Redefining "Pro-Israel"

A new group called J Street wants to loosen the right-wing stranglehold on Israel advocacy. Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami explains how it will get the job done.

By Justin Elliott
April 30, 2008

J Street, a new “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying organization, launched two weeks ago to great hopes and expectations among progressives. The mission of the group is to nudge U.S. policy regarding Israel, the Palestinians, and the Middle East away from the far right. J Street, which aims to have a first-year budget of $1.5 million, has its work cut out. The existing infrastructure of “pro-Israel” groups is extensive and has been hugely influential, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) reportedly enjoying an endowment of over $100 million. For years, AIPAC and its allies have managed to exercise near-total ownership of the term “pro-Israel.” J Street is trying to expand the definition of “pro-Israel” to include positions beyond those advocated by, in J Street’s Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami’s words, the “Israel right-or-wrong crowd.” J Street represents a centrist, and Israel-centric, take on the Mideast conflict.

At the helm of J Street is Ben-Ami, a former deputy domestic policy adviser under Bill Clinton, policy director for Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, and, most recently, senior vice president at Fenton Communications, a well-known progressive PR firm. Campus Progress caught up with Ben-Ami to talk about Jimmy Carter, what America should do about Israeli settlements, and whether J Street would endorse a Republican.

Can you explain why J Street was started and what need you think it will fill?

The J Street effort represents the first time that Americans who support Israel but believe that peaceful resolutions to its conflicts with its neighbors are really in its best interests will have a political voice in the American political process. For way too long, the main voices that have been heard when it comes to Israel and the Middle East in the American political process have come from the far right. They’ve been neoconservatives, they’ve been far-right leaders of the American Jewish community, and they have been far right Christian Zionists like John Hagee. Those voices have been taken to be the arbiters of what it means to be pro-Israel. They’ve defined what that term means. So, when American politicians try to prove that they are "pro-Israel," they take their talking points from the far right, and anything that doesn’t follow those points is assumed politically to be a death knell. So J Street is an attempt to provide a political home and a political base and a political machinery to demonstrate the broad base of support—not only in the Jewish community but in the broader American community—for an American policy that would say, yes, we do support the idea that there should be a Jewish home in Israel, but that that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be pursuing peace aggressively with the Palestinians, you shouldn’t be speaking to the Syrians, that you should be threatening war only with Iran. It’s fine to disagree with those policies and still be pro-Israel.

Why do you think the status quo in Israel advocacy has been the way it is for so long? Why do you think it took so long for an organization like J Street to be created?

The folks who are on the right tend to be, on this issue, very single-issue focused, and so you get some very strong advocates—very vocal, very willing to put their money where their mouth is—around this one issue. This is really what they determine their political decisions on, whether it's their donations, their votes, their endorsements—this is a single-issue thing for a lot of people on the right.

For mainstream and progressive Jews and their friends, this is an issue, it’s not the issue. They care about the environment and global warming; they care about women’s rights; they care about good jobs; they care about union issues. And in each of those movements, you’ll find a lot of great liberal American Jews at the forefront of it, right? But not so much when it comes to Israel; it’s not necessarily at the top of their agenda. What it is is more an issue to be avoided because it’s not the thing you’re most passionate about—it’s only going to lead to a massive argument and possibly personal attacks and vitriol.

But I think the time has come when the frustration level over who speaks for us has risen to the point where people are ready to say, "Enough. We’ve had it with this. This may not be the most important thing to me in the world, but it’s important enough and it’s enough of a symbol of my community and who we are as a country and what we’re standing for in the world. It's time for me to stand up and say what I think."

On your website you say that J Street is not just going to be lobbying but will also advocate within the Jewish community. I was looking at last year’s American Jewish Committee (AJC) poll and there was one question about whether Israel should ever compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli control. It’s 58 percent “no” to 36 percent “yes.” Do you think you face an uphill battle in convincing American Jews to be more oriented toward J Street’s point of view?

Well, several reactions when it comes to polls: There’s a question as well in that AJC survey about the two-state solution, and that, I think, had 47-43 support, a plurality. That is sort of the low mark of support in the American Jewish community for a two-state solution when the question is asked without any framing. In the context of a negotiated agreement that provides for Israel’s security—when that kind of language leads into the question—that 47 becomes 70. The way in which poll questions are phrased can dramatically impact the numbers you come up with.

So I think it’s not as much as an uphill battle as that one number [on Jerusalem] because I think the support is actually deeper. But even if it were just that floor, doesn’t that 36 to 47 percent deserve a political voice? Because right now the presumption in Washington is it’s 100 to 0 and that there’s only one opinion. When the furthest right voices speak out and say, "This is what it takes to be pro-Israel," folks on Capitol Hill don’t question whether or not they need to jump, they just ask how high. That’s the only voice they hear, and it’s presumed that there is no disagreement.

Well, at least the numbers show there is another set of views within the American Jewish community. This is an effort to provide that group with a voice and to say there’s a diversity of opinions within this community. They are legitimately all pro-Israel, they just disagree on how to get there. If you get to the point where there is some acknowledgement that that diversity of opinion exists, then we will have achieved our objectives. Because our goal is to open up political space so that policy makers and politicians can actually say what they think is the right policy, not feel afraid, not feel constrained, and not feel that there will be a political price to pay because there will be no one out there supporting them.

