Founded in 2007, the Soros-funded J Street organization has from its inception dedicated itself to undermining the State of Israel at every turn. The group absurdly self-labels as “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” but its actions and rhetoric demonstrate that it is anything but pro-Israel. Moreover, J Street has supported groups and causes that convincingly establish that it is anti-peace. For example, J Street could not bring itself to unequivocally condemn the now infamous and defamatory 2009 Goldstone Report despite the fact that the report was ultimately repudiated by its author, elicited bi-partisan condemnation from the United States Congress, and labeled a vitriolic, anti-Israel screed by prominent jurists. J Street has often condemned Israeli retaliatory actions against Hamas for the latter’s indiscriminate rocket attacks, while only paying lip service to the victims of Palestinian terrorism.
Up until 2009, the group lived in relative obscurity on the marginal, radical fringes. All that changed in 2009, when President Barack Obama came to office and sought to use the group as cover to advance his nefarious agenda. Obama recruited J Street as part of his echo chamber when he advanced his Iran appeasement deal, which provided Iran with a legal pathway toward producing nuclear bombs and an influx of cash to support its overseas proxy wars.
Moreover, Obama elicited J Street’s support when he orchestrated the perfidious United Nations Security Council resolution 2334. That resolution mandated that the international community distinguish in its dealings between pre and post 1967 Israel, a move widely believed to be a prelude for the boycott of Jewish entities situated beyond the green line. Under this resolution’s logical extreme, the reconstruction of Old City’s ancient Hurva synagogue – dynamited by the Jordanians during the 1948 War of Liberation – would constitute a violation of international law.
J Street’s representatives were frequent guests of the Obama White House where they schemed and cavorted with the likes of Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, John Kerry, and yes, former Vice President Joe Biden. White House staffers were also frequent guests at J Street confabs, where they gave speeches and addressed audience members. In 2013, Biden gave a speech at a J Street hosted event where he, in a demonstrable display of profound ignorance, referred to the Palestinians as, “the least ideological and least sectarian Arabs in the Middle East.” The Palestinian leadership today is as fragmented along ideological and sectarian lines as it was in the 1920s and 1930s.
But J Street’s cozy, symbiotic-like relationship with the Obama administration radically changed in 2016 when Donald Trump assumed office. The Trump administration, perceptively recognizing J Street as a fifth column, severed all ties with this pernicious and duplicitous group. Invites from J Street to White House staffers were rebuffed and in an instant, J Street’s access to White House and ability to influence policy, vanished.
Trump worked with alacrity to undo the damage done during Obama’s tenure. He extricated the United States from Obama’s Iran deal and complied with U.S. law by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, promptly relocating the embassy there. Trump also acknowledged reality when he recognized Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, the plateau from which prior to 1967 Syria shelled Israeli communities perched below. Finally, the Trump administration negated UNSC resolution 2334 by publicly expressing the view that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria were not per se inconsistent with international law.
Trump then transformed political rhetoric into action when he authorized Ambassador David Friedman to revise three decades-old agreements, enabling researchers in settlements to apply for U.S. government funds. The modification of these agreements opened up Judea and Samaria to academic, commercial and scientific engagement with the United States. Friedman symbolically chose the city of Ariel, situated in Samaria, as the venue to announce the new U.S. policy. In a further step toward negating UNSC resolution 2334, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a historic and courageous trip to the Psagot winery, which is located beyond the green line, just north of Jerusalem. During his visit, Pompeo announced that the U.S. will allow goods produced in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria to be labeled products of Israel as opposed to the West Bank.
All these tangible political achievements accomplished during Trump’s tenure are now in jeopardy with election of Joe Biden, whose November win is facing substantial legal challenges that will likely be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Of grave concern are people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, radical, anti-Israel extremists, who wield considerable influence within the Biden team. Equally concerning is Avril Haines, Obama’s deputy CIA director, who is part of Biden’s transition team and will head foreign policy and national security. As FrontPage’s Daniel Greenfield notes,
“In May, Haines joined other Obama staffers in signing on to a letter by the J Street anti-Israel lobby that complained that previous Democratic National Convention platforms had been ‘silent on the rights of Palestinians, on Israeli actions that undermine those rights and the prospects for a two-state solution.’”
In the meantime, the J Street buzzards are circling and salivating, waiting for their opportunity squirm their way back into the inner sanctum of the decision makers.
Leave a Reply