JustASC

David Brog, the executive director of Christians United for Israel, has a problem with J Street, and explains why in this oped for JTA.

A lot of it has to do with J Street’s criticism of CUFI (see here and here for example). What’s interesting is that both groups, one on the right and one on the left, seem to be mirror images of each other, each calling the other undeserving of the “pro-Israel” label.

Here’s Brog:

Most pro-Israel organizations, including Christians United for Israel, support the positions of the democratically elected government of Israel. We do not live within Hamas or Hezbollah missile range. We do not send our children off to the Israeli army. Whatever our personal views, we in CUFI believe that the difficult decisions about Israeli policy must be made by those who will most directly bear the consequences of the decisions: the Israeli people.

J Street’s leaders, by contrast, are confident that they know better than Israel’s voters. Like many in the pro-Israel community, J Street supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American pressure on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table and cease anti-Israel incitement. Unlike many of us, however, J Street also favors U.S. pressure on Jerusalem, continuing to see Israel as a barrier to peace despite the Palestinians’ repeated rejections of Israeli offers of statehood. Rather than persuade the Israeli people through reasoned debate, J Street has sought to override their will through American fiat.

Hmm. And yet earlier in the piece, Brog writes that when J Street was formed, he

welcomed J Street’s stated desire to “broaden the public and policy debate in the U.S. about the Middle East.” It disturbed me that there were those who would seek to preclude any reasonable voice from competing in the marketplace of ideas. 

I’m not sure how “broadening the public policy debate” is inconsistent with J Street’s views on the proper role of the U.S. government in brokering a peace process. I mean, if you are going to have a meaningful debate over policy, in Israel and the United States, it’s going to have to include the United States, and it might differ from the stated policies of the Israeli government. Otherwise, it’s not a debate.  Brog seems to be arguing that it’s okay for pro-Israel groups to disagree about Israel — just don’t tell anybody.

This goes back to the pre-Rabin era of pro-Israel politics, when the biggest Jewish organizations demanded “consensus” and Jewish critics of Israeli policy were ostracized. I thought that era ended when Norman Podhoretz, writing in Commentary in April 1993, nullified his prior belief “that American Jews had no moral right to criticize Israel’s security policies.”

Oddly, J Street also used the “consensus” standard as a cudgel in a July 2008 petition asking Joe Lieberman to cancel a planned appearance at a CUFI event:

 “The purportedly ‘pro-Israel’ views of (CUFI founder John] Hagee and his supporters bear little to no resemblance to the consensus of the vast majority of American Jews, who strongly support a negotiated, two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and active engagement by the United States to facilitate it,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director of J Street, the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.

CUFI which describes itself as “pro-Israel,” opposes efforts by the Israeli government to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through territorial compromise. Trading land for peace is viewed as antithetical to “God’s will” and as an impediment to the group’s apocalyptic quest to precipitate the biblical Battle of Armageddon, in which all Jews will either be killed or converted to Christianity in advance of Jesus’ return.

By putting “pro-Israel” in quotes, the J Street petition suggested that you can’t call yourself “pro-Israel” if you oppose efforts “by the Israeli government to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through territorial compromise.”

I think everyone has to take a deep breath here. All those who consider themselves “pro-Israel” have to find away to disagree with each other without impugning the others’ motives or “pro-Israel” credentials. We have to stop trying to define those who disagree with us out of a mythical “consensus.” If you truly believe in “broadening the public policy debate,” then you have to tolerate those whose views you find wrong-headed — or at least stop trying to delegitimize them.

Of course, a lot of folks in the pro-Israel community do not believe in broadening the public policy debate — or at least at a time when the sitting Israeli government seems to share their views. That’s a strategy. But it is an impractical, unenforceable, and short-sighted strategy, and it dooms us to bitter fights like these.

“Pro-Israel” is to the Israeli debate what “patriotic” is to the American debate: A word that one side uses to discredit another, as opposed to one that could remind us of the love we share.