Would you buy an ethnic grievance from this blogger?

Very interesting NYT Magazine article by James Traub about the rise of J Street. I liked this paragraph because I lie at the literal intersection of these demographic trends:

The average age of the dozen or so staff members is about 30. Ben-Ami speaks for, and to, this post-Holocaust generation. “They’re all intermarried,” he says. “They’re all doing Buddhist seders.” They are, he adds, baffled by the notion of “Israel as the place you can always count on when they come to get you.” Living in a world of blogs, they’re similarly skeptical of the premise that “we’re still on too-shaky ground” to permit public disagreement. There’s a curious and striking analogy with the situation of Cuban-Americans, whose politics until quite recently were dominated by the generation that fled Castro’s revolution and were grimly determined to see his regime overthrown. Obama has not had to pay a price for moderating the American embargo, as his predecessors would have, because Cuban-American opinion is no longer in thrall to the older generation — precisely J Street’s goal in regard to the Middle East.

And then there’s me: 75 percent Jewish, 25 percent Cuban, 100 percent blogger. That said, my family’s seders are pretty banal and not at all buddhist. We have gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup and brisket and all the normal stuff. I’m not really clear on what a buddhist seder will be.

J Street, the newish pro-peace Israel lobby, seems to have scored a major coup by snagging Hadar Susskind, currently vice president and Washington director for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, as their new director of policy and strategy. James Besser from New York Jewish Week explains:

“My goal is to build as broad a base of support as possible for Israel at this politically pivotal moment when there is both great opportunity to make progress in resolving the conflict and a tremendous risk of squandering it,” Susskind said in a statement. “I look forward to working to grow a strong and integrated progressive pro-Israel movement and to build that much needed support across the spectrum of American political life.”

His background – he was born in Israel and served in the IDF in Lebanon – won’t please those right-wingers who say J Street is anti-Israel because it disagrees with …well, them. And it probably won’t mollify more mainstream leaders who worry that the new group undercuts American Jewish unity on key questions involving Israel.

The significance of attracting people with this kind of credibility, however, isn’t to mollify high-information ideologues who simply disagree with a progressive approach to these issues. The significance is that a great many American Jews are torn between their generally progressive approach to political issues and the fact that they often worry about the real motives of people who become critical of Israeli policy or the status quo in US-Israel relations. It’s difficult to have those kind of doubts about Israeli-born IDF veterans with a track record of working in significant Jewish organizations.

Jews tend not to like far-right politicians from Kentucky (AIPAC photo)

James Besser at The New York Jewish Week keeps trying to swear off writing about progressive Jewish organization J Street but keeps getting dragged back in by the over-the-top hatred of Jeremy Ben-Ami’s relatively new outfit. He wonders what the deal is. I’m not sure myself and don’t want to psychoanalyze other people, but I do think Eric Alterman’s 2006 column about AIPAC’s ties to the Republican Party and conservative causes more generally is relevant here:

It’s a truism that most American Jews are liberal Democrats. For decades, neoconservatives have argued that they are bucking their own interests in staying true to these values and should join the Republicans, where, together with right-wing conservatives they will insure that support for a fair settlement for the Palestinians will remain as low as taxes on the extremely wealthy. So far, these arguments have had almost no effect on Jews, who supported Democrats as loyally as any single constituency in the last election. But the argument has worked on the leaders of many Jewish organizations. What we are left with, therefore, is a paradox. American Jews are liberals; they support Democrats. But Jewish organizations strategize with Republicans on how to smear these same Democrats, supported by the funds of these same liberal Democratic Jews.

This is just an inherently unstable situation. And I think it helps explain why much-larger and better-established organizations seem to find the very existence of J Street so threatening. Normally a conservative institution is relying on the financial and institutional support of, you know, conservatives. So while conservative organizations obviously disagree with progressive organizations, they’re not actually threatened by them. The Center for American Progress, for example, couldn’t possibly displace Heritage and AEI as go-to think tanks for conservative policymakers. But AIPAC and others are actually depending to a large extent on liberals and it’s very plausible to imagine Jews with progressive political opinions drifting away to support a left-wing organization. And of course Jews with progressive political opinions are the overwhelming majority of American Jews.

