J Street Journal
New Voices Editor Ben Sales attended J Street’s first annual confernce from Oct. 25-27 as a member of the press corps. Here are his reflections from three days wih America’s pro-Israel, pro-Peace lobby, taken from the New Voices blog:
Day One: The Challenge of Dissent
One of the most appealing, revolutionary, perplexing and perhaps sustainable aspects of J Street’s message is that there is not one but multiple ways to be pro-Israel. Appealing because it lets us be freer with our opinions; revolutionary because it appears to break with the traditional American Jewish idea that we must present a unified front regarding Israel’s policies; perplexing because J Street has articulated a set of distinct policies for Israel; and sustainable because it’s true: we don’t all agree on Israel, regardless of how much we may love the country.
It was hard to ignore the complexity of the assertion that there are as many ways to care for Israel as there are people when Daniel Sokatch, the new CEO of the New Israel Fund, said, “There is no one, official way to love Israel.” It would have perhaps been more inspiring or more simple, maybe, had he not continued, “We offer a critical third way for American Jews to love, support and engage” with the Jewish state: in other words, a specific way to love Israel, even though there are several ways you can.
Therein lies the problem: part of the appeal of J Street is that it is not AIPAC, that its message of tolerance and peace extends not just to the Palestinians but to other Jews–or non-Jews–that don’t fit the established mold; this would be fine if J Street were not an advocacy group, one committed to convincing senators, congressmen and the president that its solutions were better than those of AIPAC–a group that demands more orthodoxy in terms of Israel policy from its members.
So J Street becomes a catch-all for the diverse and disagreeing group of non-AIPAC Israel supporters, a dialogue group. This emerged in the J Street U student conference on Sunday, where students disagreed and discussed their differing Israel positions with each other in breakout sessions led by J Street U staffers who seemed happy to hear the dialogue but who doubtless wanted to push the students toward concrete action in terms of policy.
J Street U, however, calls in its mission statement for more dialogue than does J Street itself, so an emphasis on dissenting opinions there is more understandable, if less effective in terms of advancing policies. To hear the same emphasis at the beginning of the J Street conference, though, made it seem like the organization had some soul-searching to do in its quest to find its place in the Jewish institutional community. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of the lobby, even spoke to those in the crowd who disagreed with J Street, asking them to come with “open minds” instead of “open mouths” ready to argue.
Ben-Ami’s statement indicated a trend in J Street: part of their message is still on the defensive. This is understandable: several leading Jewish news sources, including the JTA and the Jerusalem Post, have run articles questioning the effectiveness and even the right of J Street to advocate the positions they do; in addition, the Israeli Embassy has sent an observer to the conference rather than Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador here. Beyond that, J Street has a herculean task ahead if it intends to convince the Jewish community of its correctness; AIPAC is one of Washington’s best lobbies. By acknowledging its interlocutors and asserting several times that their brand of “pro-Israel” is legitimate, J Street expressed that it exists not so much to provide a second or third way, but to break the monopoly.
With that break comes a plethora of new perspectives that all gain legitimacy because an institution has told them that their version of being pro-Israel is authentic. This is a triumph for the Jewish community, that people’s opinions can find acceptance; it creates a situation wherein people need to encounter opinions different from their own and think critically about what they believe. This may indeed be J Street’s biggest impact and right now it seems to be their most important one, but Ben-Ami and others will at some point need to ask how much divergence from the party line they will tolerate, and what they want their message to be.
Day Two: The Good Fight
I was a junior at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy during the height of the second Intifada in 2003 and I remember that for Israel’s memorial day that year our school put up a large banner across the stage, quoting the biblical verse, “And I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live!’ And I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live!’”
It inspired me. The death we witnessed in the land of Israel was also a reaffirmation of life, of those who went on living despite the terror. And the war also bound us to Israel, demanding our pride and devotion through one of the state’s toughest periods. I don’t know what it would have been like to go to school in an era of relative Israeli peace but I can’t imagine that we would have been so passionate.
So I identified with a woman, speaking at one of the J Street panels today, who said that she formed her Jewish identity around the conflict: when you have to navigate a war and you feel pressure to choose sides, you’re going to invest yourself more and pay more attention. You can research, dialogue, protest, write, change your mind, watch television footage, read articles and do any number of other things. The conflict is present, the conflict is real and the conflict is ongoing. Because you’re somehow connected, your opinion matters and the issues matter to you. The conflict is the focal point of your Judaism.
I got the same impression from the litany of other J Street events today. Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Haaretz, joked that he got paid by Peace Now because he speaks so much about the settlements’ injustice. Throughout the conference people were speaking about Israeli-Palestinian violence as if it were a negative but also with the assumption that it could continue for a long time. Rabbi Eric Yoffie and Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s founder, said as much in their debate this afternoon, asserting that the settlements may soon prove impossible to uproot, thereby perpetuating the conflict for years.
