Ain Breira, and There Ain’t No J Street

Democracy is wonderful but sometimes it needs restraints. For years, Israel allowed every political party that secured one percent of the popular vote to send a representative to the Knesset. The low-priced entry ticket attracted some unusual and unsuccessful parties such as a Marijuana Party, a Taxi Drivers Party, and my favorite, a Convicts Party. You see, in Israel, unlike the United States, convicts do not lose their right to vote. This was truly a unique party where its politicians started their careers in prison.

Finally, Israel raised the “threshold” for securing a Knesset seat, but Israel still suffers from a plethora of small parties who often link their coalition support to partisan demands. Too much democracy can distort the public will and public interest – in the United States as well as Israel.

An example of such a distortion took place in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee some 30 years ago. Sen. George McGovern, never known for his affection for Israel, had invited two witnesses to testify on Middle East policy. They were seated side-by-side, given equal standing in the august hearing room. One witness was the Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the veteran and respected Jewish leader, Rabbi Israel Miller (pictured). Next to him sat a representative of “Breira,” a tiny fringe organization representing a few hundred leftist activists. The flash-in-the-pan organization arose to challenge the traditional pro-Israel consensus of the organized Jewish community, and McGovern sought to inflate their importance and amplify their message.

In Hebrew “breira” means “alternative.” Over the decades, Israel often defended itself against attackers, explaining, “ain breira” – it had no alternative. But along came these activists claiming, as explained by one of its founders, “our desires for an alternative to the intransigence of both the PLO and the several governments of Israel.” Putting Breira into a historical context, Breira was demanding negotiations with the PLO at the same time it was hijacking planes, launching rockets and terrorist raids from Lebanon against Israel’s north, and sending a pistol-packing Arafat to the United Nations.

As described by one of Breira’s chroniclers, the organization “seemed to thrive as an alternative to AIPAC,” and McGovern and some members of the press were eager to grant them that role. “What ultimately did the organization in,” the writer concluded, “were meetings that some of its members held with two Arabs who had ties to the PLO….. When the Jerusalem Post broke the story, Breira was finished.”

Today, many of the press paeans to the new “J Street Project” read like re-writes of the Breira accolades. The J Street Project, named for a non-existent street in Washington, is the underdog facing the “formidable” AIPAC lobby, according to the New York Times. Quoting one J Street fundraiser, the Times explained “the group’s aim was to undo the notion that ‘AIPAC speaks for American Jews on issues affecting Israel and the Middle East.’” J Street “will try to erode AIPAC's strength,” said a Ha’aretz report. J Street leaders said “the goal is to take on the pro-Israel giants, particularly AIPAC,” the JTA wrote.

Presumably, J Street will attempt to avoid some of Breira’s fatal mistakes. It will “rein in more dovish participants – a concern that led one pro-peace process group, the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), to maintain an arms length relationship with the new group,” according to one account. Billionaire critic of Israel George Soros was involved in “early talks about forming” J Street, according to the National Journal. But he “is reportedly no longer involved, in part, sources say, because of concerns that his participation might be a lightning rod for critics.”

Nevertheless, J Street is almost destined to fail. The straw men they sculpt and fight against do not exist. AIPAC, the organized Jewish community, and American Jews are not opposed to peace nor to a two-state solution. But they did learn the lessons of unrequited concessions to the Palestinians. They do not agree with J Street’s director who echoes the 30-year-old Breira line on the PLO when he says that there should be attempts “to engage Hamas and to find dialogue with them.”

An appeasement lobby will not succeed.

The New Republic’s James Kirchick recently pointed out just how out of touch “the miniscule group of writers and activists involved with J Street” are with the majority of American Jews. “Nearly three-quarters of American Jews” Kirchick wrote, “do not believe that Israel can ‘achieve peace with a Hamas-led, Palestinian government,’ as J Street's founder advocates. … A whopping 82 percent agree with the following statement: ‘The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.’”

The Breira historian cited “moderate American Jews” who resigned from Breira 30 years ago. One of them, a rabbi and son-in-law of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, explained in the pages of the Reconstructionist magazine, “There is a serious question whether safe and fairly prosperous American Jews, from their comfortable armchairs in the USA, have the moral right to urge policies upon Israelis which could well involve their lives and the life of the State.”

In the interest of Israeli democracy that’s a statement that many can subscribe to. And frankly, it makes no difference if the “safe and prosperous” American Jews come from the Appeasement Left or the Hard-line Right.

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