This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
Some of the most interesting material on the controversy about J-Street that has developed in the run-up to the organization’s currently ongoing conference was provided by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently published an interview with J-Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami.
As a follow-up to this interview, Goldberg also posted an e-mail from Ben-Ami that was meant to clarify why Ben-Ami had incorrectly claimed that “zero rockets” were fired into Israel during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in 2008.
In his e-mail message, Ben-Ami urged Goldberg’s readers to check out a relevant commentary to which he linked, and when I dutifully clicked through, I found myself at a site called “War in Context” which is run by its original founder Paul Woodward. The specific post Ben-Ami recommended so warmly was written by Woodward and devoted to the subject of an “Israeli propaganda campaign” that supposedly “downplays the success” of the 2008 truce.
Since I wasn’t familiar with the site, I took some time to explore its offerings after reading the article Ben-Ami recommended. If Ben-Ami really regards Woodward’s site as a reliable source to inform his own, or indeed anyone’s views on Israel, he is making a good case for J-Street’s detractors.
First, it is notable that “War in Context” was set up in the wake of 9/11; yet, remarkably, its banner features an image of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, taken from a not very familiar angle that doesn’t show the Western Wall. As they say: a picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture is obviously intended to suggest that Jerusalem provides the “context” for the wars Woodward has been following since 9/11.
Secondly, there is Woodward’s blogroll that lists a striking number of blogs known for their anti-Zionist stance, or for borderline and sometimes even outright antisemitic views; unsurprisingly, many of these blogs also favor the so-called “one-state solution”.
Scrolling down from the top of the list, the first obvious example is Ben White’s blog. Ben White, a young Cambridge graduate with a BA in English Literature, is a passionate pro-Palestinian activist who has recently published his first book entitled “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide”. A review of the book was featured on Z Word; my own thoughts on the matter are here.
Among the many blogs on the list that propagate views similar to those of Ben White - i.e. a virulent anti-Zionism that doesn’t worry about drifting into antisemitic language and themes, preference for the “one-state solution” and open disdain for the peace process, which is often reflected in contempt for Fatah and vicious attacks on the current Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, - are Counterpunch, Electronic Intifada, Jews sans frontieres, Lawrence of Cyberia, and Mondoweiss.
Then there are “watchdog” sites like Islamophobia Watch which views Islamophobia “as a racist tool of Western Imperialism” and MuzzleWatch, dedicated to “tracking efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy”; on the other hand, judging from the listings on his blogroll, Woodward isn’t too concerned about antisemitism.
Since Woodward claims to be particularly interested in the impact of “the unseen” on the “context” that his website purports to offer, I couldn’t help feeling that he might greatly benefit from occasionally checking out the material available at MEMRI’s Antisemitism Documentation Project. However, this seems to be exactly the kind of context Woodward prefers to leave “unseen”. Indeed, clicking on his entry for “anti-Semitism” listed under “Categories/Issues” on the left-hand side of his webpage retrieves just two posts, one of them written by Woodward in praise of the “courage” displayed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his speech at Columbia University two years ago. The highlight of this speech, according to Woodward:
“One issue stands out above all others and the reason it stands out is that in America, a campaign aimed at stifling free speech wants to keep this subject sealed outside the domain of acceptable political discourse. The subject is the political legitimacy of the Zionist state of Israel.”
Given that this is a site that J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami would recommend as a good source to provide “context”, it is perhaps hardly surprising that in defense of his inaccurate claim that “from June until early November of last year, there were zero rockets” fired from Gaza, he now echoes Woodward’s claim that there is an “Israeli propaganda campaign” that “downplays the success of the truce”.
Apparently, Ben-Ami is unfamiliar with the motto “when in a hole, stop digging”.
Woodward’s claims about the evil doings of the “Israeli propaganda machine … revved up to full throttle” are themselves best described as propaganda, and it is rather pathetic to see him argue that those sinister Israeli propagandists are trying to “hide the numbers - with numbers!” Ah, how’s that for Israeli ingenuity!