Yoffie’s speech, which was critical of some aspects of J Street’s policies, did not find favor with the crowd, some of which booed Yoffie and yelled at him for being too excusing of the IDF. The heckling, however inappropriate, gave the room a rush and participants were most attentive to that speech than at any other time during the day. These, remember, are the people that came to Washington because they, like me, are engrossed in the conflict. Now here is an internecine conflict in the liberal pro-Israel community. They will not hold back.
And there’s nothing wrong with feeling passionate about the violence, obsessing over the conflict or arguing about it. Care for Israelis and Palestinians can be at the core of a Jewish identity that is no less valid than one based in traditional Halakhic observance or social justice. A vested interest in the conflict leads those who hold that interest to involve themselves in a concrete way, much as J Street’s supporters are doing now. Caring too much about the fighting–if that is possible–is better than not caring enough and sitting idly by while people die.
My one hope is that within this large interest in the conflict J Street’s supporters don’t lose their strong desire to end it. The woman who said that her identity developed around the conflict must find a new basis for her identity if she is indeed to realize her intentions of a peaceful region. It seems, too often, that more traditional groups engage in fear-mongering in order to guilt donors into giving and people into participating. Perpetuation of the causes of fear, then, serve the interests of those organizations.
J Street must not fall into that trap. The lobby must realize that with the end to the conflcit will come a sharp reduction in its influcence; it has to want that as much as possible and has to do everything in its power to make that happen. I believe that it will.
Living in our blood may make us passionate, but I hope that life itself will be inspiring enough.
Day Three and Recap: Posing the Problem
“In 100 years, the situation will be the same as it is now. Nothing will change.”
So said a friend of mine on my final night in Jerusalem last summer. She rolled her eyes and sipped a beer.
“What about the demographic issue?” I said.
“Whatever. We’ll just import a million more Russians. Why do you think we did it 20 years ago?”
Her cynicism was neither refreshing nor did I agree with her analysis. Her opinions, however, did not exist on the margins: it seemed then that most Israelis had given up hope for any kind of change to the status quo. She was a leftist like me and we had the same hopes: equal rights for all, a just peace and the ability for Palestinians to live in a sovereign state. But she’d given up on those hopes.
Little has changed since then and speakers at the J Street conference yesterday pulled no punches in asserting that the Netanyahu government’s policy served to keep things the way they are in Israel rather than manifesting an attempt at real change. And J Street rejected that complacency.
Yesterday’s panels and plenary sessions, featuring a number of high-ranking Israeli and Palestinian officials (or former officials), reviewed several obstacles in the way of J Street’s desired path to a two-state solution. Chief among them were the disunity of various Palestinian governing factions and their reticence to negotiate, proliferation of the settlements and the corresponding dearth of popular support for the IDF to evacuate them, the lack of extant Palestinian infrastructure for a state and, of course, the demographic issue: even if we were to assume foundation of a Palestinian state in the next couple of years, the demography of Israel proper doesn’t bode well for a Jewish, democratic and Zionist state: high birth rates among Haredim and Palestinian Israelis mean that within the next couple of decades the majority of Israeli eighteen year olds will not serve in the army because they are not Zionist.
And this is not to mention the reluctance of the Netanyahu government to negotiate, the uncompromising violent stance of Hamas and the inaction of the Arab world on this issue. All of these problems came up throughout the day at the conference.
But in recognizing these issues J Street created a sense of urgency around the timeline to create a Palestinian state. The group’s message: Now or never. Do or die. Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Eric Yoffie, Israeli MKs Ami Ayalon and Haim Ramon and J Street Director Jeremy Ben-Ami all reiterated that the open window for two states may soon close and that if it does, the ensuing calls for a binational state may spell the end of the Jewish state of Israel, something the lobby is by definition against.
Aside from one morning panel proposing various possible frameworks for a peace deal, the sessions yesterday posed more problems than they did offer concrete solutions, but that was the point. J Street does not pretend to have all of the answers; what they’re doing, in their first annual conference, is making sure that American Jews are not comfortable with the status quo, that they realize that things are changing and that there needs to be a voice in Washington to address that change in honest and productive ways. J Street wants to solve the problems but it understands that recognizing and confronting the issues comes first. That’s why the lobby exists.
J Street itself also faces some significant challenges as an organization. Along with many others, they need to define their base, focus on self-obsolescence and figure out their place on campus. In addition, they face a formidable competitor in AIPAC, the older pro-Israel lobby that is one of the most effective in Washington and that commands widespread loyalty in the American Jewish community.
But the lobby cannot achieve perfection in eighteen months and by almost any standard its first annual conference was a tremendous success. J Street attracted preeminent scholars, respected experts and high-ranking government officials; it brought together 1200 people (including 250 students) eager to stand under its banner; it staked out positions and did not apologize for its views; most importantly, it changed the landscape of the American pro-Israel community and sent a message:
Like it or not, J Street is here and it’s not going away, just like Israel’s problems.
