Standing up to the pro-Israel establishment

Q&A: Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street, wants American Jews to give Israel some tough love

AP

Jeremy Ben-Ami

In the two years since Jeremy Ben-Ami founded J Street, which bills itself as a "pro-peace, pro-Israel" voice for a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, his organization has been attacked as "morally deficient" and "appallingly naive" by critics in the American Jewish community and on the right end of the political spectrum. And in Israel, members of the Knesset have even formed a committee to determine whether J Street is "anti-Israel" and should be publicly condemned.

In his new book, "A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nat..." Ben-Ami confronts his critics and presents his case for what, exactly, has gone wrong in Jewish politics both here and in Israel. The fundamental problem, as he sees it, is that the existing pro-Israel establishment isn't willing to apply the pressure needed to bring about an end to Israel's dead end occupation of the West Bank and the creation of a viable, peaceful Palestinian state.

We caught up with Ben-Ami recently and discussed the challenges J Street has faced in trying to convince Jewish-Americans to think differently about a country they've been taught to support unconditionally.

You compare your own struggles as a minority voice in the Jewish community with those of your father, who was an active member of the Irgun, a right-wing Zionist military group, in the 1930s and '40s. What parallels do you see?

I found the similarities in the way in which our experiences played out to be really shocking. [In both situations,] you have an establishment with a certain point of view, and you have a voice of dissent that wants to come into the conversation -- and that voice of dissent is warning of impending disaster. And rather than dealing with the substance of the contentions that are being put on the table by the minority, the majority and the establishment tries to quash their voice and uses whatever tactics are at its disposal.

In my father's case, [they tried] to wiretap their operations, and bring the U.S. government in to investigate them. It was amazing, the things that were done to shut them down, rather than allow them into the debate. And I just see that as extremely similar to the tactics that are being used against J Street, and that have been used for years against many groups over the last several decades that have talked about a need to approach the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict with anything other than an "us vs. them" mentality. The funding threats are there -- groups are told by donors, "you can't host these speakers or I'm going to pull my funding from you." [There are] the personal attacks, the lies and the smears and all of this crap that gets thrown at you, which has nothing to do with what [points] you're actually raising. The ways in which an established power base tries to shut down voices of dissent was just extraordinarily parallel [to my father's experience]. It's the same exact dynamic.

I recently watched a video of your 2009 debate with Alan Dershowitz, and was struck that you didn't appear to actually disagree on the policy subjects that you discussed.

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