One big thing in the news last week was Jimmy Carter and his trip to the Middle East, where he met with a Hamas leader. I noticed that there was a pretty strong reaction to Carter’s trip in Congress. There was talk of revoking his passport. Representative Knollenberg (R-MI) introduced a Coordinated American Response to Extreme Radicals—CARTER—Act to cut funding to the Carter Center. Representative Gary Ackerman said that if Carter was at his Seder, he would have him read the part of the “simple son.” What is your take on Carter’s trip and the very strong opposition it has engendered in Congress?

I actually break the issue into two distinct questions. The first question is, "Should there be some effort to diplomatically engage Hamas, in the interest of trying to resolve this conflict?" The second question is, "Should that effort be led by Jimmy Carter?"

On the first, J Street’s opinion is absolutely, there has to be some opening, some dialogue, some exploration of the possibilities of reaching an agreement with Hamas—through third parties and back channels. Clearly Mahmoud Abbas and all of them need to be tied into this; there has to be some reconciliation within the Palestinian society as a precondition to any forward movement. So as a general matter, should there be attempts to engage Hamas and to find dialogue with them? Yes. 64 percent of the Israeli public wants the Israeli government to have a dialogue with Hamas about a ceasefire. Clearly Israelis are there. So on the first question, J Street comes out resoundingly in favor of engaging our enemies—you don’t make peace with your friends, you only make peace with your enemies. You aren’t going to make peace if there’s no open avenue somewhere for dialogue.

The second question is, "Do you send a lightning rod into the middle of a thunderstorm to be your umbrella?" If you were going to pick somebody to open up this dialogue, you probably would not pick Jimmy Carter. You have to respect him, which I don’t think everybody has done. You know, Haaretz had an editorial last week saying that the way Israeli government is treating Carter on this visit is shameful. This is a man who 31 years ago helped broker the single most significant peace agreement that Israel has ever achieved. And he deserves more respect and more thanks than he has gotten. That doesn’t mean he’s an effective emissary and it doesn’t mean that we would say, "Why don’t we send Jimmy Carter as our envoy to the Middle East." That’s not where J Street would come out.

With regard to J Street’s stance on the settlements, your website says that U.S. opposition to the expansion of the settlements should continue. But, obviously, U.S. opposition during the Bush administration and over the longer term has largely failed. The settlements have continued to expand. Does J Street advocate for any shift in U.S. policy or strengthening of U.S. policy to take a harder line against the settlements?

We think whatever can be done should be done in order to help Israel understand that this is, A, something that is simply not acceptable to the United States, but, B, continues to be not in Israel’s own self interest. This is a set of policies that is just continuing to throw fuel on a fire. Putting on our hats as advocates for Israel and people who care about Israel, we share the point of view that the majority of Israelis have which is that the whole settlement enterprise has actually been a net-negative for Israel’s security and for its future. So anything that can be done—stronger American words, stronger American actions, stronger engagement on the issue—would all be helpful if it helps the Israeli government have the backbone to actually implement the promises and do the things that it said it would do.

In terms of strengthening American policy with, as you said, increased actions, I know under George H. W. Bush there was the attempt to make American loan guarantees to Israel contingent on not expanding settlements. Would J Street advocate that sort of policy or is there any other specific policy you plan on advocating?

Not in the specific because we’re more interested in the political space for leaders to promote and propose ideas and ways to do this. By showing the generalized support from a broad swath of Americans that recognizes these settlements as a whole are antithetical to Israeli and U.S. interests, that provides the political space for public officials to pursue policies that help implement stated American foreign policy, which is opposition to the settlements.

The J Street PAC is planning on making endorsements and I noticed [Former Republican Sen.] Lincoln Chafee is on your advisory board. Do you expect there will be races in which J Street will endorse a Republican candidate who might have a reputation as more progressive on Middle East issues than the Democrat?

The PAC is an issue PAC so we’re going to be looking at the stances of candidates on the issues we care about. Whether they have a D after their name or an R is not relevant to what they say and do on this issue. So every case will have to be taken on its own merits and we’re going to have to pick in our first year in a very targeted manner which races we engage in. We’re only going to engage in a handful of races in our first year.

When will those first endorsements be made?

They should be made in June. And we’ll be rolling them out over the course of the summer.

College campuses have always been a flashpoint for debate on the Israel/Palestine issue. Do you plan on doing anything to reach out to students in particular?

We’re definitely going to have opportunities for people to engage, through the PAC, in having town hall meetings and webcasts when we have some of our candidates talk to PAC members and take questions. Broadly speaking, what we want to do is to provide a home for people on campuses somewhere between the Israel right-or-wrong crowd on the right, and the anti-Israel crowd on the left. Somewhere in the middle is a pro-Israel home for people who have concerns about what Israel and the U.S. are doing but still fundamentally want to express their support for the notion of a Jewish home in the state of Israel.

Justin Elliott is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones magazine. He lives in San Francisco.

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Comments
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1. J-Street is founded upon a poorly thought out concept of applying American standards to the Middle East. The implications of Israeli withdrawal without a quid pro quo from the Palestinians is clear from the strength of Hizb’Allah in Southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. What does J-Street have to offer in the face principles clearly stated by Hamas that require the liquidation of Israel? “Oh, please let us live and we will give you more money and land.” How naive!

   — jlevyellow - May 1, 10:21 PM - #
   
   

2. lol, I can’t believe how people are still making out the Palestinians to be the “bad guys.” Israel is the occupying power, and has effective control over Palestine’s borders and the internal movement of its people.

   Israel wants to defuse the militant radicals? Withdraw fully to the pre-1967 borders.

   — For Student Power - May 7, 10:56 AM - #
   
   

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