join me

I am reviving my blog to post about the J Street conference, which begins tonight and continues through Tuesday. A friend of mine is a liberal American Jew. He and I agree on most political issues, specifically dissatisfaction with certain Israeli government policies, but he does not support J Street. I want people like him to join me in supporting J Street.

A lot of the criticism that I have seen of J Street is laced with name-calling, innuendo, and guilt-by-association. I think responding to such criticism point by point is generally not fruitful. If any readers of my blog care to sift through the static to extract a salient argument, I'd be happy to address it. But there is also some thoughtful criticism out there, including emails from my friend, and addressing that criticism is my main goal with this post. I focus on three issues: Zionism, funding sources, and base constituency.

Zionism. My friend wants J Street to state unequivocally that it is Zionist. There is some controversy about the definition of Zionism. Birthright Israel, for instance, has recognized the controversy. Here's my definition for the purpose of this discussion: "commitment to the notion of a Jewish democratic state". J Street is doing Zionism by this definition even though it is not saying "Zionism". I think this is a wise approach. More on this later.

Funding sources. J Street was not entirely forthcoming about its relationship with George Soros. Jeremy Ben-Ami apologized, which I think was proper. There are some people from whom it would be inappropriate to accept money at all, regardless of how transparent you are about it, but I wouldn't put George Soros on that list. The huge donation from Consolacion Esdicul is kind of puzzling, but if there's a good reason not to accept money from her then I haven't seen it. Overall this issue seems to me like a red herring.

Base constituency. Jonathan Chait wrote an interesting critique about whom J Street is targeting. J Street's base constituency is both (1) American Jews who wear their Zionism proudly and aren't afraid to express their disagreement with self-destructive Israeli government policies and (2) American Jews who are uncomfortable with the word Zionism but are nonetheless "committed to the notion of a Jewish democratic state". People who oppose Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state are not in the base constituency.

The two groups who are in the base constituency are both significant. Leaving off the label Zionism has alienated some of the people in the first group, like my friend. I hope they have the wisdom to see that adopting the label Zionist would be the end of the discussion for their potential partners, and that saying Zionism is less important than doing Zionism.