Sharply criticizing J Street and implying that US Senator Bernie Sanders should not be called a Jew may not have been Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter’s most diplomatic moment. But it was perhaps his most candid – articulating what many Israelis and their supporters quietly believe.
“How can you be pro-Israel and advocate for an arms embargo on a state that’s fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies?” Leiter asked of J Street, which bills itself as pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy.
His comments in Washington referred to the lobbying organization’s call to end military aid to Israel, including support for weapons systems such as Iron Dome.
“If they said that they were pro-Palestinian, I wouldn’t have a problem meeting with them,” he said. “I meet with pro-Palestinian groups. But when you come and say in such a two-faced manner, ‘We’re pro-Israel, we’re pro-democracy,’ there’s a democratically elected government in Israel. You don’t like [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, make aliyah, vote in the next election, and express yourself. Don’t say you’re ‘pro-democracy’ and decry and defy the position of the democratic government of Israel.”
Even as we reject Leiter’s reference to J Street as a “cancer” – believing it is possible to disagree without resorting to toxic rhetoric – we agree with the thrust of his criticism.
Israel is now in the 956th day of a war forced upon it on October 7. The very least it could expect from an organization calling itself pro-Israel is not to lobby against the sale of arms needed to defend itself or accuse it of genocide. That’s a low bar, and one that J Street failed to clear.
J Street lobbies Congress from far-Left position
Since its 2008 founding, just before Barack Obama’s presidency, J Street has served as a convenient vehicle through which Democratic administrations could pressure Israel while touting Jewish political backing.
Its head, Jeremy Ben-Ami, gave voice to this role in a 2009 interview, using an American football metaphor and saying that the organization’s “number one agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”
In other words, J Street would lobby Congress on behalf of Obama’s Middle East policies – policies that tilted overwhelmingly toward the Palestinians – counter opposition from AIPAC, and give Democratic lawmakers political cover to side with the administration against Netanyahu.
Along the way, J Street adopted a far Left position on Israeli politics even as the Israeli public repeatedly rejected that approach at the ballot box. Yet, the organization continued to portray itself as the arbiter of what was best for the Jewish state, arrogantly signaling that it knows the country’s interests better than Israel’s elected government.
In August, Ben-Ami said he could no longer defend Israel against accusations of genocide. Pro-Israel indeed.
Ben-Ami’s reaction to Leiter’s criticism was predictable.
“Instead of disparaging friends of Israel who disagree with its government and calling us names, Israel’s ambassador to the United States should be engaging seriously with us.”
Really?
Ben-Ami is complaining that his organization is being disparaged, even as he and J Street have spent years disparaging the very state Leiter represents.
Bernie Sanders is 'not a Jew'
Speaking about legislation J Street supported in April to block the sale of bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel, Leiter said one US senator reminded him that the sponsor of that legislation was Jewish.
“The sponsor is not a Jew,” Leiter said of Sanders, though not mentioning him by name. “The sponsor is a Communist, who may have Jewish pedigree. That doesn’t make him a Jew.”
Harsh words, certainly. But the criticism is not unwarranted.
Sanders is the prototype of the anti-Israel activists who leverage their Jewishness to lend legitimacy to their attacks. Sanders and others like him have done enormous damage to Israel’s standing by employing some of the harshest rhetoric against the country while benefiting from the credibility their Jewish identity gives them as critics.
Seven of the 10 Jews in the Senate, all Democrats, voted with Sanders in a failed attempt to block the arms sales to Israel. They surely understood the signal they were sending: if Sanders sponsors the resolution, and senators such as Adam Schiff and Jon Ossoff vote for it, then it must be kosher.
But it is not. And those advancing that type of agenda – J Street and Sanders – deserve to be called out, even if doing so is undiplomatic.