November 05, 2009
At the J Street meeting
*By* *Lori Lowenthal
Marcus*
The Washington conference of the new organization "J Street" took place on
October 25-28. It was a fascinating but scary cultural experience.
For three days I watched hundreds of intensely pious people sitting under an
awning that reads "pro-Israel, pro-peace." But by far the dearest hopes of
the folks on J Street were for the well-being, and especially the
sovereignty, of a people whose leadership has stated repeatedly that its
goal is to destroy Israel and murder Jews.
I saw two overarching themes defining this conference: one, Iran is not a
problem we care about; and two, a Palestinian State must be created now (*What
do we want? A Palestinian State! When do we want it? Now!*), and both the
Israelis and the Palestinians are so dysfunctional that only the Obama
administration can achieve it. Palestine Now! was the battle cry of the
conference, but the utter lack of concern regarding the Iranian threat is
the real proof that J Street is not at its essence pro-Israel.
First, a fact: although it is difficult to get Israelis to agree on
anything, there is one issue on which there is near unanimity among them:
Iran presents an imminent and devastating threat to the existence of the
State of Israel. It is the single biggest security concern amongst nearly
all Israelis of every political and religious stream.
The J-Conference organizers devoted only one of the thirty-two sessions to
the issue of Iran, and that session focused solely on the success of
diplomacy. The speakers and the moderator of that session were aggressively
anti-anything-other-than-diplomacy, so there was nothing for audience
members to consider as a legitimate alternative.
But most disturbing was the nearly complete silence about Iran *other* than
by Israeli speakers and a few American politicians who, presumably, assumed
a "pro-Israel" gathering would want reassurances on the topic. Those
politicians were wrong.
In other words, the overwhelming majority of those who came to the J Street
conference understood the code words "pro-Israel" to have no bearing on what
Israelis might find most important to their security. The threat of Iran to
Israel simply plays no role in the narrative that motivated so many hundreds
of people to identify with and join the J Street team.
Think of it: an oil-rich nation near Israel pursues nuclear power, refuses
to eschew nuclear weapons, denies the Holocaust from the podium of the
United Nations, and threatens to wipe Israel off the map -- and the enormous
audience the J Street leadership claims as its own, an organization calling
itself "pro-Israel, pro-peace," doesn't really give a hoot.
This was too hard even for Obama political appointees to grasp. U.S.
National Security Advisor General James Jones, in his keynote address
attended by nearly all conference participants, did mention Iran as a threat
to Israel. Jones assured the sandwiched-in crowd that the United States
stands with Israel in facing Iran.
But there was little audience response. A far different reaction --
rapturous applause -- met nearly every mention of alleviating Palestinian
suffering and the "Palestine Now!" mantra.
I heard one or two mentions of Iran by non-Israeli "experts." Each time it
was discussed in the context of that country's hostility to Israel being
"neutralized" by the immediate creation of a Palestinian State.
The link between Iran and the posthaste demand for a Palestinian State, the
lectures went, was that taking that bold step would not only quell unrest
amongst Palestinians and Israelis, but it would also stabilize the entire
Middle East and end global terrorism.
A straight-up articulation of this Palestine Now! equals Global Peace theme
was by Salam al-Marayati, a source of acrimonious controversy in advance of
the conference. (Al-Marayati had immediately pointed to Israel as the likely
source of the attacks on the World Trade Center.) At J Street, Al-Marayati
informed his audience that the absence of a Palestinian State is a major
source of the current violence in Pakistan, and that it is *the* central
issue "critical to the hearts and minds" of all 1.5 billion Muslims
worldwide.
But it was not only controversy-generating Muslims who were intoxicated by
the desire for a Palestinian State. Former Israeli Minister of Foreign
Affairs Shlomo Ben-Ami explained that it is only President Obama who can
achieve this because "there is no chance whatever to reach settlement by
ourselves; it is entirely out of the question." This is because both Israel
and the Palestinians have such "dysfunctional political systems."
Several other Israelis who were once members of Israeli governments, or who
are aligned with former (but not current) leaders pushed the presto
Palestine line. Virtually every one of them was heavily invested in the Oslo
Accords and the Geneva Initiatives, both peace plans that literally blew up.
Of course, to the extent the failures of these "peace" efforts were
acknowledged at all, their failures were attributed to Israel's not having
capitulated far and fast enough. Like the food in the Jewish resort
described long ago: it tasted terrible and the portions were too small.
The desperation driving some of the rhetoric worked itself out in the form
of veiled threats. Ron Pundak, whose ink is on both the Oslo Accords and the
Geneva Initiative, and who is currently the Director General of the Peres
Center for Peace, was practically frenzied.
Pundak went beyond merely promoting Palestine Now! as a sure way to soothe
the Iranians and bring regional peace -- he said "the only real answer to
the Iranian threat is peace with the Palestinians." Pundak claimed that if
such a state is not created immediately, Arabs will live in ghettos in
situations even worse, possibly, than those of blacks in South Africa during
the eighties and nineties.
Many anecdotes have been reported about the conference, but I believe these
two themes offer an important insight. How does J Street's claim of
"pro-Israel" square with being deaf to the threat Iran poses to Israel's
security, and what does it mean for a group to be so utterly invested in
Palestine Now! that the participation of the parties and even the peace
process itself is jettisoned? Could it be that these themes are
complementary? The immediate creation of a Palestinian State will mean the
end of Israel, and therefore Iran will not pose a problem.
*Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the co-founder of Z STREET ziostreet.wordpress.com
*
*Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/at_the_j_street_meeting.html* at n
November 05, 2009 - 07:06:50 AM EST
No comments:
Post a Comment