JERUSALEM – Left-wing and progressive groups are campaigning to demonize Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his stunning return in elections last month, according to some experts on the Middle East’s only democracy. are going
Amid Netanyahu’s efforts to unite a complex coalition of religious, conservative and ultra-nationalist parties, the US left-wing organization J Street came under fire this week.
“The potential for concrete actions that can be taken with this [Israeli] “These are the moments when the relationship between the government, the bulk of American Jewry, and the state of Israel really starts to deteriorate,” J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Associated Press.
on December 1J Street posted an ad on its website, “The United States must act now to confront Israel’s extremist officials and policies.” J Street identifies itself as a “pro-Israel” organization on its website.
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Former Israeli prime minister and leader of the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu, speaks to supporters in a truck with a modified windshield during a campaign rally in Bnei Brak, Israel, Oct. 29, 2022.
(Amir Levy/Getty Images)
In the same Associated Press report, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the incoming coalition would include “the most extreme voices in Israeli politics.” Jacobs, head of the largest Jewish group in the United States, was quoted by the AP as saying, “What the trajectory of a new Israeli government with such voices in such key leadership roles will be is deeply and deeply troubling.”
Carolyn Glick, an American-born Israeli columnist and author, said J Street “is trying to foment a crisis by spreading lies. J Street is not a pro-Israel organization. They support the Iranian regime.”
Glick, author of “The Israel Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” said J Street has a very warm relationship with the Biden administration, and that’s troubling.
Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken on December 4th Spoke at the J Street National Conference.
“J Street’s ongoing presence … continues to inform our opinion,” Blinken said, adding that J Street is a “remarkable organization.”
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Benjamin Netanyahu is about to become the next prime minister of Israel. Here he will welcome supporters at Likud headquarters in Jerusalem on November 2, 2022.
(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
J Street and the Biden administration support the controversial Iran nuclear deal, which the Israeli government strongly opposes.
Israel says the nuclear deal only temporarily limits the Islamic Republic’s right to develop nuclear weapons and will cost Tehran’s coffers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program is an existential threat to the Jewish state.
In a recent interview with J Street, Blinken said the US wants the Iranian regime to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name of the Iran nuclear deal, and rejected the previous administration’s campaign of “maximum pressure” on theocratic Islam. state.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken speaks as his photo is projected on a large screen behind him at the J Street National Conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4, 2022.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Custer)
Netanyahu advocates using all means of pressure, including the actual military option, to stop Iran’s nuclear race.
“We’ll weigh in,” Blinken said, hinting at some of the Israeli firebrands expected to be part of Netanyahu’s cabinet. [Israeli] according to the policy pursued by the government, not by individuals.”
Traditionally, Israeli governments They ran away from J Street and because of its president’s alleged anti-Israel policies.
The US and Israel have discussed conducting military exercises to simulate a conflict with Iran, proxies.
The main pro-Israel organization in the US is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) publicly tweeted this “J Street is many things, but it is not pro-Israel.”
According to Glick, progressives in the United States are spreading disinformation against Netanyahu, which is “almost identical to the campaign that progressives are running on school boards against parents who oppose wake-up calls.” He said the “awakened ideology” in many US schools is “anti-American”.
Glick argues that a new conceptual framework for understanding the daily attacks on Israel’s legitimacy is “demonization” and that it is “a new fig leaf to embrace anti-Israel politics because the peace process is dead.”
(L to R) Itamar Ben-Gvir, far-right Israeli MP and leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, and Israeli far-right MP, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, attend a rally with supporters. The city of Sderot in southern Israel, October 26, 2022.
(Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
The peace process between Israel and Palestine over the disputed West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, has reached an impasse for many Israelis.
Glick criticized J Street and two Washington foreign policy elites who called for sanctions against Israel in the Washington Post.
“They hate Israel,” Glick claimed. “They want to damage Israel-US relations. This will damage the main interests of America. Israel is the most loyal ally of the United States.”
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Rabbi Abraham Cooper, assistant dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said: “I think J Street does not speak for the majority of American Jews on this issue. The best way for Americans to help expand the Abraham Accords. must put an end to his relentless anti-Semitism and put pressure on him to end his policy of paying to kill Jews.”
The Trump administration negotiated historic normalization agreements – the Abraham Accords – between Israel and four Sunni Arab states (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan).
A Palestinian man uses a catapult against Israeli soldiers during a protest against new construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
(Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The Palestinian Authority pays the families of terrorists and terrorists who attack and kill Israelis. Critics say Palestinian policy supports terrorism.
Glick and Cooper asked the US State Department to respond to the criticism leveled against J Street.
“Like our predecessors, this administration regularly engages with American-Jewish and diaspora groups to emphasize our strong commitment to and cooperation with Israel,” the department said.
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“Israel is not America’s 51st state, but a reliable friend and ally,” Cooper said. “This is an unusual democracy, whose electorate voted in the last election for coalition parties that included Israeli Arab parties. Now, that same electorate is supporting right-of-center parties and hardliners who are angry at the relentless Arabs. voted for smaller parties including terrorism and some with extremist views outside the mainstream of Israeli society.”
Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for a Shared Society at the Israel Democracy Institute, said, “Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic country, and new policies that touch on core characteristics and shared values can create tension.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo visits the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, March 21, 2019.
(Hum Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“A possible point of conflict between competing worldviews can be found in two extreme examples. Proposed changes at the Ministry of Education raise questions about the role of diversity: teaching Israeli children to be Jewish and Will they be offered different options for being Jewish? Will they be able to adopt different relationships with Jewish practices, or will Orthodox views be the only way to do so? Another example shows the way to be Jewish.”
He added that the new right-wing government would “continue to recognize Reform and Conservative conversions as valid to confirm Judaism and thus automatic Israeli citizenship,” the Interior Ministry added, although the Rabbinical even if not. “
Progressive critics of Netanyahu’s coalition partners say there is an anti-LGBTQ war within the Noam party leader because he wants to ban a gay parade in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has steadfastly rejected efforts to downplay his pro-LGBTQ record. Israeli media reported that it “will not harm the status quo on pride parades or LGBTQ rights.”
Glick accused some groups of blaming Israel’s right to be anti-gay.
“You don’t see gay people being hanged on the streets of Tel Aviv, but gay people are being killed by Palestinians,” Glick said.
called and sent several press inquiries to J Street.
Associated Press contributed to this report.