J Street did a video attacking neo-fascist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and those American Jewish groups who’ve decided to sell their principles out and become Lieberman apologists. James Besser has a worthwhile article touching on this incident and the entire Lieberman issue that includes this bizarre argument:

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, conceded that Lieberman, dramatically different from the suave, Americanized Netanyahu, is a lightning rod for many American Jews.

“Different can be scary,” said Laszlo Mizrahi, whose group works with media to present Israel favorably. “There were people who thought Barack Hussein Obama was scary because of his middle name.”

This is true. There were people who thought Barack Hussein Obama was scary because of his middle name. And there are also people who think Lieberman is scary because of his repudiation of the Annapolis process, his hostility to equal rights for minority populations in Israel, for his racist campaign tactics, and for his apparent criminal conduct. It’s not entirely clear, however, what the analogy between the two situations is.

Daniel Pipes, head of the Middle East Forum outfit that recently took a victory lap over its role in spiking Chas Freeman’s nomination, is also psyched about Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister:

Avigdor Lieberman became foreign minister of Israel yesterday. He celebrated his inauguration with a maiden speech that news reports indicate left his listeners grimacing, squirming, and aghast. The BBC, for example, informs us that his words prompted “his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably.”

Too bad for them – the speech leaves me elated.

Pipes is more right-wing than the bulk of the “pro-Israel” establishment. But it’s telling that that establishment regards Pipes as a perfectly acceptable comrade-in-arms, while seeking every opportunity to trash the pro-peace J Street. It’s a telling indication of where things really stand, and a welcome pretext to link to J Street’s rather different take on Lieberman.

An interesting article by James Besser in New York Jewish Week asks why the Jewish American establishment is driven into such a frenzy by J Street, when it’s hardly the first dovish Israel-focused group in history:

But the reaction is far out of proportion to the Jewish “establishment’s” response to other dovish groups. I remember when Americans for Peace Now (APN) appeared on the scene (yes, I’ve been doing this job that long), and the reaction from the big guys was barely detectable. The Israel Policy Forum (IPF) and a predecessor group, Project Nishma, started out with some big name, mainstream Jewish leaders, so you’d think the pro-Israel establishment would have had fits, but I heard almost no reaction. Brit Tzedek v’Shalom was started by a former Knesset member, but its arrival caused barely a ripple.

So why J Street? Why all this fury? More to the point, why do so many find this group so threatening? [...] I suspect the answer has to do with something else: J Street is the first group on the left that’s dared to take on the pro-Israel lobby where it really matters: at the critical intersection of campaign finance and congressional lobbying.

I think that’s part of the story. I think another part of the story has to do with the dramatic rightward lurch in Israeli politics. Back when Ariel Sharon announced his Gaza “disengagement” plan in order to head-off international pressure for Israel to start negotiating on the Arab Peace Initiative, I don’t recall very many American Jews—including quite hawkish American Jews—being sympathetic to the far-right current in Israeli politics that denounced his move as a craven sellout. Hawks and doves disagreed about how to characterize Sharon: Was this a bold gesture of peace, or was it a a bold tactical gambit aimed at securing Israel’s grip on West Bank settlements. But everyone agreed that Netanyahu was playing to extremist sentiments. And now Netanyahu’s running the show, and the main partner in his coalition government is an anti-Arab demagogue coming from an even more extremist posture.

Meanwhile, neither American public opinion in general nor American Jewish public opinion in particular has become more hawkish or right-wing over the past five years. Quite the reverse. Obviously, this is going to be a problem for any group that wants to both be seen as “speaking for” American Jews and also aligned with the policy agenda of the Israeli government. It’s a period of real risk in which many Jews, and many politicians who are interested in what Jews think, might see their allegiances shift away from an establishment that’s come to be dominated by neocon-type views that relatively few American Jews actually hold. Under the circumstances, I can see why there’s a real effort to preemptively discredit a group that stands for fairly conventional things—support of a two-state solution, opposition to settlements, belief that preemptive war has not been a boon to American or Israeli interests in the region, etc.—at a time when Israeli politics is lurching in a weird and disturbing direction.