03 Jun
Uncategorized

Back to the Future: Obama's Peace Plan

by Amanda Walgrove In 1967, the 25th amendment to the constitution was ratified, the U.S. was in the thick of the Vietnam War, Benjamin Netanyahu first joined the Israeli army and the Six-Day war ended with a U.N.-mediate ceasefire established between Syria and Israel. The year 1967 brought the release of The Doors' self-titled debut album, Elvis Presley's marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, the inaugural Superbowl game on network television, and the birth of Julia Roberts. What a different world it was. Tweeting was still something that only birds could do and revolutions were not started on Facebook, because back then a facebook was a company photo album. In late May, President Obama delivered a speech that sparked a wealth of controversy and a barrage of criticism after he insisted that Israel and Palestine return to their 1967...

Continue reading

24 May
Uncategorized

Tweeting AIPAC

Well, folks, another AIPAC Policy Conference has come and gone, and this year’s had no shortage of buzz. With a pair of high-profile speeches from Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, bookended by the former’s speech on the Middle East last week and the latter’s Congressional address earlier today, the 2011 Conference generated a lot of chatter on that up-and-coming phenomenon, the Internet. Here are a few of our favorite tweets from the weekend’s events: Noah Pollak (@noahpollak), Executive Director of the Emergency Committee for Israel: “Boehner is great. But he looks like he spent the weekend pounding Bud Lites on a motorboat. Sunscreen, Mr. Speaker. Check it out." Jeffrey Goldberg (@Goldberg3000), national correspondent, The Atlantic: “AIPAC convention feels a bit like what I imagine the atmosphere inside the Loehmann’s dressing room to be.” “Is it possible to find speakers who...

Continue reading

30 Mar
Uncategorized

Loving Israel The Right (Or Left) Way

By Amanda Walgrove Last week, Sarah Palin visited Israel and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of Israel's right-wing coalition, including Likud Chairman, Danny Danon. Many have questioned whether or not this was an early campaign move; many GOP members who may throw their hats into the Presidential ring—Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Haley Barbour—have recently made visits to Israel as well. “It’s not the Ames straw poll, but I do think a visit to Israel is an important stop for folks who are running for president,” Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks told Politico. “So much of what our commander-in-chief will deal with in the White House is rooted in this part of the world.” Besides being a shiny credential on the checklist for candidacy, Palin’s visit also serves to put another...

Continue reading

28 Feb
Uncategorized

At J Street, Attempting to Redefine “Pro-Israel”

By Niv Elis In its second-ever conference in Washington, DC this week, the self-described “Pro-Peace, Pro-Israel” lobby group J Street drew some 2,000 left-leaning Israel supporters. By its very existence J Street, has sparked a conflicted and sometimes angry debate within the Jewish community as to what it means to be “pro-Israel.”  Before J Street, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held a virtual monopoly in Washington on the term pro-Israel.  For AIPAC, it meant supporting a “strong U.S.-Israel relationship” by keeping disagreements out of the public spotlight and, more broadly, supporting the policies of the democratically elected government in Israel, regardless of who was in power.  But critics, including many J Street supporters, accuse AIPAC of being more sympathetic to the conservative Likud party and promoting its hard-line policies. J Street has its own critics, who...

Continue reading

24 Dec
Culture, Latest

AIPAC vs. Seinfeld

by Daniel Kieval I recently heard a lecture by J. J. Goldberg, senior columnist for The Forward, about the current state of American Judaism and its relationship to Israel. Goldberg spoke about intermarriage and what he termed the "Seinfeld effect," in which the national popularity of Jewish figures such as Jerry Seinfeld (or, these days, Jon Stewart) leads children of interfaith (or secular Jewish) parents to embrace the Jewish side of their identity. He also argued, like Peter Beinart in a much-discussed article earlier this year, that the right-wing position of major American Jewish organizations toward Israel has the opposite impact on these mostly liberal young people, turning them off of Judaism completely—we could call this the "AIPAC effect." AIPAC, popularly referred to as the "Israel lobby," has drawn criticism from liberals, Jewish and non-Jewish alike,...

