Don’t worry so much about JStreet. That’s my advice to all the fretting over Michael Oren’s probable snub of the organization’s October 25 conference.
JStreet. From left: Daniel Kohl, political director; Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director; Rachel Lerner, chief of staff. (NYT)
This policy was disastrous for Obama in Israel because it was spectacularly disconnected from reality. This wasn’t a demand for no geographic expansion of settlements (something Netanyahu has already committed to), but of no population growth.
Why is that shockingly stupid, you ask? For one thing, American officials publicly refused to distinguish between far-flung towns like Emmanuel and generations-old Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. For another, 960 children are born each year in settlements. Presumably Israel was expected to snatch these from their parents and sell them to the Chinese?
But none of that was as serious as the profound damage this elephant-in-a-china-shop policy did to the Palestinian Authority. With America demanding of the Israelis more than the PA seemed to demand, and then, because the demand was demonstrably stupid, suddenly withdrawing it, US diplomats left the PA with hat in hand facing an unprecedented wave of Arab excoriation for its “collaboration.”
I’m not saying Obama shouldn’t lead on peace, but he should do so competently and carefully. It wasn’t Bush’s Zionism that prevented peace in the past eight years, as Obama suggested to Jewish leaders back in July. It was Palestinian political dysfunction and ideological rejectionism. Remember the suicide bombings? Those were in Bush’s term, too.
Whether or not Obama gets this basic reality barely matters, since the Palestinians will explain it to him in short order. We know how to extract concessions from Israel for peace treaties, territorial withdrawals – even on the dismantling of settlements. Has anyone figured out how to extract a “yes” from the Palestinians?
So I couldn’t bring myself to share the excitement about JStreet, either for or against. It won’t bring peace because it’s barking up the wrong tree. But neither will it “undermine” or “betray” Israel’s security, since the ball will always stop, motionless, in the Palestinians’ court.
At some point, I figure, it is the Palestinians who will set the JStreet folks straight.
J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.
Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.
Now if only I could be as confident vis-a-vis JStreet’s stance on Iran, where its lack of support even for sanctions is just plain dangerous…
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