Jeremy Versus Goliath J Street’S Brave Effort to Promote Peace in the Middle East by Scott Macleod

Books Jeremy Versus Goliath J Street’s Brave Effort to Promote Peace in the Middle East By Scott MacLeod A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation. By Jeremy Ben-Ami. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 242 pp. eremy Ben-Ami has written a valuable book that should be read by everyone affected Jby the Israeli–Palestinian conflict—Israelis, Arabs and especially by Americans. The title may suggest to some that this is another volume of familiar pro-Israel boosterism. The author believes that Israel’s existence is under threat and this is the focus of his effort. Yet, he has written a very different sort of book than we are used to seeing from Israel’s die-hard supporters in America. Part of A New Voice for Israel is an account of the deep roots of Ben-Ami’s family in Israel. The book also serves as an insider’s guide to J Street, the pro-Israel lobby group that Ben-Ami founded in 2008. In that aspect, he tells the story of a struggle under way for the soul of America’s Jewish community, and J Street’s role in it. At its core, Ben-Ami’s book, like J Street’s work, is a courageous effort to rewrite the Israel- driven narrative of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that is too unquestioningly accepted and parroted in the West. This is an impassioned plea for American Jews, U.S. politicians, and Israelis to get on the right side of history in the Middle East. Ben-Ami debunks the mythology about Israel’s founding, embraces the need for a peace settlement that provides dignity and jus- tice to the Palestinians, criticizes Israeli politics for undemocratic tendencies, and blasts Washington’s uncritical support for Israeli policies. “The present path that the State of Israel is on is unsustainable,” he writes. “The occupation of another people and denial of their national aspirations and their rights is not only morally unacceptable, it is a fatal threat to the entire enterprise of the State of Israel.” Elsewhere Ben-Ami writes: “The un- sustainability of the present course seems clear to just about everyone except the present Israeli government and some of the leadership of the American Jewish community.” The message is not a new one, of course. What makes it meaningful is a messenger who came to deliver it after honest self-reflection. His thinking is well in line with CAIRO REVIEW 3/2011 95 BOOKS dovish Israelis. Many American Jews mother was in Austria as the Anschluss or agree with him, and some of them have German annexation approached. She fled joined or donated to J Street. But in the to the United States, but countless rela- U.S., few figures in the political main- tives who did not escape perished cruelly stream have been as brave as Ben-Ami in in Nazi concentration camps. expressing strong and valid views critical Ben Ami’s father, Yitshaq, was born of Israeli policies and of Israel’s Ameri- in Tel Aviv in 1913, and grew up as the can supporters. We might wager that struggle for Palestine, involving Zion- the boosterish title on the cover, which ists, the Arab population, and the British skirts any reference to the criticism found Mandate authority, turned bloody with inside, was given in the hope of deflecting the outbreak of anti-Zionist rioting in the the backlash that books critical of Israel 1920s. He became a follower of Vladimir tend to ignite in the U.S. As he notes in Jabotinsky and went on to play a leading the book, opponents of J Street call “my role in the Revisionist Zionism move- colleagues and me fanatics, anti-Semitic, ment. At nineteen, he joined Jabotinsky’s extremists and self-hating Jews.” Betar youth group, becoming commander Ben-Ami is hardly any of those things, of the Jerusalem branch, and eventually or even a political lefty. He spent a twenty- signed up for the Revisionist’s under- five-year career embedded in mainstream ground militia, the Irgun Zvai Leumi. Democratic Party politics, starting in his Revisionists believed that a Jewish state hometown of New York City. He served was essential and that violence was a nec- as deputy domestic policy advisor in the essary instrument to be used against Arabs White House during President Bill Clin- and the British in achieving it. The Irgun, ton’s first term in office. led by Menachem Begin, who would later Giving the author’s critical views start the hard-line Likud party and serve great poignancy and standing are Ben- as prime minister of Israel, was a terror- Ami’s deep family connections to the ist group blamed for atrocities such as the Zionist movement, the Holocaust, and Deir Yassin massacre and the bombing of Israel’s war of independence. Both sets the British military headquarters at the of his paternal great-grandparents were King David Hotel in Jerusalem. In 1937, among the early Zionist settlers, arriv- Yitshaq went to Vienna to run the Irgun’s ing in Palestine in 1882 and 1891 respec- illegal immigration efforts, and two years tively. His paternal grandparents, Mena- later he arrived in New York on a mission hem and Sara, were among the sixty-six to alert American Jews to the Nazi threat Jewish families that founded Tel Aviv in to European Jewry. 