Continue reading

21 Jan
Latest

Jews Up For Grabs

By Symi Rom-Rymer In advertising the November debate between Alan Dershowitz and Jeremy Ben-Ami, the 92nd St. Y framed it as a discussion over Israeli policy, Iran, and military vs. diplomatic strategies in the Middle East.   Yet it turned out to be a debate not so much about foreign policy, as a fight for the right to represent the Jewish community.   A clash between the old and the new.  Who has the right to speak for American Jews? Can that right extend to more than one group?  And most importantly, (at least to Dershowitz) who has earned that right? There was, of course, the requisite tussling over J Street’s branding and each of their positions on Iran but the real flashpoint erupted around J Street’s very existence.   Despite its successes in its first 18 months, including being...

Continue reading

14 Sep
Latest

Jeremy Ben Ami is the new Don Draper

By Sarah Breger The interweb has been abuzz this past weekend over the publication of the NYT magazine profile of J Street. Critics of the left-leaning Israel group have promptly responded, asserting that having moderate Arab and Muslim board members makes the group anti-Israel and calling into question polls J Street has published. No matter how you feel about J Street, you have to admit it is pretty impressive that the not even two-year-old organization has received so much media attention. Or as M.J. Rosenberg at Talking Points Memo puts it, Don Draper has nothing on Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s executive director. The bigger story however may be the decline of AIPAC, the once untouchable Israel group. As Robert Dreyfuss writes in this month's Mother Jones: “AIPAC is facing something of a perfect storm. Advocating for stronger...

Continue reading

12 Mar
Latest

Rosen's Revenge

By Jeremy Gillick In August of 2005 the United States made an unlikely indictment: following an FBI raid on AIPAC's offices, it accused Steve Rosen, one of the pro-Israel group's most senior and influential lobbyists, of passing classified information leaked to him by a Pentagon analyst to the Israeli government. The pro-Israel community rushed to his defense, but newspapers worldwide pounced on the case, using it as a springboard to attack AIPAC. The indictment itself was sufficient to disgrace Rosen, who soon lost his job, and whatever the trial's outcome, it seemed unlikely that he would ever regain his influence or stature. Now, with his long-awaited trial less than two months away (it's scheduled for April 29), Rosen has re-emerged, according to several reports, as the man responsible for the downfall of Charles (Chas) W. Freeman, Jr, who...

Continue reading

13 Nov
Arts & Culture, Culture, Latest, Misc, Religion

The Forward 50: 2008 Jews of the Year

By Jeremy Gillick The Forward has published its annual list of America’s 50 most important Jews: the Forward 50. Winners include Rahm Emanuel, Obama's newly appointed Chief of Staff, about whom you can read here. There's also Morris Allen, a Conservative Rabbi from Minnesota who helped re-invent kashrut as a moral rather than merely legal imperative, just as Agriprocessors, America's largest kosher meat producer, sunk deeper and deeper into sin, exploitation and eventually, bankruptcy. Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of the new, liberal Jewish, Israel lobby group J-Street, is at the top of the list too. Although this choice is perhaps more a reflection of the Forward's editorial stance than of Ben-Ami's success, the creation of a viable alternative to AIPAC is, at the very least, a major symbolic accomplishment. And it could become much more than that. Here's what Moment...

Continue reading

24 Sep
Latest

Jewish Politicians Rip into RJC

Watch Joe Biden deliver last night's opening speech at the National Jewish Democratic Council's Washington Conference. Jewish politicians known for their support of Israel lashed out against the Republican Jewish Committee this morning, accusing it of dividing America’s Jewish community for the sake of politics. During a panel discussion titled “Israel: Bipartisan Consensus or Partisan Wedge Issue” at a conference hosted by the National Jewish Democratic Council in Washington DC, House Representatives Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and Brad Sherman (D-CA), and former Representative Mel Levine (D-CA) criticized the RJC’s anti-Obama campaign as “BS,” emphasizing that historically Democrats have been the most staunchly and consistently pro-Israel party. “You cannot denigrate and destroy our community in the interest of getting someone elected and that’s exactly what they are doing,” said Berkley, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from...

Continue reading

1234