Waging Peace, Pages 55-56

J Street and the Battle for the Jewish Soul

THE INAUGURAL conference of J Street, held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC from Oct. 25 to 28, lived up to the media fanfare which led up to it. The self-styled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby, launched in 2008, has been at the center of controversy since it opposed the Israeli war in Gaza. Expecting an attendance of around 1,000, the conference ultimately exceeded capacity at 1,500—a sure sign that large numbers of Americans are looking to J Street with hope for extrication from, if not the resolution of, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the same time, the controversies which raged going into the conference are no less ferocious coming out of it.

Unlike past likeminded Jewish organizations, J Street has typically avoided any talk of “Zionism” or “the Jewish people.” This line appeared to break down in the opening plenary of the conference, however, most strikingly with a film prepared by the leftist New Israel Fund featuring several American rabbis speaking effervescently of their love for Israel as their ostensible homeland.

But overall, as the conference wore on, this avowed progressive Zionism demonstrated itself to be mere “crossdressing,” as David Brooks called it in the context of the Democratic and Republican conventions, projecting a markedly different image to the public than would be evident on the floor and in breakout sessions. The marked absence of progressive Zionist platitudes from all of the breakout sessions attended by this writer may be exactly analogous to the contrast reported on by bloggers such as Philip Weiss at recent AIPAC conferences: between the warm regard for the Obama administration expressed in their public program and the frank neoconservatism dominating the breakout sessions.

Notable in this connection was the postscript for the conference written by The Forward’s J.J. Goldberg, who in multiple breakout sessions eagerly held the line for steadfastness to Zionist ideology, even to the point of invoking such antique platitudes as that “the Jews”—as opposed to mere Israelis—were entitled to national self-determination “just like the French.” Writing after the conference, Goldberg rued that “[b]y calling for unfettered debate, J Street essentially invited the un-Zionists to come and participate. Objecting to their presence would undercut its declared commitment to open discussion. But embracing them would undermine its credibility as a pro-Israel organization advocating compromise as a means to strengthen Israel’s security, not weaken it.”

Permeating the conference throughout, and perhaps especially in the “crossdressing” main program, was the theme that we are rapidly approaching the point of no return with respect to saving the two-state solution. There was probably no one more alarmist about the rapidly closing window than Eric Yoffie, leader of the Union for Reform Judaism. Yoffie had issued a highly publicized attack on J Street last January over its opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza, and while many observers had expected him to make some effort to be conciliatory in his highly anticipated address to the conference, he came out forcefully with no apologies for his positions on Gaza. Indeed, he began by lecturing about what it means to be a “pro-Israel organization,” that this required no less than to “recognize that Jewish life cannot be sustained without Israel at its core.”

Most notably, however, Yoffie was roundly booed by the audience for declaring that “Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself,” referring to the recent U.N. report finding that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in Gaza. This was followed with a polite questioning from the floor by Ellen Lippmann, a co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, speaking candidly about the devastation to Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure in repeating her organization’s endorsement of the Goldstone Report—only to receive the cold shoulder from her rabbinic colleagues.

Yoffie’s performance brought into sharp relief one of the most striking implications of the conference. Whereas the neoconservatives have responded to the rise of J Street with a hysteria nearly unmatched in their long and hysterical history, the leadership of J Street, and the more conservative cohort present, care deeply about Israel and are desperate to save the two-state solution and thus save Israel as a “Jewish state.”

Gen. James Jones, the president’s national security adviser, addressed the conference on its final day, assuring the audience in an otherwise boilerplate address that “this administration will be represented at all future conferences.” It would indeed be difficult to interpret this as anything less than Obama throwing down the gauntlet to the whole Israel lobby and declaring “we will deal with you on our terms.” This can certainly go far in explaining the extraordinary fever pitch of neocon hostility to J Street—that a considerable number of American Jews are willing and perhaps eager to serve the Obama administration in exploiting the divisions in the American Jewish community.

Indeed, in an interview with NPR after he was booed out of the conference, Yoffie warned, “If this becomes an anti-AIPAC effort, then the American Jewish community will turn against it.”

Those who came to the J Street Conference with no illusions about saving or redeeming the Zionist project left with optimism going forward. Declared the ever-popular blogger Philip Weiss, “The status quo lobby is under assault from within the Jewish community, the battle has begun in earnest. Whether it will have any effect on Palestinian freedom is yet to be determined.” Rabbi Brant Rosen, organizer of the Jewish fast for Gaza endorsed by several dozen rabbis, wrote: “Over the course of three days, we heard professions of love for Israel, concern over the endangered ”˜Jewishness’ of the Jewish state, and expert analysis of the peace process. But for many in the crowd, it seemed that the conference was most galvanizing during the relatively rare and unscripted moments when presenters and participants delved more deeply into the inherent injustice of the situation on the ground.”

J Street, in short, is engaged in an extremely shrewd and complicated political game: to neutralize the threat posed by the Israel Lobby to the broader foreign policy agenda of the Obama administration, and to do so in the least antagonistic way possible. But in its desperation to save “the Jewish state,” it is not at all clear whether or not it recognizes the limits of J Street’s purpose and goals. As J.J. Goldberg observed, “The core problem is that J Street has two main stated goals, and they don’t really fit together. The first goal is to open up Jewish community discourse to a wider range of acceptable opinions. The second goal is to lobby for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that leads to a two-state solution. It became evident during the convention that you can’t do both.”

It remains to be seen how the leadership of J Street will react when all illusions about saving the two-state solution are gone. The question posed by Steve Walt in a blog responding to multiple developments in the days following the conference applies as much, and perhaps more, to J Street than anyone: “The two-state solution was on life support when Obama took office, and at first it appeared he might make a serious effort to nurse it back to health and make it a reality. At least, that’s what he said he was going to do. Instead, he and his Secretary of State are pulling the plug. But what will they do when ”˜two states for two peoples’ isn’t an option and everyone finally admits it, and the Palestinians begin to demand equal rights in ”˜greater Israel’?”

—Jack Ross