This is a guest post by Joel, a non-profit professional and former Hillel president at the University of Colorado. Joel will be writing a series of posts on non-profits and NGOs either located in or focused on Israel and the Middle East. He can be followed on Twitter at @ExplodingGopher.
There has been a lot of talk this week about a new Israel-centered grassroots political group. J-Street is definitely ruffling some feathers after last week’s large conference turnout, which they heralded a “smashing success”. The group exceeded attendance goals and managed to attract the attention of college students, members of Knesset, major newspapers from the Jerusalem Post to the Economist, and even the ruling powers of Jordan. In a political atmosphere supposedly dominated by AIPAC, many believe that the conference signals J-Street’s “coming out” onto the scene of the American lobby for Israel. However, at this point in time, a comparison of the two groups which seeks to paint them as opposites on a spectrum of pro-Israel political engagement is disingenuous, and the belief that J-Street is truly “the new address for Middle East peace and security” is dangerous.
For now, we will have to put aside the question of the legitimacy and the irony of American political groups that lobby for the interests of another country. Instead, let us examine the rhetoric of J-Street and how it plays into the current political scene. J-Street is a self-described “‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ lobby, whose executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, says it is fighting for the ‘heart and soul’ of the American Jewish community. Unlike AIPAC, J Street intends to push aggressively for a two-state solution based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders” (source). Surprisingly, the interesting part of this discussion is not J-Street’s actual platform; it is not surprising to see a group emerging which grounds its support of Israel on the premise that Israel ought to be making unprecedented concessions.
The method and rhetoric of a grassroots political group is as important as the actual policies which it supports. J-Street has done a brilliant job attracting support using wording like “pro-peace.” While seemingly harmless, this phrase places dissenters in a defensive position; if you don’t agree with J-Street’s path, you must be “anti-peace,” or worse, “pro-war”. This is a dangerous way to paint the opposition, as it’s the same rhetorical technique that the hawks use to bully people into supporting wars: “either you’re with us, or you’re a terrorist.” Certainly, this is the kind of destructive manipulation that we should be avoiding.
Moreover, J-Street puts a lot of emphasis on its relationship with the Jewish community. In America, the Israel question is often painted as a Jewish question, which is a dangerous position to take. When we twist the concept of “pro-Israel” into an understanding of “pro-Jewish,” we enter the rhetorical territory of Ahmadinejad and his lovely Holocaust-denying friends and open the door to legitimizing anti-Semitic arguments. Though J-Street’s policies of engagement show that the group understands the distinction, their numerous references to being the new voice of the American Jewish community have a high potential to slide down this slippery slope. It would be a mistake to paint groups like AIPAC as non-representative of Jewish opinion; it is equally wrong to claim that J-Street represents a major shift in Jewish public opinion about Israel. Most importantly, however, it’s simply a bad idea to paint the question of Israel as a Jewish question.
In the post-Obama political atmosphere, grassroots political organizers and lobbyists have found strength in numbers. In order to bring in the throngs, however, such groups manipulate their language and position to a dangerous extreme. Since AIPAC markets itself as “America’s pro-Israel lobby,” J-Street’s rhetoric equates this traditional pro-Israel stance with violence. Young Jews are certainly “low-hanging fruit” for recruiting members into organization like J-Street. However, the need to gain members ought not overshadow the group’s purpose–in this case, to promote Israel’s interests. We shall see what happens as J-Street matures, but it does not make sense to portray them as the new American Jewish voice on Israel.
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