1909—and as a descendent Ben-Ami fea- Ben-Ami, born in 1962 and raised in tured in the city’s centennial celebrations New York, where his father had chosen two years ago. The family of Ben-Ami’s to settle after Ben-Gurion crushed the 96 CAIRO REVIEW 3/2011 BOOKS Irgun, obviously grew up in a differ- moving passage. “There was, however, ent era and has found himself involved one huge gap in my learning about the in another type of advocacy concerning history and the culture of the region and Israel. Yishaq remained a hard-liner until the land. I never learned about the Pales- his death in 1984, the year his son gradu- tinians. I knew them simply as the ene- ated from Princeton University. At that mies of my people. Back then, we called time, Ben-Ami seemed broadly in sync them simply Arabs. My father and his with his father’s views. He defended friends were, to me, the true Palestinians. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and I understood that the Arabs had tried— reflexively complained about “media more than once—to destroy Israel and bias” against Israel. But he undertook a make the Jews leave. But never once did I deep reevaluation of his views on Israel hear their side of history. Not one book in and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict while our house told their story. Not one class residing in Israel after serving in the in Hebrew school exposed us to their cul- Clinton administration. Having decided ture, their backgrounds and lives.” to reconnect with his family’s roots, he By the time he returned to the U.S. enrolled in an intensive Hebrew language after two years living in Israel, Ben-Ami course and discovered that some of his says, “my perspective on Israel and the classmates were Palestinians from Gaza. Middle East had been thoroughly altered.” The experience was an epiphany. He was determined to put his new outlook “After thirty-five years of knowing little in the service of Israeli–Palestinian peace. more than caricatures on which I had He would soon experience the serious dis- been raised,” Ben-Ami writes, “I was connect between American policies in the now getting to know pharmacists and Middle East and the realities in the region schoolteachers, fathers and sons, real as he now understood them. people with real stories—and I opened Back in the rough and tumble of a window into a history of which I had American politics and working for Mark been totally unaware.” Green’s mayoral campaign in New York The Palestinians shared their stories in 2001, Ben-Ami was appalled when of national catastrophe, displacement, Green’s charitable donation to Ameri- and occupation in the wake of Zionism’s cans For Peace Now caused Green’s great triumph. “As with so many young opponent, a politician with connections Jewish Americans being exposed to Israel to West Bank settlers, to question his can- in that era, I was thoroughly steeped in— didate’s pro-Israel credentials. Later, as and loved—the mythology of the State the national policy director for Howard of Israel, its miraculous founding and the Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, Ben-Ami astonishing accomplishments of its brief was driven to similar outrage when oppo- history,” Ben-Ami writes in a particularly nents staged a furor over Dean’s comment CAIRO REVIEW 3/2011 97 BOOKS that the U.S. should be ‘even-handed’ in alike who fail to see the urgency of address- the Arab–Israeli dispute. “These are but ing the existential crisis and believe that two minor examples of what happens the conflict can be “managed.” every day, everywhere in the country, Like most groups of its kind, J Street when American politicians interact with raises money for and provides campaign Israel’s most vocal supporters,” Ben-Ami backing to politicians running for seats in explains. “Strip away the spin and the the U.S. Senate and House of Representa- politics, and what was so terrible about tives, lobbies the Congress and American what Dean said or what Green did?” administration to support its outlook on Those experiences and others led Ben- the Middle East, and engages in nation- Ami to establish J Street as a ‘pro-Israel, wide grassroots organizing to promote pro-peace’ lobby group and political its efforts.

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