To prove his non-existent case, Woodward reproduces two different graphic representations displayed at the website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The original graph illustrated the rocket attacks launched from Gaza between November 2007 and November 2008 with simple blocks for each month that varied in size according to the number of rocket attacks which was also specified, e.g. 257 in February 2008. Woodward apparently liked this graph a lot because “it told the story in terms that even a child could understand.”
This simple graph was eventually replaced by a new one that covered the period from January 2008 to December 2008, and included graphic representations for both rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. Astonishingly, Woodward claims right under the image that belies his words that the graphic employs “blocks of equal size”. To be sure, the difference in block sizes is less dramatic, but proportions are still visible; moreover, as before, each block displays the precise number it represents. Most importantly, however, the new graph provides two sets of blocks for June 2008, distinguishing the period before the ceasefire came into effect on June 19, 2008, and the remainder of June. Therefore, in complete contradiction to Woodward’s inane claim, the graph actually emphasizes that before the ceasefire took effect, there were 153 rockets and 84 mortar shells fired from Gaza, while there were only 5 rockets and 3 mortar shells from June 19th to the end of the month. Unfortunately, this is apparently much too complex for the simple-minded, and Woodward is thus left to conclude that somehow all this amounts to an attempt “to obscure” the dramatic reduction in attacks.
Beyond disgracing himself by recommending such a shoddy piece of anti-Israel propaganda from such a dodgy website, Jeremy Ben-Ami also didn’t help J-Street’s reputation much by ignoring several well-known and crucial factors that contributed to the failure of the ceasefire. The perhaps most important point is that the Israeli military was fully aware that Hamas was using the lull not only to prepare for additional kidnapping attempts and to stock up on rockets, mortars and explosives, but also to upgrade its arsenal with longer-range missiles that exposed almost a million Israeli citizens to the threat of attacks from Gaza. Ben-Ami also conveniently ignored the fact that it is by no means clear that Hamas was interested in an extension of the ceasefire, since the group raised demands aimed at barring Israel from taking action against Hamas members in the West Bank.
In the interview with Goldberg, Ben-Ami claimed that J-Street was “trying to put forward a thoughtful, moderate, mainstream point of view about how to save Israel as a Jewish home.” Way to go.
Take issue with Paul Woodward, by all means - but to tar Jeremy Ben-Ami as somehow associated with the likes of Counterpunch and Jews Sans Frontieres on the basis of someone else’s blogroll, and one fleeting link that JBA provided solely for the purposes of pointing readers to Israeli Foreign Ministry data, is misleading in the extreme. Ben-Ami’s rejection of antizionism and one-statism could not be any clearer.
Hi David, I’m in no way “tarring” Ben-Ami with the likes of Counterpunch etc.; if I’m tarring anyone with those, it’s Woodward — but he really tarred himself and his site, because he put them on his blogroll.
Also, I agree with you that in the interview with Goldberg, Ben-Ami was indeed very clear in his rejection of anti-Zionism and the “1state solution”. But that’s not really the issue here in my view: the issue is that on a very popular blog like Goldberg’s, he gave an interview in which he made a mistake, and instead of just saying: oops, I didn’t get that quite right, he attempted to justify this mistake by sending readers to a site run by a guy who professes interest in a rather broad subject, but writes remarkably much on Israel, its supposedly “all powerful” lobby, its supposedly prominent role in the organ trade, etc. — I trust you get the idea.
Even worse, Ben-Ami urges readers to read a post that, in a completely screwed-up attempt at “reasoning”, accuses Israel of a propaganda campaign to obscure figures, and from what Ben-Ami wrote to Goldberg’s readers, he was clearly endorsing this baseless attempt at smear.
I have no idea why he did that, and I have no idea why he would even know about the site of Woodward and why he would think a guy who writes the kind of “editorials” Woodward likes to write would be worthwhile quoting — but that’s what Ben-Ami did very publicly on Goldberg blog. I certainly hope that Woodward’s “editorials” are not something that Ben-Ami regularly reads and agrees with.
Just one more point on the blogs: there is a group of bloggers including the Mondoweiss guys, the “Mother from Gaza”, Laila El-Hadad who is a one-stater and Hamas supporter, and a few other bloggers with anti-Zionist leanings whom J-Street has apparently allowed to feel “hosted” by them, i.e. they get a room to group-blog from the conference or something of the sort.
