J Street

J Street is an interest group intending to encourage a U.S. role in ending the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestine Conflicts. While it describes itself as composed of "Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, peacefully and diplomatically", it also supports a two-state solution with a sovereign Palestinian state. Its policies differ from many held by the State of Israel's government and other U.S. Zionist organizations.

Its name is something of a Washington pun, as while Washington, D.C. streets are alphabetical and K Street NW is associated with the highest density of lobbyists, for reasons never explained, the original city design skipped the letter J; there is no physical J Street.

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom will merge, as of October 2009, its estimated 50,000 grass-roots members and 1,000 rabbis with J Street.

Positioning

The organization is fairly new, having been founded in 2008. It is positioned as a liberal alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; David Kimche, former Mossad officer and director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said "AIPAC has become more militant than the Israeli government. Its messages reflect more the oppositionist Likud doctrine than the moderate stance of Prime Minister Olmert. Moreover, whereas … some 80 percent of the Jewish voters traditionally cast their votes for the Democrats, AIPAC is geared to an extreme-right-wing agenda, often more in line with the Jewish neo-cons than with the majority of American Jews.” While FrontPage Magazine, the publication of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, claims that the organization was founded and funded by George Soros, the organization denies his involvement, says he is welcome to contribute, and its financial disclosure statement reveals no contributions from him.

October 2009 conference

For its October 2009 conference, the keynote speaker was James L. Jones, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Obama Administration. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, however, declined to appear, saying that J Street's policies "could impair Israel's interests." J Street, however, did not invite Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) to the conference, because JVP does not assume a two-state solution.

Relations with Oren

While there is suspicion from the Israeli government, Oren, in February 2010, said, in a February 10 interview with the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, that J Street had moved "The J Street controversy has come a long way toward resolving. The major concern with J Street was their position on security issues, not the peace process. J Street has now come and supported Congressman Howard Berman’s Iran sanction bill; it has condemned the Goldstone Report; it has denounced the British court’s decision to try [[Tzipi Livni[[ for war crimes, which puts J Street much more into the mainstream." J Street, in turn, defended him after protesters at the University of California at Irvine kept him from speaking.

Gaza sanctions

J Street and Americans for Peace Now cosponsored a letter from 54 House Democrats to President Obama, calling for lifting sanctions on Gaza. The lead authors were Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Washington) and Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) Gaza is under the control of Hamas. The letter was critical of Israeli positions. Hadar Susskind, Director of Policy and Strategy at J Street, on February 21, 201, coauthored an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, commenting on the response to the letter.

Not a single major Jewish communal organization opposed the letter during the six weeks it was open for signatures. There is a good reason no groups opposed the letter, because there is nothing in it that would justify such opposition.

Yet now, the Republican Jewish Coalition (not a Jewish communal organization but rather a partisan organization that targets the Jewish community), for its own narrow political reasons, is attacking members of Congress who signed the letter, grossly mischaracterizing its content and the focus of its message.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who supports the State of Israel policy, said J Street takes “positions in Washington I have difficulty with.” According to Engel, J Street overemphasizes Israeli imperfections and refuses to put "the blame squarely where I think it belongs – the Palestinian attitude of denying Israel the right to exist as a Jewish state.”

Congressional visit to Israel

When a group of Democratic Congressmen ,led by Bill Delahunt (Massachusetts), with Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio), Bob Filner and Lois Capps of California and Donald Payne (New Jersey) visited Israel in February 2010, sponsored by J Street and Churches for Middle East Peace, the Deputy Foreign Minister, refused to meet with them as long as staff from the sponsors would be present. Israeli Defense Forces prevented them from going to Gaza. They did meet with Palestinian officials, the king and prime minister of Jordan, and members of the Knesset including the leader of the opposition, Tzipi Livni (Kadima).

Yuli Edelstein (Likud), the Diaspora affairs minister, was among those to refuse to meet with them.

There's a very simple rule, and I leave it with a question mark: If J Street says it is able to represent every government in Israel, maybe they can be a lobby. If they can't be a lobby, call themselves Young Liberal Jews for whatever, for Better Jewish Communal Life in the United States, and then we'll speak with them.

Ben Ami responded that Edelstein was setting an impossible benchmark for any U.S. Jewish group to meet.

The minister clearly misunderstands what J Street is and how American lobbies that are not agents of foreign governments operate. We don't claim to, and in fact do not, represent the government of Israel. We explicitly reserve the right to agree with it at times and to disagree with it at times -- as we do with the U.S. government.