The son of my people
In its 3 Years of existence, J Street, the Jewish lobbying organization, dealt with hostile criticism from the American Jewish establishment, and what seemed like a boycott from the Netanyahu administration in Israel. Yet the founder of the lobby, Jeremy Ben-Ami, emphasizes repeatedly that the goal of the lobby is to support the state of Israel and its chief interest: the advancement of peace. Last week, he visited the city in order to explain himself to New Yorkers.
By Orli Santo and A di Mahalel
Translated from the original Hebrew by Aviv Roth
In Hebrew: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4104284,00.html
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby – or more accurately, “the pro-solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, speedily and in our days” organization – has received a cold to hostile welcome from the Jewish-Zionist establishment, both in the US and in Israel, ever since it burst into the public arena in 2008.
AIPAC sees them as competitors, dreamers who harm the diplomatic and security interests of Israel, even enemies. Official Jerusalem unofficially boycotts them, even though they enjoy the support of the President of Israel and of the Peres Center for Peace. In Kadima and the Labor they’re well liked, and among the Israeli left, and its partners in the American Jewish community, they’re practically loved. Last April, more than two thousand people took part in the huge conference they organized in Washington, including five Knesset members – four from Kadima and one from Labor. A conference that large is testament to the many hands involved in the work of this peace lobby, as are it’s 180,000 supporters in the United States, according to J Street.
But there’s no doubt that the driving force of J Street is its founder and leader,
Jeremy Ben-Ami.
Last week, Ben-Ami was hosted at the headquarters of the Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan, where he discussed the release of his book, A New Voice for Israel: Fighting For the Survival of the Jewish Nation, with New York Times reporter, James Traub. The book lays out the beliefs of Ben-Ami and the organization that he heads: it’s a document in first person of the combination of familial, national, and political histories that led Ben-Ami to the founding of J Street.
A different American Zionism.
The roots of Jeremy Ben-Ami, 47, are entwined in the roots of Zionism and the state of Israel.
His grandfather and grandmother were amongst the first residents of Tel Aviv. His father, Yitzhak Ben-Ami, was one of the first Hebrew babies born in the first Hebrew city. Before World War 2, Yitzhak Ben-Ami became an activist in the revisionist party called “Ha Irgun” (the Organization), which sent him to the U.S. in order to raise support and financial aid from American Jews, for the immigration of European Jews to the land of Palestine, following the Zionist vision.
Over the years, Jeremy came to develop a different outlook from his father, along with different way to support the state of Israel. After earning a B.A. in International Relations and Public Administration from Princeton, he studied law at NYU, and later worked in the White House during the Clinton administration. His path in Jewish-American organizations began at the New Israel Fund, after which he participated in the campaign of the Democratic candidate for president, Howard Dean. In 2008, he founded J Street.
In his parents’ home in New York, Jeremy was educated in a manner typical to the American Jews of his generation: liberal views on every domestic American issue, such as support for government healthcare and workers’ rights, as well as a dovish liberal approach to foreign affairs issues – except when it came to Israel. Israel, Ben-Ami suggests, was regarded with a proud patriotism and a selective vision. This is how he describes it in his book:
“As with so many young Jewish Americans being exposed to Israel in that era, I was thoroughly steeped in – and loved – the mythology of the State of Israel, its miraculous founding and the astonishing accomplishments of its brief history. There was, however, one huge gap in my learning about the history and the culture of the region and the land. I never learned about the Palestinians…I understood that the Arabs had tried – more than once – to destroy Israel and make the Jews leave. But never once did I hear their side of history. Not one book in our house told their story. Not one class in Hebrew School exposed us to their culture…According to the history I learned, Palestine was essentially empty when the Jews arrived…
…It would be many, many years before I discovered that there is more than one narrative when it comes to the history of Israel and Palestine. In fact, it wasn’t until I moved to Israel and started meeting those very Palestinians that I learned that, yes, the Palestinians are a people and, yes, they do believe that my people came and threw them out of their homes and took their country away from them. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they had the keys to those homes to prove it.”
