[The battle between J Street and AIPAC to influence the Democratic
Party is also opening space for Palestine solidarity to enter the
mainstream.]
[[link removed]]

J STREET TRYING TO OUST AIPAC AS DOMINANT PRO-ISRAEL FORCE FOR
DEMOCRATS  
[[link removed]]


 

Mitchell Plitnick
June 8, 2022
Mondoweiss
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The battle between J Street and AIPAC to influence the Democratic
Party is also opening space for Palestine solidarity to enter the
mainstream. _

Nancy Pelosi addressing the 2019 J Street Conference, October 28,
2019 , ((Photo: J Street)

 

Last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has a long and
enduring relationship
[[link removed]] with
AIPAC, accepted an endorsement from the more dovish pro-Israel PAC, J
Street. It’s the first time Pelosi accepted J Street’s
endorsement, and even though she is also endorsed by AIPAC’s new
PAC, it’s a significant prize for the group.

For Pelosi, this is all about a delicate balance she is trying to
strike in the Democratic party. She knows the growing sympathy for the
Palestinians and the expiring patience with Israel many liberals,
including millennial and younger Jews, are feeling. She knows that
even among staunchly pro-Israel Democrats, few remain committed to the
“Israel right or wrong” politics of Democratic power brokers such
as Haim Saban
[[link removed]].
Yet she also knows that those power brokers still have wildly
disproportionate influence in the party. 

Above all, Pelosi wants to prevent the question of Palestine from
causing more conflict within the party than it already has
[[link removed]].
So, she accepted the J Street endorsement and, while she has not said
anything about AIPAC’s endorsing her as well, she also recognized
that the J Street criticism of AIPAC
[[link removed]] over
its decision to endorse over 100 Republicans who refused to
acknowledge Joe Biden’s electoral victory is a powerful one
that resonates
[[link removed]] broadly
[[link removed]]. 

That decision by AIPAC was emblematic of its recent shift even farther
right in its support of Israel. One of their main targets during this
primary season has been Andy Levin (D-MI), a Jewish, Zionist liberal
Democrat who, last year, introduced a bill that J Street had a key
role in developing. 

The “Two-State Solution Bill
[[link removed]]”
would, as its name implies, enshrine that solution as official U.S.
policy by law, and so the only one that could be pursued. The bill
would also reaffirm that the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are
occupied territory; it would re-establish the 1977 State Department
legal finding that settlements are “inconsistent” with
international law; that “that settlement expansion, demolitions of
Palestinian homes, revocations of residency permits, and forced
evictions of Palestinian civilians by Israel impede the establishment
of a Palestinian state and violate the human rights of the Palestinian
people;” call for the reopening of the PLO office in Washington and
remove the PLO from the list of terrorist organizations.

The bill has more provisions that AIPAC hates, such as a call for
respecting Palestinians’ civil rights and a renewed call for
ensuring that U.S. aid to Israel comports with U.S. law. And so, AIPAC
has not just supported Levin’s opponent
[[link removed]],
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), they have attacked Levin
[[link removed]] in every
way they can. J Street, of course, has been front and center
[[link removed]] in
defending Levin, whose bill not only defends their core value of a
two-state solution, but also calls for or legislates conditions that
would lead to such an outcome, assuming it was still feasible. 

J Street is currently reaching out widely 
[[link removed]]within the
Democratic party, courting powerful conservative Democrats like
Pelosi, strengthening its position among liberal Democrats, while also
working to either ally with or at least avoid conflicts with the more
left-wing elements in the party. 

Last year, when the Democratic Socialists of America was considering
expelling Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) after he went on a J Street trip
to Israel and the West Bank, J Street stayed out of the fight. In May,
when Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, equated
anti-Zionists with the worst white nationalist antisemites, J Street
president, Jeremy Ben-Ami pushed back pretty firmly
[[link removed]],
while making it clear that he still personally and organizationally
objected to the anti-Zionism. 

The positions J Street has staked out that have brought them into
conflict with Palestine solidarity activists in the past –
particularly the insistence
[[link removed]] on the two-state
solution and firm opposition
[[link removed]] to
the global BDS movement—remain firmly in place. But the organization
these days seems to be highlighting their argument that BDS and
one-staters should be debated, not ostracized or reflexively labeled
antisemites. 

J Street would surely argue that this has always been their position.
In 2011, they even invited Rebecca Vilkomerson, then-executive
director of Jewish Voice for Peace, to their conference to speak about
BDS. But it was a controversial move, and one that brought significant
backlash against J Street, even though many in attendance appreciated
Vilkomerson’s presence. Indeed, her talk laid bare the fact that J
Street’s membership included some BDS supporters. 

After that, however, J Street seemed to bring their opposition to
BDS more to the forefront
[[link removed]],
and they did not again include such discussions in their programs. By
2016, J Street was seen
[[link removed]] as
such a staunch opponent of BDS that even the Israeli government of
Benjamin Netanyahu—a government that was often openly hostile to the
relatively moderately Zionist J Street—was turning to it for help in
fighting the growing BDS movement. 

