'J Street' Seems to Be Finding a Niche

J Street, the leftish Jewish lobby, is having an effect. Here is a piece urging Obama to make common cause with the "other Jewish lobby"-- not the Likudnik-neocon lobby, AIPAC. Here is J Street's great ad in the New York Times the other day, in which it urges American Jews to give support to Israel when it is negotiating with Arabs (not just when it's killing them). Here is Ralph Seliger (of Meretz-USA) supporting J Street, and noting that Avrum Burg and Henry Siegman are associated with the new lobby, two prophets.

Last night I was reading about an effort by progressive Jews to take on the lobby 30 years ago, Breira. In his book on American Jews and Israel, Steven T. Rosenthal says that Breira formed in the mid-70s in alarm over the occupation. The Jewish establishment promptly stuffed the group in a bag and dropped it off a bridge. Breira people were blacklisted, the group seems to have disappeared.

This time round J Street has plenty o' room to run. Israel looks a lot worse, for one thing; Zionism has worked out to be an extremist ideology by and large. I think the biggest factor in its favor is assimilationism. As Rosenthal writes, the American Jewish devotion to Israel served as a "bulwark against assimilation...While their love affair with Israel has never guaranteed a viable Jewish identity, it has at least prevented the decline in Jewish identification from becoming a total surrender and has kept alive that sense of communal obligation indispensable for the well-being of both Israeli and American Jews." Ah, now you know what it's about, huh! Rosenthal said that, presciently, 7 years ago. Since then Jewish identification has softened even more in the U.S. One of my principal impressions of going to the AIPAC policy conference was how old the crowd was, and old-world too.

Comments

[Richard Witty]

"Zionism has worked out to be an extremist ideology by and large. I think the biggest factor in its favor is assimilationism. "

J Street is Zionism. If you appreciate J Street, then you appreciate Zionism.

If you criticize expansionistic flavors of Zionism, that is an entirely different color.

"old". You and I are old. If you go to meetings of the left, peace groups, etc., they are also old.

A different question than what you are asking.

[Richard Witty]

Assimilation is on a continuum.

There is NO perfectly isolated, nor perfectly assimilated.

You and I are cases in point.

[David]

Richard's right. You're old, he's old. Here's what a young Jew looks like
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8JbnPkPMU5o

[otto]

The niche J Street appears to be finding is the ability to give the impression that change in US policy towards the Palestinians is possible. But in fact the policy - basically, colonise the natives, then offer them a 'generous compromise' based on 'demographic realities' - is one J Street endorses.

[Jim Haygood]

"Here is J Street's great ad in the New York Times the other day."

Great ad. But how much did it cost? Sending money to the Slimes just serves to fund the zionist establishment.

For once, Richard Witty and I are in complete harmony: "J Street is Zionism. If you appreciate J Street, then you appreciate Zionism."

WORD!!

[Rupa Shah]

Here is another one which indicates, Sen Obama still has not discovered 'J Street' or other progressive american jewish community!
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/hijab

[Ed]

I just watched the YouTube video on Birthright Israel linked to by David above.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8JbnPkPMU5o

It featured the gorgeous Jamie Lynn Sigler, who played Tony Sopranos daughter on The Sopranos, who recently participated in the program with her unnamed American friend. In Israel, they were filmed on video, chatting:
----
American Friend: …what we were talking about last night, if we had to go to war, I would almost rather go to war for Israel than America.

Sigler: Yeah, it seems awful to say, growing up in America, but I feel more pride, connected to this country just in the past 10 days.
----
This program is clearly designed to recruit Jewish American Zionists to commit both hard and soft treason against America.

God knows, these two angel-faced Jewish American Princess airheads will never have to enlist in the US military, but both of them are the type of Jewish Zionists who, on the one hand, profess to be anti-war liberals, but on the other, are indoctrinated to give Israel free rein to murder and subjugate at will. No doubt, as they grow older and “wiser,” they will concede that it is sometimes necessary for even America to conduct wars -- so long as they are for Israel.

Americans are subsidizing a country that indoctrinates Jewish Americans into Jewish nationalism, and then suborns those same Jews to commit treason against America.

How many thousands of Zionist neo-Rosenbergs are out there just waiting to be activated by their Israeli handlers? And how many don’t even need to be activated to betray their own country, but do it out of the kind of conscious Israel-first loyalties (albeit in the incubation stage) that found expression in the conversation above? And how many mature Israel-firsters are methodically going about this treasonous business every day?

The damage that the Jewish Zionists Neocons who were instrumental in lying America into the Iraq war have done thus far is likely merely the tip of the iceberg unless this problem is addressed. Even today, we're seeing the kind of pull that the new Rosenbergs have at the highest levels of government with the blatant Israel-first warmongering against Iran going on by the Bush administration and the Democrat Congress.

It's really no longer a question -- Americans are today in an existential struggle against Zionism, with the lives of tens of thousands of US soldiers hanging in the balance.

It’s time for an anti-Zionist movement of the severity, scope and tenaciousness that comprised the anti-Communist one.

