Official Israel Hearts Palin…J-Street Not So Much

Jeffrey Goldberg is often the voice of reason when it comes to evaluating the American Jewish political scene.  Today he comes to the defense of J-Street.  I quite identify with him in both his critique and his comments in support of that organization:

Let me be clear about something: There are many things about J Street I dislike. I think some of its members actually don’t like Israel very much, and especially don’t like the idea of Israel. I think many J Street supporters are cringing Diaspora Jews who are embarrassed by displays of Jewish muscularity, those displays of muscularity that are warranted as well as those displays that are unwarranted. There is much about J Street policies that I don’t like; I think J Street believes that settlements are the root cause of the Middle East conflict; I believe that settlements are a moral and political catastrophe, but that one of the tragedies of the settlements is that the settlements obscure the true nature of the Middle East conflict.

Those are the things that bother me, too.  But they are no excuse for the Knesset’s hearings on whether J-Street has the right to call itself pro-Israel.

The Knesset is debating whether or not J Street is Zionist. This is a farce. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuses to meet with J Street. This, too, is a farce. The Prime Minister, in fact, will meet with Sarah Palin (whose politics are favored by a tiny minority of American Jews) but he will not meet with J Street. He should argue with J Street, yell at J Street, grapple with J Street, but most of all meet with J Street. Those Israelis, and those American Jews, who believe that J Street, and the spirit it represents, are fleeting phenomena have absolutely no idea what is happening in the Jewish world.

I have written before about Israeli leadership cuddling up with the likes of Palin and Huckabee.  I am especially concerned about the message that this is sending to young liberal American Jews.  Israel and the American Zionist leadership have expressed ongoing concern about American Jewish alienation from Israel.  It certainly doesn’t help matters when Bibi rejects a meeting with J-Street while fêting Palin and Huckabee as they traipse around Israel calling for the expansion of settlements.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that Sister Sarah is actually frighteningly ignorant of the facts on the ground.  If she weren’t, I’m sure she wouldn’t have made that u-turn at the entrance to Bethlehem.  What a maroon.