It seems that their idea was that J-Street somehow represented at least part of their ideology. However, they are apparently cooling, and will no doubt produce the criticism from the fringe left Ben-Ami said he wanted.
Only by linking to a guy like Woodward, who would fit quite well into this group, Ben-Ami is in my view not doing enough to deserve the left-fringe criticism he was hoping for.
It seems to me that JBA raises his lips service to Zionism to the level of token gestures. But the core reminds the same, an anti Zionist core. His choice of authority and guests are those who regard the vary existence of Israel as a crime. He and the core members of his group are Palestinian ultra nationalist pretending to be Zionist doves.
Ok Petra, I now see that Ben-Ami did urge Goldblog readers to read Woodward’s post - probably a careless move, and I do agree that J Street should do its utmost to reject the fringe left view of Israel.
If I leap to J-Street’s defense it’s because of unfair, knee-jerk, demonizing views of the group, precisely the kind articulated by commenter Dvar Dea above.
David, this is a widely quoted commentary I very much agree with:
http://volokh.com/2009/10/24/some-friendly-really-advice-to-jstreet/
– what I write here is simply an illustration that while JStreet complains a lot about getting unfair criticism — and of course anyone who criticizes them is denounced as right-wing, neocon or otherwise satanic –, they are plainly doing quite a bit themselves to deserve criticism even from a mainstream perspective.
And I don’t quite agree with you that this was likely just a “careless move” by JBA. Ask yourself how he came across Woodward’s post (which is from January), and if we don’t want to assume that he reads his website regularly, it seems the most likely scenario is that somebody on JStreet does, and saved the post in some background research file as a handy example of the supposed deviousness of the Israeli government.
Knee jerk? J
I may have been telegraphic, but what I wrote is a summation of matters I gave a lot of thought to. As you can see from my blog: this criticism is about ‘Brit Tzedeck v’Shalom’, the grass roots infrastructure of J Street, lengthy and thorough, doubtful you have the time to read it all.
http://dvardea.blogspot.com/search/label/Brit%20Tzedek%20v%27Shalom%20btvs
But this is just the face of such groups, the façade, which by itself is lacking in credibility. It’s the content of their actions that counts the most, such as Max Blumenthal, which JBA has a good view of, http://dvardea.blogspot.com/2009/07/max-blumental-yoav-shamir-cruising-for.html
Or their opposition to ‘Cast Lead’, where we had to respond to a clear provocation.
How about mocking Eli Wiesl?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/10/elie_wiesel_mocked_at_j_street.asp
Or what they truly feel about JBA pseudo Zionist gestures?
And more, there is always more, more of the same, lack of credibility and the persistence presence of anti Zionist activity.
Dvar - I got to the point where you call Brit Tzedek v’Shalom a far left organization, so I’ll stop there and say if BTvS is far left, then by your standards I’m far left. Which is to say that your standards are skewed.
I’ll also note that Max Blumenthal, in addition to attacking Eli Wiesel, attacked Jeremy Ben-Ami as well.
Adler, just what is the target audience of such an evasive response?
I also argued that Brit Tzedek v’Shalom live in a bubble and they are selective in their view of history. I brought arguments and examples for each.
And Blumenthal is a member of J Street; while it is quite possible he is just one view out of many, who is his counterweight?
If someone like JBA has to march rightwards as far as Fox news in order to appear centric, just how far left of center was his original position?
I also followed Ben Ami’s link to Woodward’s website and was disgusted by what he’d linked to.
What bothers me about J-Street is not the idea of being a critical supporter of Israel, or that they might want to advocate for Israel in a different way than AIPAC. It’s that they seem to be rather light minded about the boundary between critical support and outright enmity. An organization that can link to Woodward’s website, can’t tell Stephen Walt what to do with his endorsement, provides a home for people like Bernard Avishai and meeting space for the likes of Philip Weiss and Helena Cobban, and (according to today’s Jerusalem Post) addresses the problem of anti-Zionism on campus by shedding “pro-Israel” from its “pro-Israel, pro-peace” slogan, has a credibility gap.
J-Street seems intent on reenacting the train wreck of the wider left, which is very clear about its antagonism to all things right but doesn’t know its limits at the other end of the spectrum.