In public, J Street says it’s horrified by the antisemitism of pro-Hamas protesters. But in private this week, J Street’s president pressured Jewish Democrats to stop accusing the protesters of being antisemitic. Why the two faces?
After last month’s pro-Hamas protests in Washington, D.C., J Street issued a statement denouncing what it called “the hateful, antisemitic, protests and harassment.” The July 25 news release said it was “vile and abhorrent” for the protesters to use “pro-Hamas slogans” and charged that their behavior “instills fear and fuels hate.” J Street said anybody “associating with the brutal terror organization Hamas must be condemned.”
But J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami sure sang a different tune at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During a meeting with Jewish Democrats, Ben-Ami said the pro-Hamas protesters outside the convention “don’t intend” to offend Jews and merely need help understanding “the history of the Jewish people and the things that they can and can’t say that will rub the wrong way and trigger us in ways that they don’t intend.”
As if the problem with cheering for gang-rapists is that their loud cheering might rub a few people the wrong way!
The J Street president emphasized: “I think it is so important that we not adopt a position that holds those who are wearing a keffiyeh, or carrying a Palestinian flag, or chanting a stupid slogan, that they are all somehow anti-Semitic or even anti-Israel.”
A few blocks away, those protesters were waving Hamas flags, burning American and Israeli flags, calling for Israel’s destruction and chanting pro-Hamas slogans such as “Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!” and “Intifada Revolution!”
So what’s J Street up to? How come one minute it’s calling pro-Hamas slogans “hateful, antisemitic, vile and abhorrent,” and the next minute it’s saying that such slogans are “not anti-Semitic or even anti-Israel”…?
The answer is that the two faces of J Street were for two different audiences: one public, one private.
J Street was forced to say something about the pro-Hamas protests in Washington, DC: they took place practically in J Street’s back yard. Plus, even President Biden condemned those protests and said that “celebrations of October 7” are an example of “antisemitism.” So J Street had no choice but to condemn them. Hence the moderate face of J Street in public.
But in private, behind closed doors, J Street’s president expressed his true feelings. He doesn’t really want the Jewish community speaking out against the antisemitic pro-Hamas protesters. That would discredit the protesters—and those protesters are Jeremy Ben-Ami’s biggest ally right now.
How so? The screaming flab-burners enable Ben-Ami to play a good cop-bad cop game. He can say to the White House: “Look how angry these people are. You better pressure Israel, otherwise you’ll lose Michigan.”
The pro-Hamas protesters whom J Street pretends to condemn actually give J Street a weapon that it would not otherwise have. But if Jewish Democrats, like the ones Ben-Ami met with last week, start denouncing the protesters as antisemitic, it could undermine the Biden administration’s policy of trying to appease them by pressuring Israel.
For J Street, it’s all part of a cynical political strategy. Say one thing in public, say something different in private. Manipulate Jewish leaders, ply sympathetic reporters with well-timed leaks, and think up new ways to embarrass and pressure Israel. It’s a cold and sometimes brutal game played along the shores of the Potomac. But for Israelis, it’s a matter of life and death.
(Moshe Phillips is National Chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.)