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.
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.
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.
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 >>
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Yours,
Jeremy Ben-Ami
President, J Street
