excerpt from "US Jewish lobby gains new voice," Max Deveson, BBC News
Are liberal Jewish voices in America being drowned out by powerful conservative lobbyists? A group of prominent left-leaning Jewish-Americans thinks so. They have launched a new lobbying organisation, called J Street, which they hope will redress this perceived imbalance.
"The term 'pro-Israel' has been hijacked by those who hold views that a majority of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, oppose," says executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.
The group is billing itself as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the most prominent Jewish lobbying organisation in the US. J Street says Aipac does not reflect the liberal views of a large number of its existing donors, let alone the mainstream of Jewish-American opinion. The role of the pro-Israeli lobby - and of Aipac itself - in American politics has been the subject of furious debate in recent years.
Former U.S. President George W. Bush
at a conference with Aipac
In 2006, academics Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago caused a storm when they published an article arguing that groups like Aipac had pushed US foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction often against America's national interests. Critics of the two academics countered that the pro-Israeli lobby should be allowed to make its case to government just like any other interest group, and that characterisations of Jewish lobbyists as "well-funded" and "powerful" were liable to play into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.
The team behind J Street do not necessarily buy into the Walt-Mearsheimer analysis, but they do believe that America's current policy tilts too strongly towards Israeli right-wingers, and is in the long-term interests neither of Israel nor the US.
Although Aipac have not publicly commented on J Street's launch, they are - perhaps unsurprisingly - not thought to be particularly supportive of the new group's aims. Nor are they concerned that they will lose their pre-eminent position within the Jewish-American community.
"I believe that Aipac has very broad support and will continue to enjoy it," Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which Aipac is a member, told the Washington Post newspaper.
Financially, J Street is certainly unlikely to pose a threat to Aipac. Its first-year budget of $1.5m (£750,000) will be no match for Aipac, which has an endowment of more than $100m (£50m), over 100,000 members and 18 offices around the US. J Street hopes that its voice will be amplified by some of its more high-profile backers, including former senator Lincoln Chafee.
It may also be able to draw on the power of online fundraising groups like Moveon.org, from which some of J Street's organisers have come. A similar attempt to create a liberal Jewish pressure group took place in the UK last year, with the launch of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). IJV set itself up as an alternative to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which it said was too uncritical in its attitude to Israeli policy.(more)
J Street is right: pro-Israel, Republican-led neo-conservatism is not in American interests. But neither is J Street! J Street only represents a different approach to policy based on what is best for Jews.