This traditionally hawkish, one sided perception of history, was what moved Ben-Ami’s father to oppose the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, which was signed in exchange for redeployment from Sinai. It is, according to Jeremy, what moved AIPAC to oppose the Oslo accords, or any other concessions Israel would have to make to solve the conflict with the Palestinians.
Ben-Ami believes that a hawkish approach does not characterize the majority of American Jews, but rather what he calls “the loudest eight percent”. In his talk in the Society for Ethical Culture, he explained his meaning:
“In order to familiarize itself with the prevailing political mood, J Street regularly conducts polls of American Jews. The polls show that the overwhelming majority of American Jews considers itself liberal-democratic. Regarding Israel, a poll from 2010 showed that 78% support a two-state solution, 82% understand that this kind of agreement is vital to security and democracy in Israel, and 69% believe that settlement building in the West Bank should be halted, or stopped all together.
Another regular question in the poll is: ‘What are the two most important issues for you in a political candidate?’ To our amazement, we discovered that in every poll, consistently, there exists a minority of 8-10 percent, for whom the decisive issue is not the economy, not health care, or education, but rather the single issue of the candidate’s position on Israel. These eight percent, who mostly for religious reasons are engaged with Israel above all else, are the ones who drive the debate – by being the loudest and the most aggressive. This minority is prone to a more hawkish and conservative approach than the majority of American Jews – and is pushing policy in a direction that in my opinion is harmful and dangerous to Israel.”
But the largest pro-Israel lobby, according to Ben-Ami, is actually Christian. “Today happens to be the annual conference of Christians United For Israel (CUFI),” he said last Thursday. “Today in Washington, over 10,000 Zionist-evangelical Christians assembled, and tomorrow they will gather on Capitol Hill in order to further their interests. CUFI is the largest pro-Israel lobby, larger than any Jewish organization. They have 700,000 members. That’s a huge political force. Even now, in the midst of the debate over the debt ceiling, Congress will stop and listen to them. So yes, the debate on Israel is formed in part by evangelical Christians. But essentially, I believe the Jewish voice is the decisive one on the issue of Israel.”
Jewish Politics
James Traub wanted to know how lobbies such as AIPAC and AJC, which represent the “eight percent” that Ben-Ami refers to, actually impact American policy.
“For example, in the speech that President Obama gave in May, he outlined a very sensible vision for Israel: the setting of borders between the two populates, based on the 1967 borders, with agreed upon land swaps. This is not new. It’s the accepted starting point in Middle East policy. But the minute that the president took a stand on it, he was hit by a wave of indignation from Jewish organizations, indignation that was echoed in the broader media. Oh, no, Obama attacked Israel! He’s approaching Israel with unilateral demands; he’s endangering its borders. This narrative got its start from the Prime Minister of Israel, of course, but it’s persisting because lobbies like AIPAC put out protest letters and gather signatures, activities that make Obama’s supporters feel threatened. Thus, instead of seeing broad bipartisan support for peace, we’ll see both parties stepping back from peace, and supporting a line that doesn’t threaten the status quo.”
“The political power of American Jews is a factor that can’t be underestimated,” Ben-Ami continued, “It greatly exceeds our percentage demographically. The estimate is that about 50% of the funds raised by the Democratic Party for national elections comes from Jewish sources. Every time a political figure considers supporting the peace process, what he dreads of hearing is: ‘If you do this, you’ll never see another dime from the Jewish community.’”
But all this, according to Ben-Ami, is changing.
For example: In 2010, candidate Jan Schakowsky ran for a congressional seat in a largely Jewish district in Chicago. Schakowsky is a liberal-democratic Jew, and she decided to accept J Street’s sponsorship in the race. Running against her was an Orthodox Jew, a conservative Republican. He arrived at the debate in city hall with a map of Israel, pointed at it, and said: ‘This is what will decide this election.”
The result: Schakowsky won the seat with a majority of 67%, instead of the 70% Democrats had in the previous election. Take into account that it was a year of Republican resurgence in local elections.
