Reflections on the AIPAC Conference.Dowd Confirms: J Street Is Obama's Enabler

Thank God for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Maybe after its conference in Washington this week and its loud and clear expression of Americans’ support for Israel, the anti-Israel pundits, “Waltsheimers,” and the J Street-Walkers will shut up. On second thought, they have no shame, so they’ll probably keep yapping about how bad Israel and the pro-Israel lobby are.

Consider Maureen Dowd’s screed against the “supremely aggravating” Benjamin Netanyahu last week. After what she called the “president’s smackdown” of Netanyahu, she and others, like Joe Klein, MJ Rosenberg, and Roger Cohen, were experiencing orgasmic frissons over the Administration’s attacks on Israel. “Tough love,” they call it; others recognize the act they recommend as attempted rape.

Dowd lets the J Street cat out of the bag when she wrote, “Mr. Obama knows that Jews no longer speak with one voice. That gives him enough room to keep the heat on Mr. Netanyahu.”

Then along came AIPAC with its 7,500 delegates, 1300 students, hundreds of senators and congressmen – of all faiths and colors -- and put the squeaky J Street mouse back in the bag.

J Street was formed, reportedly with the help of Obama aides even before the 2008 elections, precisely to claim that there was a counterweight to AIPAC. Soon after its establishment, J Street published a public opinion poll ostensibly supporting its positions, but it was quickly discovered that the poll had been drafted and cooked by one of J Street’s founders and officers. And again last week, J Street shamelessly went back to the same founder who cooked and presented another distorted poll. (Ha’aretz attempted a similar trick this week to try and show popular Israeli support for Obama and dwindling support for Netanyahu. The poll was also quickly discredited.)

Circumstantial evidence suggests that J Street was primed to back the Administration attack on Israel last week. Last year, when faced with the American financial crisis, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, expressed his strategy for crisis management: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste — and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could do before.”

As the U.S.-Israel tension grew, J Street sent out a letter on March 16 to its members urging support for the Administration. The wording was uncannily familiar: "The Obama Administration can turn this crisis into an opportunity to tackle a core issue at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians - the need to establish a border between Israel and the future Palestinian state….Bold American leadership is needed now to turn this crisis into a real opportunity to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

If we’re talking about chums chomping at the same trough of analogies, Tom Friedman blasted the Israeli government on March 14 for “driving drunk in Jerusalem.” Now, where did we hear that description before? Oh yeah, J Street’s director used that line to describe Israel in the Washington Post in May 2008, and in Newsweek two weeks later. J Street co-founder Daniel Levy used it too in July 2009.

There is – and there must be -- a place in the Jewish and pro-Israeli body politic for expressions from the Left. But not a fraudulent one like J Street that received political action funding from Americans affiliated with pro-Arab and pro-Iranian organizations or working with the Saudi government and embassy.

Kudos to the students who attended J Street’s October conference in Washington, revealed their true anti-Israel colors and requested that J Street’s “pro-Israel” brand be removed from their campus organizations. Compare them to the 1300+ proudly pro-Israel students of all faiths and from 50 states who attended the AIPAC conference this week.

And bravo to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz who interrupted a J Street rep who was holding court at the AIPAC Conference on Monday. "I reject J Street,” the professor declared before a Ha’aretz reporter, “because it spends more time criticizing Israel than supporting it. They shouldn't call themselves pro-Israel.”

Ha'aretz continued, “The combative Harvard law professor said that he too opposed settlements. ‘But I spend 80 per cent of my time supporting Israel,’ he said. The sort of supporters J Street was attracting to its conferences showed that the group was damaging to Israel, Dershowitz said.”

"’If you invite [former NSC advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinski you are not pro-Israel,’ Dershowitz told the J Street rep. ‘You should ask yourself why Norman Finkelstein loves you,’ he said, referring to the noted leftwing American political commentator [and Holocaust denier].’”

Dershowitz’ own presentation to the AIPAC Conference was brilliant.

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