ajl * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Was the recently held J Street conference the herald of an incipient peace treaty in Israel-Palestine? The supporters of the new lobby group hope so.

For decades, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has had a cloaked but powerful grip on American discussion of Israel. If politicians were to criticize its policies, or to discuss trimming aid or re-evaluating American support for Israel, they would likely incur a cost that few were willing to pay: the use of AIPAC's influence to destroy any hope for re-election.

AIPAC was recently shoved unceremoniously out of the closet by scholars Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, with their broadside against the role of the "Israel Lobby" in distorting the functioning of US foreign policy.

Enter J Street, its name is a riff on K Street, the real Washington, DC address of many powerful lobbying firms. With a staff of 30 and a budget of millions, it has set itself up as the liberal alternative to AIPAC.

Last month, J Street held its inaugural conference in Washington, attracting more than 1,500 individuals who gathered to listen to such liberal Zionist luminaries as Katrina vanden Heuvel, Bernard Avishai, J.J. Goldberg and Akiva Eldar, and a keynote address by Obama Administration National Security Advisor General James Jones. Several members of Congress attended and spoke, and more than 100 were listed as honorary hosts.

The attendees were an eclectic bunch -- Brit Tzedek-ers, college students, aging hippies, rabbis, ambivalent Zionists, human rights activists, organizers -- among them many supporters of Judge Richard Goldstone's landmark fact-finding report on war crimes in Gaza.

Any organization to the left of AIPAC that could in turn marginalize the latter is a good thing and a good start. Bravo. But being merely more progressive than AIPAC is not enough, because to be more progressive than AIPAC is to be drier than the sea.

Looking more closely at the nature of J Street on its own terms, in its own words, reveals many problems. According to its mission statement, the organization is a group for people "who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own." It supports sanctions on Iran, although it prefers a diplomatic process, and it supports the maintenance of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in the context of mutual land-swaps. On aid, J Street claims that "American assistance to Israel, including maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge," will be maintained.

J Street's executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, in a widely-circulated interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, argued against using the threat of reducing US military aid as a means to pressure Israel.

J Street's view of Israel, at its core, is fundamentally sympathetic. It is a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby, not a "pro-peace, pro-justice" lobby. It is, then, not at all shocking that J Street supported a modified version of House Resolution 867, which condemns the Goldstone report, referring to it as a "one-sided and biased action in the United Nations when it comes to Israel." From J Street's perspective Israel's attack on Gaza last winter was understandable, even "justified," as Ben-Ami put it.

At the conference, J Street's general tenor was for critical support for Israel, with minor harmonics here and there -- for example, serious and frequently-voiced concerns that soon, a two-state solution would be no longer viable because of Israeli settlement policy. In turn, there was much introspection about Israel's future as a democracy if it continued ruling over Palestinians. At the outer limits, journalist Michelle Goldberg observed that it is currently possible to be a liberal Zionist. From this perspective, Israel has not yet crossed the threshold that would make that position problematic, if not untenable, but it's close. Many statements were prefaced by pronouncements of the speakers' "great love" for Israel, "support for Israel" and the need for a "strong Israel," all purportedly compatible with the desire for a safe and secure Palestine.

Israeli irredentism and the nature of Israeli society were taboo topics amongst the vast majority of the officially-sanctioned panelists and speakers. The overwhelming support for the Gaza attacks amongst the Israeli populace, even among doves like David Grossman, went unmentioned. It is not for nothing that Israeli dissident Michel Warchawski refers to Israeli society as heading towards an "open tomb," or that sniper units wore t-shirts depicting two-for-the-price-of-one -- a pregnant Palestinian woman and her unborn baby for one bullet. Israel may have many of the formal procedural mechanisms that connote "democracy," but it has an array of mechanisms that prevent it from being a democracy for those who aren't Jewish. This, too, went unmentioned, but is at the core of what makes Israel a Jewish state, and an ethnically stratified democracy.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. J Street's policy positions reflect the assumption that the correct amount of strategically-targeted pressure, consisting of the right mix of harsh words and blandishments, can compel Israel to change its policies. The trump card of aid-cessation has been ruled out. American diplomats and statesmen are fond of the language of carrots and sticks, but there is to be no carrot for Israel and no stick, just the vague threat of the inevitable end of the two-state solution if a negotiated settlement is not arrived at by the end of Obama's term in office, and the accompanying end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

This vision is based upon a fantastical vision of Israel: a flawed democracy, not a scarily aggressive state harboring dangerously genocidal sentiments, with a messianic military believing in its divine right to sovereignty over another people's land. J Street does not recognize these facts. It's attempting to walk a path that's unwalkable, and when one wishes to trod a path that can't be trod upon, it helps to be able to dream. The dream is that Israel is a beleaguered democracy, struggling to defend itself. Emphasis on defense: the Zionist warrior ethos, manifested as security through the gun, may be somewhat beguiling to segments of an American Jewish population swearing that we never again will be helplessly slaughtered. There's no doubt about that.

But another segment of American Jewry was at that conference, too. Maybe we were a large plurality of the attendees, perhaps not -- certainly the participants at the conference were far to the left of the speakers. That segment knows far too much to any more countenance Israeli policy, and increasingly sees little reason to call itself "pro-Israel," when Israel has become a stand-in for unspeakable crimes. Perhaps most importantly, that segment trends young. The J Street University Student Board has stated "To us being pro-Israel is intertwined with being pro-Palestine," and is letting individual university chapters decide whether or not to include the "pro-Israel" slogan on its individual messaging. Otherwise, they worry, no one would join.

Whether that segment can exercise discernible influence on J Street in the next six months or one or two years, enough to make the lobby something better than it is now, enough to change its unacceptable policy positions, is not clear, and I'm betting against it. But it's possible. Furthermore, that segment will not be shushed by accusations of anti-Semitism, not anymore, never again. That segment may not be able to save Israel as a Jewish democratic state, and for many, that's fine too, and makes it that much easier to unite with other dissident sectors that don't see Israel as a Jewish issue but the conflict as a human issue, and see a Jewish democratic state not as a dream, but as an impossibility, the product of feverish fantasy.

Modern Zionism is an addiction for American Jewry, and withdrawal goes in stages. J Street was step one. Let's take it for what it is, and keep working.

* Max Ajl blogs on Israel-Palestine at www.maxajl.com, and is an organizer with the Gaza Freedom March.

Time for a democratic discourse

SR Editor — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:23:38 +0000

By Kevin Coval and Josh Healey *

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace" Washington-based public action committee is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were scheduled to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure that a multiplicity of voices are heard, and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.

This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh's poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street's Obama. Again, this is not surprising.

What is disappointing and troubling is J Street's response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say "I know what I'm doing is wrong ... but there are some battles we choose not to fight," before canceling our program and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and the environmental advisor to Obama resigned last month, the radical right hasn't stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the left doesn't. And that's why we often lose -- on health care, on global warming and on Israel/Palestine.

For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they'd rather not have him. Now Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone's oppression.

One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of the Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, "when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions." Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc.)

But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians' right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.

There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right to be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.

Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America's support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one's worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a "chosen people" and the acting out of geo-strategic nightmares via military might.

Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem's sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

Images courtesy the artists.

* Kevin Coval and Josh Healey are Jewish writers in America and can be reached at jewsthatareleft AT gmail DOT com.

Source: Electronic Intifada