New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief and often unrelenting critic of Israel, Jodi Rudoren tweeted the obvious about Israelis reaction to the Obama administration’s deal with Iran, “You know, 2 Jews, 3 opinions. Here you have 8 million Jews and nearly one opinion.”
Israelis understood that their security, if not their existence, was being offered up on a platter of narcissism to promote President Barack Obama’s legacy and Secretary of State John Kerry’s quest for a Nobel Prize that will be as meaningful as the one given to the murderous thug Yasser Arafat.
Israeli Jews are indeed of one pessimistic mind with regard to Obama’s capitulation to Iran. Israeli Jews remember that in the period between the wars, among their European brethren, the pessimists fled to America while the optimists got a free train ride to Auschwitz. Misplaced optimism has its price.
For both Israeli Jews and nearly every major Jewish organization, this is not a time for optimism but a time to petition congress to block Obama’s surrender to the mullahs.
Not so for J Street, the anti-Zionist Zionists that have convinced “useful idiots” in the liberal Jewish community that Obama has effectively blocked Iran from a pathway to the bomb by releasing billions in Iranian funds, ending sanctions, and submitting to every demand the Iranians made with regard to inspections, which will require more notice than the Chicago police once gave Al Capone before a raid.
J Street’s president and founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami once described the organization as Barack Obama’s blocking back. So, it is not surprising that the organization proclaimed that the deal appeared to adhere to the criteria established by non-proliferation experts and it verifiably blocks Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon.
Who are these experts and what are their criteria? J Street does not say. J Street’s talking points and the administration’s are almost identical. Like the administration, J Street’s message is clear. All that stands between Iran and the bomb is Barack Obama’s deal with Iran.
It should not be forgotten that when meeting with Jewish community leaders, Obama long ago replaced the Zionist Organization of America with J Street. A simple comparison of the statements issued by the two organizations will underscore why that happened.
In contrast to J Street, ZOA’s President Morton Klein said the organization is “deeply horrified but not surprised by the truly terrible nuclear agreement.” Klein called the agreement “a catastrophe and a nightmare” that leaves the “world standing at an abyss.”
When it comes to Israel, J Street has been far and away more than Obama’s blocking back. It has been his stalking horse, and worse it has taken positions against the Jewish State that Obama himself would not even contemplate having taken.
Foremost among these is J Street’s support for the infamous Goldstone Report that condemned Israel as a war criminal from testimony from Hamas functionaries and far leftist Israeli NGOs supported by the anti-Israel, New Israel Fund, another fifth-column operation supported by Jewish liberals. Even the Obama administration found the biased blood libel unpalatable, and ultimately Goldstone himself retracted his own report. Not J Street.
At J Street’s 2013 convention, Israeli cabinet member and left of center Knesset member Tzipi Livni was given a cold reception when she made a case for defending the Israeli Defense Forces against scurrilous accusations and for Israel’s security needs amid a hostile environment. Not so, Fatah representative Husam Zomlot whose call for a formal recognition of the Nakba, the disaster that Palestinians call Israel’s founding, received an enthusiastic reception.
J Street was in the forefront in urging acceptance of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s quest to legitimate Iran’s nuclear program. It took the side of the knife and club wielding jihadi thugs who set upon the Israeli naval soldiers who legally boarded the blockade-running Mavi Marmara. If that were not enough, J Street rallied against an anti-Boycott Divestment and Sanctions bill.
If there is a policy that hurts Israel, count on J Street to mobilize for it, just as it is now mobilizing for the administration’s deal with Iran, seeking to raise two million dollars in donations to implement the effort.
J Street is the beneficiary of the largess of George Soros, a man who told CBS Sixty Minutes that his most exciting memories were of his youth in Hungary were he pointed out Jews to the Nazis. For years, Ben-Ami hid the relationship and Soros used a Hong Kong resident as a “cutout” to transfer funds to the group. Soros believes, as does J Street, that Israel should not exist. And with a little help from Iran, Soros will live long enough to make that as exciting a reality as helping the Nazis capture Hungarian Jews.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a senior fellow with the Salomon Center for American Jewish Thought. @salomoncenter