The conclusions that Ben-Ami draws from this are, first: that the backing of the “Jewish vote” is no longer conditioned by a blind support of an uncompromising line, a line following the will of a rightist Israeli government, and second: “even now J Street is a real alternative to AIPAC, a cohesive and organized alternative, well funded and with real political muscle. We are able to support and advance the candidates who will advance the peace process.”
In his book, Ben-Ami compares the opposition that he encounters from the mainstream of American Judaism to the one his father faced in his own time, when he tried to rouse the Jewish-American establishment to help bring European Jews to the land of Palestine, before the founding of Israel. Ben-Ami the father worked within the framework of the Irgun and Beitar, the opposition to the leadership headed by Ben-Gurion, and was perceived by the establishment as someone who was causing more harm than good to the Zionist enterprise. Jeremy writes:“…calling my colleagues and me fanatics, anti-Semitic, extremists, and self-hating Jews. The rules as set out by today’s mainstream leaders tell us to stay quiet, respect unity and avoid dissent. Just as my father wouldn’t accept the rules as he found them in the 1930s and ‘40s, I think today’s rulebook needs a fundamental rewrite.
“…I only hope that I will not spend the waning years of my life with as many regrets as my father had, because he just couldn’t get more people to listen.”
Ben-Ami characterizes the mainstream reaction to J Street as “a smear”, nowadays reserved for anyone who strays left from the accepted rightist-centrist line. “That is one of the reasons,” he says in an argument that was already raised in detail by the journalist and professor Peter Beinart, in an article that was published a year ago in the New York Review of Books and made him the target of the wrath of the Zionist-Jewish establishment in America, that “young American Jews, otherwise involved and politically active in the United States, distance themselves from the debate of anything related to Israel. The choice before them is to either support policy that doesn’t correspond with their liberal value system, or to risk being labeled anti-Israel.”
The Wrong Direction
If J Street objects to the argument it is an extremist leftist organization, then where does it in fact stand?
From the discussion it arises that politically, Ben-Ami sees the Kadima party as his parallel in Israel. He believes that the time has come, for the security of its people and the democratic character of Israel, to stop settlement building and to set a border between the two populations, as President Obama outlined in his speech in May, and that an American administration that is truly determined to solve the conflict can in fact do so.
No, he doesn’t think that President Obama is pressuring Israel unfairly; despite the fact that the polls show that this is the prevailing opinion among American Jews.
Yes, he does think that the UN dedicates disproportionate attention to Israel, and the public’s wariness of this treatment is justified. And no, no, he does not believe that the majority of arguments against Israel stem from anti-Semitism. “If somebody says he recognizes the right of Israel to exist, and the right of the Jewish people to self-rule and self-defense, but he doesn’t agree with the actions that Israel takes – that is not anti-Semitism. Different spokesmen and representatives used the anti-Semitism card too many times already: We delegitimized the term “de-legitimization”. We’re like the boy who cried wolf: If, god forbid, a moment will come when we actually have to warn against a real anti-Semitic problem, no one will believe us.”
“The feeling in the broader public,” says the journalist James Traub during the talk with Ben-Ami, “is that it doesn’t matter what happens in Washington; while Netanyahu is the Prime Minister, there is little chance for peace. What is your opinion?”
“I agree. This isn’t an optimistic moment. But that doesn’t mean that we get to rest on the sidelines until conditions improve! That’s the message that I am trying to send with this book. If the people in this room care about Israel, if they care about the character of the country, that it’s a democratic and Jewish state, it’s up to us to sound the alarm. We need to sound the alarm that the policies of the current administration are putting Israel in real danger, and we need to change course quickly. The current Israeli government has a tendency to respond to any kind of pressure as if it is an attack, and Netanyahu is great at spurring feelings of anxiety and national persecution: That’s why J Street opposes such methods as general boycotts of settlements, or any other negative pressure, that can create a backlash. The message we wish to send the government of Israel is: we’re on your side. We really are pro-Israel, and we really do care about Israel. We, the Jews of the United States, stood behind you for generations. We give you money, political support, we invest in Israel, we send our kids on vacation in Israel, we do everything that is good for Israel. Now we are asking you to listen to us. Not out of pressure, but out of love: you’re going in the wrong direction!”
