Jones Signals White House Support for J-Street Cause

Jones Signals White House Support for J-Street Cause

National Security Adviser Outlines Outreach Strategy on Israel-Palestine Peace Goal
By Spencer Ackerman 10/27/09 4:07 PM


Granting recognition to a new American Jewish lobby group pressing for peace between Israel and the Arab world, Ret. Gen. James Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, said that resolving the 60-year conflict was the crisis that the Obama administration would prioritize if it could “solve any one problem.”

Jones sharpened the Obama administration’s conception of an end-state to the conflict during a keynote address to the first annual conference held by J Street, the year-old “pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby,” calling for a “secure, Jewish state of Israel” side by side with a “viable, contiguous state of Palestine” that “ends the occupation began in 1967 and unleashes the full potential of the Palestinian people.” No previous U.S. administration has emphasized the essentially Jewish character of Israel or the need for Palestinian territorial contiguity, both of which speak to deep-seated concerns of both sides in the conflict.

The formulation streamlines one unveiled by Obama at the United Nations General Assembly in September and was one Jones recently used in a keynote address to the American Task Force on Palestine, a Palestinian lobby group also seeking a two-state solution, on Oct. 16. And that reflects an emerging strategy of the Obama administration: to cultivate ties with groups within the American Jewish and Arab-American communities to support a two-state solution, at a time when few believe the prospects for peace look bright, to demonstrate both to a skittish Congress and to the international community that there is a robust American political constituency for ending the conflict. Calling himself “honored” to keynote the first J Street conference, Jones pledged founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former Clinton White House staffer, “You can be sure this administration will be represented at all future conferences.”

That strategy has grown controversial, as more conservative elements of the American Jewish community — and even the Israeli government — who view Obama’s quest for peace with skepticism have attacked J Street as inauthentically Jewish and insufficiently pro-Israel in advance of the conference. Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, declined an invitation to attend the conference, saying last week that J Street took positions that “hurt Israeli interests.” Also last week, Lenny Ben-David, a former official at the Israeli embassy in Washington and with the largest Israel lobby group, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, circulated an assault on J Street for accepting money and partnership from Arab-Americans, which he intimated were anti-Israel. And during the same time, Michael Goldfarb, a blogger for the Weekly Standard and a communications director for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, called members of J Street’s honorary congressional “host committee” to accuse the group of insufficient support for Israel, getting 12 out of 160 members of Congress to withdraw their membership.

J Street said it expected the attacks, as it emerged in April 2008 specifically to challenge the more traditional Israel lobby groups — referred by some in the American Jewish peace community as the “status quo lobby” — by providing a more explicitly vocal presence in the American Jewish community for peace. One of J Street’s founders, Daniel Levy, said he believed the presence of Jones and the retention of 148 members of Congress on the host committee show that it has attracted political strength in its year-long existence.

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http://washingtonindependent.com/65366/jones-signals-white-house-support-for-j-street-cause

Carter is the President who finally brokered peace between Israel and an Arab state, which led to peace with both Egypt and Jordan and the end to Israel facing ground wars from neighboring Arab States. So why is Carter vilified by the right wing in Israel and some American Jews who claim he is Anti-Semitichttp://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1469

Carter’s first trip to Israel was at the invitation of Yitzhak Rabin during his term as Governor of Georgia. After his first visit, Carter thought that Israel should leave the territories they occupied at the time in the interest of peace. As Carter became more involved with the key players in the conflict, he began to see that the solution to the conflict is much more complicated than simply turning over land.
Throughout the years, many attempts have been made to negotiate an agreement between Israeli leaders and the Palestinians. One of the most notable attempts was one spearheaded by Carter during his presidency. Carter brought Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat together at Camp David for a twelve day summit. Carter worked with both leaders in order to create the Camp David Accords. However, these Accords are violated and abandoned a few years later.http://www.wikisummaries.org/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid