When Barack Obama met 16 leaders of US Jewish organizations this July, the guests listed were the usual suspects, plus one. There were the presidents and chairmen (and chairwomen) of hawkish old groups such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee, and the lobbying powerhouse, AIPAC; and there was Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of the new Jewish peace lobby J Street.
His presence did not please everyone. In publications sympathetic to mainstream, often neoconservative dominated, US Jewish organizations, J Street is hardly more popular than Hamas. Commentary’s Noah Pollak called it contemptible, dishonest and anti-Israel. James Kirchick of The New Republic called it the Surrender Lobby. Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard said it was obsequious to terrorists and hostile to Israel. That language is evidence of panic among those who fear that the appearance of J Street, in conjunction with Obama’s election, could imply the beginning of the end of their (nearly) unchallenged power to shape debate over US Middle East policy.
Why does US policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict differ so profoundly from that of the rest of the world, particularly the US’s European allies? The long-term US relationship with Israel is its most expensive in terms of lives and finance. It costs taxpayers $3bn in military and economic aid, and inflames much of the Islamic world, fuelling global anti-American violence. No other nation (save Israel) sees the conflict as the United States does, with the Palestinians viewed as the irrational attackers, and Israel as aggrieved. Yet, however costly and controversial, the policies continue almost unchanged from administration to administration, and Congress to Congress.
American supporters of Israel’s hardliners include a strong evangelical Christian component, and they fail to see a problem. They argue that Europe’s even-handedness is driven by traditional European (Christian) anti-semitism and a desire to placate oil-rich Arab regimes. They also claim that Europe’s “anti-semitic media” always side with the underdog (in this case the Palestinians), and so there is pro-Palestinian bias. They are sure that America is not the problem; the rest of the world is the problem.
This is only part -- and a small part at that -- of the reason why Israel’s supporters always come out on top in Congress. The other reason is AIPAC and its ancillary organizations, which exercise power and influence over Congress unrivalled by any other foreign policy lobby. There have been recent setbacks involving (now dropped) charges against two of its former staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, accused of espionage on behalf of Israel, and the publication of a book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. But the influence could be seen in the way Charles “Chas” Freeman was forced to renounce being considered for chair of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration. He was understood to have “Arabist” views about the Palestinian problem. There was a heavy campaign against him (one writer even accused him of ties with pedophiles) but AIPAC claimed it had no connections with this, which may be true, if unprovable.
Yet as Jonathan Freedland wrote in The Guardian on 18 March 2009, even when “the mythology of the Israel Lobby” was discarded, “the reality is bad enough.” Those who felt the need to destroy Freeman did so because they genuinely cared who is analysing US intelligence data since they are worried this might obstruct a US or Israeli attack on Iran (as the report published by the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate did, affirming that Iran no longer had a military nuclear program). Or they wanted to make it clear to any aspiring public servant that it would be dangerous to hold any position about Israel inconsistent with their worldview, even if the aspirant might not have any role in policy-making. The “pro-Israel community” wanted Freeman’s head and they got it. AIPAC can upend the president’s wishes without even bothering to take a position on them.
There are many good reasons why AIPAC is so powerful and why American Jews defer to its judgment over who should be empowered to speak for them about US Middle East policy. But support for AIPAC’s hardline agenda is not one of those reasons. According to recent polls by J Street, US Jews support by 76% to 24% a two-state final status deal between Israel and the Palestinians, along the lines of the agreement nearly reached eight years ago during the Camp David and Taba talks. This approach is routinely condemned by AIPAC. The lobby has remained silent on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s appointment of the racist Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister. According to J Street, when US Jews were told about Lieberman’s campaign proposal that Arab citizens of Israel should sign loyalty oaths and his threats against Arab Members of Knesset, they opposed these by 69% to 31%.
