The Nation magazine today published an in-depth assessment of J Street, the influential liberal organization that describes itself as “the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans.” Today’s piece analyzes more than 130 news releases issued by J Street between October 7, 2023 and late January of this year, when the current precarious ceasefire took effect in Gaza.
The article — titled “Has J Street Gone Along With Genocide?” — documents the organization’s support for continuous large-scale arms shipment from the United States to the Israeli military during its mass killing of civilians in Gaza. The piece also reports on J Street’s insistent claim that Israel has not committed genocide in Gaza, despite a ruling 13 months ago by the International Court of Justice finding it “plausible” that Israel had already violated the Genocide Convention and despite unequivocal reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israel has committed genocide.
Here are excerpts from the piece, which was written by Norman Solomon:
· “Month after month, J Street news releases echoed pronouncements coming from the White House and State Department, becoming grim parodies of wishful thinking and empty warnings. The headlines of J Street releases were largely contoured around hollow claims from the Biden administration that it was diligently striving to end the death and agony in Gaza.”
· “J Street kept telling Congress to approve multibillion-dollar arms shipments to Israel. … In early May [2024], a news release showcased J Street’s eagerness to have it both ways — calling for massive amounts of weapons and bombs to Israel while declaring that ‘any further military assistance to Israel must be provided in full accordance with U.S. and international law.’ At the same time, J Street pointedly described itself as ‘a pro-Israel organization that has supported every single appropriation of security aid to Israel.’ It was a political dance in step with many members of the president’s party in Congress.”
· “Even when J Street chided the Biden foreign-policy team for not putting enough pressure on [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, the understanding was that J Street would remain a reliable supporter of Israel no matter what its forces did in Gaza. As 2024 went on, the mild criticisms of Biden that J Street began to voice were roughly equivalent to the feeble criticisms that Biden occasionally voiced of Netanyahu. Meanwhile the weaponry kept flowing. Even as Israel triggered starvation, bombed hospitals and schools, cut off aid supplies, and sent the death toll in Gaza higher and higher, J Street refused to change its approach.”
· “When both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch put out reports in December 2024 concluding that Israel was engaged in genocide, J Street made no response. It remains on the record proclaiming that ‘J Street rejects the allegation of genocide against the State of Israel.’ The genocide charge is one of the organization’s most uncrossable red lines.”
· J Street “has come to embody the basic contradictions of liberal American Zionism. The Gaza genocide exposed the limits of this worldview like never before, including for J Street. From the outset, the group fell in line with the Biden administration’s approach of publicly urging Israel to use its weapons within the confines of U.S. and international law — while reliably enabling Israel to do the opposite. As the carnage escalated, the enabling was crystal clear.”
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NORMAN SOLOMON,
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.