HuffPost on December 3 published a piece by Akbar Shahid Ahmed about J Street, a US-based, self-described “pro-Israel” advocacy group whose founder this week denounced the Trump Administration’s ambition to sell $23 billion of advanced military equipment to the United Arab Emirates.
While the matter, like most government policies, has become the focus of robust debate, what is certain is that the author disseminated an outright falsehood when he suggested that security “hawks” view J Street as supportive of Israel.
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J Street’s Iranian Blind Spot
The article, titled Major Jewish Group Joins Fight Against Trump’s Massive Middle East Weapons Sale, suggests that opponents of the proposed deal — which envisions the sale to Abu Dhabi of fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets — received a boost when J Street came out in favor of a push by some members of Congress to torpedo the initiative:
J Street’s decision, in particular, to oppose the deal is highly significant because of the group’s status as a pro-Israel voice that’s respected by progressives, mainstream politicians and even some hawkish figures.
In reality, however, J Street is a highly divisive, if not entirely partisan, organization that on occasion has lobbied the US government to adopt policies that are diametrically opposed to those of the democratically elected government of Israel. Case in point is the group’s backing for then-president Barack Obama’s “signature” foreign policy achievement: namely, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.
The agreement, against which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fought tooth and nail — going so far as to defy Obama by slamming the pact during an address to both chambers of Congress — provided the mullahs with some $100 billion in sanctions relief. Most of this has subsequently been used to sow additional chaos across the Middle East. From Syria to Yemen and Lebanon to Iraq, the Iranians and their proxies have left death and destruction in their wake since 2015.
Indeed, this was predicted by many “hawks,” who believed from the get-go that the nuclear accord was liable to facilitate the Iranian regime’s clearly stated goal of exporting by any means its extremist Islamist ideology throughout the globe. Or, perhaps these “hawks” took the Ayatollahs at their word when they repeatedly called for the destruction of the one and only Jewish state.
In reality, all these “hawks,” or anyone else for that matter, needed to do was look up which country the US Department of State has long classified as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Related Reading: The Iran Regime’s Incitement to Destroy Israel
It is against this backdrop that one needs to contextualize J Street’s assertion that an arms deal between Washington and a Mideast ally, which, by happenstance, just months ago agreed to normalize relations with Israel, will serve only as a disrupting force:
The sale of a massive quantity of such destructive weapons systems to the UAE would only further fuel an escalating arms race in a region already suffering from destabilizing wars that endanger civilians and undermine US interests.
This, even though the primary source of current regional mayhem is Tehran, not Abu Dhabi.
This geopolitical reality seemingly had no bearing on the nature of the nuclear deal that J Street supported. Neither was J Street deterred by the fact that the JCPOA was opposed near-universally by Israeli officialdom. Rather, J Street lashed out at any objections to the Iran deal, as was made clear by the group’s denunciations of Netanyahu.
Contra our friends at @ADL_National, we don’t think this is an inflammatory statement:#BibiDoesntSpeakforMepic.twitter.com/3ye8tnfiMQ
— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) February 11, 2015
Such antagonism to a sitting Israeli premier flies in the face of a decades-long tradition of Jewish groups in the United States supporting, at least publicly, whichever Israeli government is in power.
J Street: Threats to Israel Are ‘Mythic’
Another demonstration of J Street’s troubling “pro-Israel” stance was revealed during Operation Cast Lead, the 2009 mini-war instigated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and which was backed by all Zionist political parties.
Nevertheless, J Street was unable to distinguish “between who is right and who is wrong.” One of the organization’s leaders described the Israeli army’s mission to defend the country’s citizenry as an “unjust and even criminal act,” and claimed that the terror group, which rules the Palestinian enclave and had already been firing rockets into the Jewish state for years, represented a “mythic threat to Israel.”
In addition, J Street in 2010 described as “cruel brutality” the response of Israeli commandos who were attacked by knife-wielding Turks connected to a terrorist organization while boarding the Mavi Marmara ship, which was attempting to break the naval blockade on Gaza.
J Street and BDS: Israel’s Creation Is an “Injustice”
Daniel Levy, a co-founder of J Street, sits on the board of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), which has provided grants to groups associated with the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement against Israel. RBF has since 2013 given at least $880,000 in funding to the likes of Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestine Legal, neither of which, to put it mildly, are considered “pro-Israel” as defined by a majority of Israelis and their government.
Recently, J Street was a signatory to a letter to US President-elect Joe Biden urging him to avoid appointing people who advocate for outlawing the BDS movement to top national security and foreign policy posts.
J Street is, in fact, so far removed from the Israeli mainstream that in 2019 it backed tying US financial aid to the Jewish State’s adoption of policies related to the Palestinians that the group promotes. At the time, J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami declared that, “our [American] aid is not intended to be a blank check.”
J Street’s apparent philosophy in a nutshell: “There’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice in the creation of Israel,” according to the group’s co-founder Levy.
Related Reading: Israel Apartheid Week – The Smear Disguised as a Human Rights Campaign
J Street: Prejudice is as Prejudice Does
One could not be faulted for concluding that HuffPost is touting J Street’s “pro-Israel” bona fides in order to legitimize ideological opposition to the prospective sale of weapons to the UAE:
J Street’s opposition strengthens the Democrats’ argument that a vote against the arms deal has nothing to do with prejudice.
In this regard, it is worth noting that J Street seemingly had little to say about the Obama administration having offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in military support and weaponry, including everything from tanks to attack helicopters, air-to-ground missiles to warships.
However, soon after President Donald Trump entered office and pursued a similar path, J Street all of a sudden became very concerned with Riyadh’s involvement in the Iranian-sponsored war in Yemen as well as maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.
At the very least, the article should have included a balancing voice so that readers can decide for themselves how to perceive J Street. But that presumes that Huffpost is dedicated to serving the public and not reinforcing an ideological echo chamber.
Featured Image: Israel flag via Wikipedia.