While AIPAC is dominated by neocons, American Jews remain liberals and they have supported Democrats as loyally as any single constituency in the last election, backing Obama by roughly four to one. The result is a paradox: Organizations like AIPAC, funded by liberal American Jews, strategize with Republican conservatives about ways to smear liberal Democrats.
J Street’s new approach to Congress and the American Jewish community is well-timed. As MJ Rosenberg, who recently resigned from the dovish Israel Policy Forum, explained, AIPAC is dominated by “a much older crowd” but “their children and grandchildren don’t have those views. As we get further from World War II, it’s harder to scare young people into support for Israel. They will support Israel if they believe in Israel and if Israel appeals to them. But those scare tactics, ‘write checks because there’s going to be another Holocaust’, that doesn’t work with the under-60 crowd. The people who demonstrated against the Vietnam War in the ’60s, they’re just not going to buy into the ‘Hitler is coming’ stuff.”
Rosenberg notes that “Israel’s popularity with American Jews has gone down since 1977, when Begin became prime minister. The way Israel was sold, the Leon Uris Israel, was the Israel of the kibbutz, this socialist paradise. And that’s totally changed now.”
While Israel remains far more popular among Americans than do the Palestinians (a survey by the Global Attitudes Project of the Pew Research Centre during the fighting in Gaza found that 49% of Americans are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians, and only 11% prefer the Palestinians), that sympathy is far more in evidence among conservatives (7-1 in favor) than among self-described liberals (3-2).
J Street wants to use the viral marketing techniques of civil action groups like MoveOn.org and the Obama campaign to change the face of Jewish political influence in Washington and match the actual views of American Jews. It is too early to judge its success, but so far it is growing in a way that dwarfs all previous efforts. In the 18 months since it began, it has created a $3m organization with a staff of 22. This doesn’t compare to AIPAC’s $70.6m budget, but it’s an auspicious start. A million dollars was raised for the 2008 election cycle in the drive for pro-Middle East peace congressional candidates.
J Street is coordinating its efforts with other smaller organizations, many hard hit by the funding collapse of left-of-center organizations in 2009, and has even been absorbing some, rationalizing the efforts of their staff and supporters. Its first national convention on 25-28 October will include 11 peace groups (among them the more established Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and the New Israel Fund). J Street absorbed the Union of Progressive Zionism last October, which gave it access to a small but dedicated network of peace-oriented students. Reports suggest it is also poised to take over Brit Tzedek, which claims to have 48,000 volunteers.
Inside Washington, it substantially increased its credibility by hiring Hadar Susskind, a former IDF combat veteran, until recently vice president and Washington director of the mainstream Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the organised Jewish community’s umbrella group for advocacy on domestic issues. These efforts, together with powerful endorsements from former Israeli generals and intelligence officials, make the “red” (Arab) baiting by neocons inside and outside the media more difficult to sustain and less effective. Some predict an eventual takeover of the Israel Policy Forum; the newspaper The Forward recently reported that it is on the brink, maintaining itself from month to month with just two staffers and a decline in donations down to $1.7m in 2007.
Much will depend on how the Jewish and gentile media, choose to cover J Street’s convention. Ben-Ami said that its primary goal is to demonstrate that the Jewish peace camp “isn’t just 10 people gathering in a basement” and to give its supporters the opportunity to “look at and see each other and feel less like lone voices in the wilderness.” Not long before Israel’s previous prime minister Ehud Olmert was forced to resign his office (and eventually indicted), he predicted that “if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a South-Africa style struggle for political rights.” And should that happen, “the state of Israel is finished.”
Just how successful Obama may be when the time comes to help Israel save itself from this fate, and to offer the Palestinians a reasonable hope for self-determination and statehood by demanding the necessary, difficult territorial concessions, might just depend on the success of those previously lone voices.
Eric Alterman is distinguished professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College, New York, and author of Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post Bush America, Penguin, 2008.
Copyright © 2009 Le Monde diplomatique – distributed by Agence Global
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