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Friend --

Over the past few days I’ve been reading President Obama’s new book, A
Promised Land, and I wanted to share with you a few passages that relate
directly to J Street’s work.

At one point in the book, Obama describes Deputy National Security Advisor
Ben Rhodes as “looking particularly harried” after almost an hour with a
“highly agitated liberal Democratic congressman” critiquing President
Obama’s opposition to settlements.

“I thought he opposes settlements?” Obama said. “He does,” Rhodes replied.
“He also opposes us doing anything to actually stop settlements.”

This is just one of a series of frustrating moments in the book that
captures the political challenges J Street was founded to overcome -- and
it’s one that will be a key focus of our work in the months and years
ahead.

I want to be clear: Following years of deadlock, occupation and creeping
annexation, it’s no longer enough to simply echo talking points in support
of peace, Palestinian rights and Israel’s future as a truly democratic
homeland for the Jewish people -- we must demand real action.

[ [link removed] ]If you share our desire to see real progress, please donate now to help
us advance meaningful policies and hold our leaders to their word >>

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At another point in the book, President Obama succinctly captures the
broken politics on Israeli-Palestinian issues, describing the corrosive
influence of AIPAC’s “Israel right-or-wrong” approach:

“As Israeli politics had moved to the right, so had AIPAC’s policy
positions,” Obama writes. American politicians who criticized the Israeli
government, even when they took actions contrary to our interests, “risked
being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted
with a well-funded opponent in the next election.”

It created a situation where “officials also had to explain why it wasn’t
hypocritical for us to press countries like China or Iran on their human
rights records while showing little concern for the rights of
Palestinians,” Obama wrote. “Our diplomats found themselves in the awkward
position of having to defend Israel for actions that we ourselves
opposed.”

At J Street, we know there is no conflict between supporting Israel on the
one hand, and supporting human rights and Palestinian self-determination
on the other -- in fact, we know that achieving a lasting peace is the
only way to secure Israel’s long-term future as a truly democratic
homeland for the Jewish people.

[ [link removed] ]If you want to see that reality reflected in our foreign policy -- and
our leaders proudly advocating a pro-Israel, pro-peace, values-driven
approach -- please contribute to our work today >>

Friend, as we can see from the positions taken by 2020 Democratic
primary candidates and written into the 2020 Democratic Party platform,
our movement is achieving real success in countering right-wing influence
and expanding the political space for more nuanced, pro-Israel, pro-peace
policies.

Just look at the recent race for chair of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee: All three candidates agreed with our position that US funding
should be prohibited from being used to carry out annexation. And a
growing number of senators have backed that position as well.

Four years after President Obama left office, the next administration will
have significantly more room to pursue peace, deter destructive actions
and advance the shared interests of Americans, Israelis and Palestinians.

Still, there is more work to do.

In the years ahead, we must pursue a bold new values-driven approach to
the conflict, and overcome those urging a return to the familiar, failed
policies of the past.

Together, we must honestly reckon with decisions and dynamics that have
led us to this point and demand clear, meaningful steps to bring the
occupation to an end and deliver peace to Israelis and Palestinians.

[ [link removed] ]If you’re ready to stand with us for that fight, please chip in now to
propel us into 2021 and sustain our work to fix our broken politics >>

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your
donation will go through immediately:

[ [link removed] ]Chip in $9 [ [link removed] ]Chip in $36
[ [link removed] ]Chip in $100 [ [link removed] ]Chip in $250
[ [link removed] ]Chip in $500 [ [link removed] ]Chip in another amount

Yours,

Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street


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© 2020 J Street | [ [link removed] ]www.jstreet.org | [email protected]

J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who want
Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people.
Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we advocate policies that
advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish and democratic values,
leading to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.



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