J Street, AJC on CNN

CNN’s Christiana Amanpour interviewed “pro Israel, pro peace” lobby J Street’s Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami and American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris. J Street recently held a controversial conference in DC that had unexpectedly high turnout. However, critics of the group contend J Street’s agenda and supporters do not have Israel’s best interests in mind.

As tension on settlements continues to grow between Israel, the United States, and the Palestinian Authority, Ben-Ami condemns settlement activity as the downfall to the peace process and the future of the State of Israel. He says:

“The settlement enterprise is essentially the equivalent of a cancer eating away at the state of Israel. It’s a disease that needed to be stopped early, and unfortunately it’s now taking over the chances of Israel’s survivor as a Jewish democratic state. And so I think that it is — has been a mistake on the part of lobbyists in America who have tried to help Israel and facilitate the continued settlement expansion… The point is to secure a future for Israel as a Jewish and a democratic homeland. And that requires the creation of a Palestinian state.”

Ben-Ami provides an apt response to critics of J Street for being ‘self-hating Jews.’ Many Israelis and supporters of Israel chastise Jews or other Israel supporters who question the Israeli government’s actions. By criticizing Israel and identifying potential areas of improvement, many Israel supporters say these critics are actually hurting the Jewish state. Ben-Ami responds:

“And I think that’s one of the fundamental problems with the discussion in this country to date that we are trying to break through J Street, is the notion that to criticize the policy of the government of Israel is to somehow criticize the legitimacy of the state of Israel.

It is absolutely not equivalent. And the defensive reaction on the part of the traditional status quo lobbies that attack those who criticize by saying they are anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews or other negative stereotypes, they are actually worsening the long-term prospects for support for the state of Israel.”

Further, one of Ben-Ami’s main reasons for the creation of the group -demographic changes-  is highly contested. He uses supposed demographic changes due to high Arab birth rates as a rationale for urgency in the peace process. Even former President Bill Clinton used this fact recently to infuse urgency in the peace process. However, many analysts cite studies that suggest there is no demographic threat to Israel due to the Russian aliyah, recent reductions in Arab birth rates, and the high birth-rate of Orthodox Jews. A recent op-ed in Yedioth Achronot challenges the demographic shift.