New York – J Street announced Tuesday that it would be launching field operations around America to encourage grassroots activists to become involved in shaping local debates on Israel and US Middle East policy.
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J Street, which describes itself as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization that pushes for greater American involvement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is looking to harness the power of its more than 100,000 online supporters into activists who will present the J Street perspective in community debates, meet with members of Congress to advocate J Street positions and write supportive letters and op-eds in local newspapers.
“The next two years are going to be absolutely critical to the hopes of achieving peace in the Middle East, and especially between Israel and the Palestinians,” said J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami, continuing that it’s “vital” for legislators and policy-makers here to show “the depth of support for strong leadership on the peace process.”
Pointing to the large number of supporters on J Street’s e-mail list, Ben-Ami said the idea is to “take this energy and excitement that we’ve generated in a little over a year [and] take that offline and into community meetings.”
To that end, J Street will be coordinating with Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, a left-wing grassroots network of some 50,000 backers founded in 2002 and engaged in similar activities, and exploring how the two groups might best work together.
In welcoming J Street’s announcement, Brit Tzedek on Tuesday also noted that it would no longer be looking to fill its executive director position, raising questions about whether the two organizations would eventually merge.
The idea was raised during the creation of J Street in early 2008, but officials from both organizations indicated that it was premature to discuss such an eventuality. Still, combined with J Street’s takeover of the campus-based Union of Progressive Zionists, which gives J Street a college presence it will be re-branding and expanding over the course of the year, the organization is increasingly becoming a dominant voice in the progressive Jewish community.
“From the beginning of our existence, we’re always been aware that to be really effective we need to have as big and powerful a presence as possible,” Brit Tzedek President Steve Masters said Tuesday. “We’ve always tried to work with other organizations that share our point of view,” running several campaigns in cooperation with J Street, “so this is a positive development.”
Brit Tzedek has close to 40 chapters in 30 states, along with offices in Chicago, Washington and San Francisco, cities along with New York, Boston and Seattle that J Street sees as key in setting up its own grassroots program.
Yet some of J Street’s detractors dismiss the idea that the field operation would have a significant impact on shaping the debate in America on Israel, and point to Brit Tzedek’s low profile to support their thesis.
“You’re talking about a fringe, extreme group with no influence joining a group with pretensions on influence. Zero times zero in the end still equals zero,” said Morris Amitay, who runs the pro-Israel Washington PAC and is a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington’s dominant pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC has 100,000 members according to its Web site, offices around the country and a growing campus presence.
“To say J Street has as much support as AIPAC is ridiculous,” Amitay said. “They have an e-mail list. I can get you an e-mail list with 100,000 people for a few hundred dollars.
It’s always good to have another perspective and hear another opinion in a debate. But this “J Street” organization seems to be a little too well organized and popped up from nowhere to claim 100,000 members. They also seem to be getting well placed publicity in the national media. Makes you wonder!
For those unaware, J Street is a leftist organization that has many anti israel members…it has big links to George Soros, the anti-Israel billionaire, and they are receiving contributions from numerous Arab and Muslim sources that are not known to be pro-Israel, such as leaders of Muslim student groups, Saudi- and Iranian- born americans, Palestinian- and Arab-American businessmen who also give to Arab-oriented Political Action Committees. The organization has supported candidates who have not supported the American-Israeli relationship in congress, even some who appear hostile to it. The organization calls themselves “pro-Israel, pro-peace”, pushing for more American involvement and diplomacy in resolving the middle east conflict. We all see how our President’s involvements have been going so far…
“J Street, which describes itself as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization …”
Their definition of pro-israel and pro-peace, they mean capitulating to hamas and fatah, and strengthening Israel’s enemies. No thanks.
A more accurate description of “J Street” would be “far left, anti-Zionist” Soros hobby horse. Soros has a dismal record as a Jew; he even refused to offer regrets that as a teenager in Occupied Hungary during the Holocaust that he helped enforce the Nyilas confiscation of Jewish Property.
J Street is Obama’s mid east policy machine that is why it has risen so fast to the media spotlight. It is no coincidence that under the Bush administration, J Street was kept outside and no one even heard of them much. Today they get White House red carpet welcome from Obama because he likes their agenda which is palpable to his left wing understanding of the mid east conflict. When you have a friend like Rashid Khalidi as Obama did, you too would love what J Street stands for.