[Richard Silverstein]

Breira--now, that's My Back Pages. Takes me back to my youth & the deep dark past of being an American Jewish dissident in the 70s & beyond. Let's also remember New Jewish Agenda.

I wouldn't use Ralph Seliger as an arbiter of what is good on the American Jewish scene regarding Israel. He supported the war in Lebanon almost till the bitter end & berated me mercilessly for my unyielding opposition to it. Regarding J Street, I guess the guy sometimes does get it right.

[Jonathon Plimpton]

As long as people see themselves as separate from others, by whatever insane rationale, by whatever degree, they will lack peace. Such judgements come from fear, which cannot co-exist with Love . . . for Perfect Love casts out all fear. From judgements come all the sorrows of the world. From Love comes the Peace of God.

All judgement is self-judgement. It binds the eyes, giving rise to the blindness of hatred, and that of one's self. Directed toward others and their destruction, it is but one's self that is destroyed. Thus has it ever been.

[Richard Witty]

Jonathon.
Be careful about your use of "all". Its also an exageration of reality.

Diversity (individuals and distinct communities) is also part of the native universe.

[Ed]

One other point on the Sigler conversation in Israel:

American Friend: …what we were talking about last night, if we had to go to war, I would almost rather go to war for Israel than America.

Sigler: Yeah, it seems awful to say, growing up in America, but I feel more pride, connected to this country just in the past 10 days.
----
There's clearly a contempt for contemporary American values expressed here, even though these two princesses, in theory, have been beneficiaries of the best life that America has to offer.

This explains why both "liberal" and money-worshipping Jewish Zionists have systematically gone about turning America into a chaotic, increasingly depraved and desperate society, by, for example, piping Hollywood trash television programming with the filthiest, most violent and degenerate content into nearly every American household 24/7 for years on end: they want to destroy the American and Christian fabric to break down its resistance to their alien, supremacist Zionist ideology, and render Americans virtual zombies to their will. They also want to create the illusion that Israel is a paradigm of principles and morality by comparison.

It's sure working. On the left, we have useful idiots dumbed down by Hollywood, mainstream media and political correctness; on the right we have useful idiots dumbed down by Hollywood, mainstream media and "Christian" Zionism.

Statist socialists and capitalist extremists have also played right into this by systematically destroying America's Christian underpinnings in favor of their competing, Godless ideologies.

The Zionists have one thing right: it takes more to hold a society together than abstract creeds and materialism. American Neocons, who preach the creedal nation/markets line probably know this too, and only seek to keep America together long enough to suck it dry.

I’d bet most US-dwelling Jewish Zionists keep an open-ended, one-way ticket to Israel tucked away in their safes and safety deposit boxes right underneath their garish jewelry in anticipation of the day when it all falls apart.

[Jonathon Plimpton]

Diversity is not reality, but is a part of the illusion. That we appear different, as diverse cultures, etc., has no bearing on the reality of all being one.

Even within the illusion, we may respect our differences. To do otherwise is to judge, to dwell in fear and endless pain in a hell of our own making.

[Richard Witty]

Jonathon,
You are misguided.

There is no valid school of thought that suggests such a suicidal approach.

Not yoga, not tantra, not Islam, not Judaism, not Christianity, not Buddhism.

[Richard Witty]

Your life has a purpose, a unique one, not a dissolved one.

[MM]

Actually I would say that it's your tribalist separatist thinking that is "jewicidal", Richard.

Jonathon on the other hand has got his hammer squarely on the nail's head. Right on, my brother. Right on.

'Member Thich Nhat Hanh Rich? "We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness"? Haven't we swam through this before, the implications of universalism for zionism? Do you think you can just keep treading water eternally, Richard, while we humanists goy & jew just swallow all your saltwater?

[samuel burke]

check this one out...about six minutes into it they mention jstreet the other jewish lobby.....aipac gets a couple of dishonorable mentions to boot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlFO-7vfhJc

[Richard Witty]

MM,
Thich Nhat Hanh's PRACTISE is what's important.

Peace. Acceptance of the other. Health.

Its a DIFFERENT message than "dissolve".

[Richard Witty]

MM,
Thich Nhat Hanh might also say that the reaction to "tribalism" is itself a form of tribalism.

Greed is a trap. Anger at greed is a trap.

[MM]

Zen master Witty, are not traps themselves a trap? "Never Again" zionism, is that not a trap?

Stop thinking about traps, and start visualizing bank accounts and congressional legislation.

"Follow the money", to me, is no trap. Just basic American common sense.

When Phil says US politics is broken, coughs nervously and circles his finger over in the general direction of American zionism, he is not trapping anyone.

He's also not telling the entire story--just an important part. The militarism of the U.S. predates and transcends zionism, but especially now with the disappearance of the USSR, zionism provides the vehicle for so much of it.

Practice is everything. Practice no longer denying rights to non-Jews or bombing its neighbors, and zionism might just get out of its own trap.

[moonkoon]

My own preference is for a one state solution and a wider economic, political and military union for the Levant, so I probably don't line up with jstreet's ideas.
Nevertheless, I would like to congratulate them on the ad in the New York Times.
Even if they did have to "deal with the Devil", it was money well spent. :-)