The J Street Davids vs the AIPAC Goliath

That’s the story being sold by last week’s NYT Magazine. It’s the kind of story J Street will probably excerpt heavily in its fundraising materials. But sending out the full text of the story would remind J Street donors of this:

The most controversial and significant of J Street’s campaigns was the one most directly tied to Israel’s security. When Israeli fighter planes first hit Gaza on Dec. 27, J Street issued a press release stating that “there is no military solution to what is fundamentally a political conflict” and calling for “immediate, strong diplomatic intervention” to negotiate a resumption of the cease-fire. The next day, in a message to supporters, J Street’s campaigns director, Isaac Luria, wrote that “while there is nothing ‘right’ in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing ‘right’ in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.”

J Street’s stand cemented its position on the left side of the spectrum; Ben-Ami says that the group’s list of supporters grew to 100,000, from 90,000. The group was, inevitably, denounced on the right. But it was denounced from the middle as well. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a natural ally, writing in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger op-ed in The Forward, described Luria’s sentiments as “morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.” In retrospect, Yoffie now says: “J Street missed the overwhelming support from the American Jewish community for the war in Gaza. This was their first big test, and they flunked the test.”

Rabbi Yoffie represents the left or center-left of Jewish opinion much more than he does the “middle”. If he’s denouncing J Street as “morally deficient”, then it is way out there.

Of course, President Obama may disagree. He welcomed J Street to the White House along with many more established Jewish groups. Here’s the opening graf of the NYTM story:

In July, President Obama met for 45 minutes with leaders of American Jewish organizations. All presidents meet with Israel’s advocates. Obama, however, had taken his time, and powerhouse figures of the Jewish community were grumbling; Obama’s coolness seemed to be of a piece with his willingness to publicly pressure Israel to freeze the growth of its settlements and with what was deemed his excessive solicitude toward the plight of the Palestinians. During the July meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Obama that “public disharmony between Israel and the U.S. is beneficial to neither” and that differences “should be dealt with directly by the parties.” The president, according to Hoenlein, leaned back in his chair and said: “I disagree. We had eight years of no daylight” — between George W. Bush and successive Israeli governments — “and no progress.”

And Obama said “Let there be daylight” and there was daylight.