While J Street’s anti-BDS stance has not changed, their public
efforts, at least in recent months, have been much more focused on
working against criminalizing BDS
[[link removed]] on free speech
grounds, and distinguishing between
[[link removed]] boycotts
of Israeli settlements and economic actions targeting all of Israel,
supporting the decisions of others to boycott settlements, though not
calling for or engaging in such actions itself. 

In all of this, J Street seems to be trying to position itself to
become the primary force influencing mainstream Democratic views of
Israel. While their two-state fixation might still be well out of step
with the rights-based view of the Palestine solidarity movement, and
they remain committed to Zionism, it’s hard to argue that this would
not be a better playing field than the current, AIPAC-dominated one
for all those opposing the status quo, whatever their alternative
visions may be. 

It’s reasonable, as a long-term goal, for J Street to believe they
can become the primary pro-Israel voice among Democrats. That will
certainly not mean that the views of Palestine solidarity activists,
supporters of a secular, democratic state in all historic Palestine,
or BDS activists are suddenly going to be heard in a way that
significantly alters U.S. policy. Let’s recall, that J Street
supports the basic ideological and policy stances toward Israel and
Palestine that were consistently held, at least officially, by
successive U.S. administrations since at least 1993 apart from Donald
Trump’s four years in office. 

Still a recent episode in Congress demonstrates the potential for
Palestinian solidarity groups’ ability to push a Democratic Congress
toward more just, and productive, stances should AIPAC be removed from
the equation. 

In late May, J Street helped gather the signatures of 62 members of
the House of Representatives and 19 Senators on a letter
[[link removed]] led
by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) calling
on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to convince Israel to halt the
planned expulsion of over 1000 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta
[[link removed]],
a small area of villages in the West Bank where Israel has declared a
“firing zone” as a pretext for removing them. The letter went as
far as to say that the action would be “inconsistent” with the
Geneva Conventions.

A few days later, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) led 15 progressive House
Democrats in a letter
[[link removed]] that
was much more forceful, calling the potential expulsion of the
villagers a “war crime,” demanding Blinken call it one if Israel
goes through with the expulsion, and that the State Department send
observers to see if any U.S. weaponry was used to carry out the
expulsion, which would violate U.S. law. 

It’s significant that Bush’s letter got fifteen signatures, and
it’s important that such a call be on the record, as a building
block for the fledgling push in Congress to monitor Israel’s use of
U.S. weapons, and to recognize Israel’s apartheid policies for the
crimes they are. Those calls, once inconceivable in Congress, could
eventually lead to changes in policy for the better. For Masafer
Yatta, it’s important that a larger number of Congressmembers, and
from both houses, are telling the Biden administration that they’re
watching right now. 

There is particular weight in the fact that eight of the fifteen
signatories on Bush’s letter also signed the Stansbury/Merkley
letter. Congressmembers did not see the letters, as many might have in
the past, as competing between a more moderate J Street version and a
more forceful one supported by both Palestine solidarity groups.
(_Full disclosure, ReThinking Foreign Policy, of which I am president,
signed on to support the Bush letter._)

J Street’s effort opened a path for a stronger statement by those
congressmembers who wished to make one and, while fifteen is not a
large number, when we consider that the Bush letter raised the idea of
Israeli war crimes, it’s significant compared to what we might have
expected in the past. 

J Street’s stated position of engaging the Palestine solidarity
community is one that should be encouraged. Such engagement will
inevitably expose the deep flaws in U.S. policy and the logical
impossibility of continuing a single-minded pursuit of a two-state
solution that, whatever one thinks of its inherent flaws or strengths,
has now been rendered moot by Israeli expansionism and increased
nationalistic fervor. 

Above all, in a future Washington where AIPAC is aligned with
Republicans and J Street with Democrats, the cone of silence over
debate on U.S. policy will be shattered. That doesn’t thrust
Palestine solidarity into the mainstream, but it does open space for
Palestinians to be more heard than they are now. Progress. 

_Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He
is the co-author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The
Limits of Progressive Politics. Mitchell's previous positions include
vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of
the US Office of B'Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for
Peace.  You can find him on Twitter @MJPlitnick
[[link removed]]._

_Mondoweiss covers the full picture of the struggle for justice in
Palestine. Read by tens of thousands of people each month, our
truth-telling journalism is an essential counterweight to the
propaganda that passes for news in mainstream and legacy media._

_Our news and analysis is available to everyone – which is why we
need your support. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO RAISE
THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO ADVOCATE FOR THE RIGHTS OF PALESTINIANS TO
LIVE IN DIGNITY AND PEACE.  Donate today →
[[link removed]]_

* BDS
[[link removed]]
* AIPAC
[[link removed]]
* Palestinians
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]