Pro-Israel lobbyists work to save Palestinian Authority funding (and why should this be a surprise?)

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss September 14.

Congressional threats to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) have grown in recent weeks as the PA leadership forges toward action at the United Nations.

But at least some Israel lobby groups are voicing opposition to any reduction in aid to the PA–not because they support the bid to attain UN recognition of Palestine but because they realize a US aid cut-off could lead to the PA collapsing, which would in turn harm Israel.

Reuters reports:

It is difficult for pro-Israel groups to publicly support maintaining aid to the Palestinians given the Palestinians’ stated determination to flout the wishes of the United States.

However, at least two groups have explicitly done so — The Israel Project, which says it has laid out an argument to members of Congress that US security aid should not be cut; and J Street, which has issued a statement defending the aid.

“We have made the case that the security cooperation, which is largely funded and supported by America, needs to continue if we want to see the progress … in reducing terrorism continue,” The Israel Project’s president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, told Reuters, stressing her group does not lobby.

J Street said last week: “We must make clear to American politicians, particularly in Congress, that being pro-Israel does not require cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for approaching the UN

“Such a move will hurt Israel’s interests by undermining moderate Palestinian leadership and defunding productive security cooperation.”

The right-leaning Israel Project and J Street have both come out against the Palestinian move to the UN.  Their position on funding for the PA, though, is a reminder of what the PA’s actual role in the West Bank is and why US officials like Senators John McCain and John Kerry and Elliot Abrams (all quoted in the Reuters report) are becoming increasingly vocal about maintaining aid to the PA.  It also may be a harbinger of the Obama administration’s line on PA funding if a vote takes place at the UN.

The PA’s most heralded accomplishment over their decade-plus tenure was the establishment of “law and order” in the West Bank, which in part meant cracking down on political dissidents through the creation of a repressive security force.  The PA security forces, which have been accused of detention, arbitrary arrest and torture, have worked hand-in-hand with the Israeli military, the US and the EU to keep the West Bank void of resistance to the occupation.

State Department cables released by WikiLeaks clearly show this dynamic.  One recently released cable shows the PA’s efforts at containing protest against Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza:

Hamas leaders called for mass demonstrations in the  West Bank and East Jerusalem starting January 2. PA security  personnel are deployed to contain violence or clashes with Israeli forces after Friday prayers. PA security contacts told ConGenOffs that the PA will allow the demonstrations but will not permit demonstrators to approach IDF positions. These contacts say they anticipate Palestinian-Israeli clashes in areas without a PA security presence, including Qalandia, Hebron’s H2 zone, and villages west of Ramallah and Bethlehem. Palestinian press report that GOI DefMin Ehud Barak ordered a general closure of the West Bank on January 2-3, and raised the IDF’s alert status.

That cable and others show why the US and Israel–bluster from right-wing politicians aside–are keen on keeping the donor tap flowing to the PA.  It wouldn’t be surprising if the Obama administration bucked Congressional calls to cut off the PA–after all, the aid benefits Israel in the end, and that consideration dictates US policy.

J Street sticks to the script at its annual conference, despite coming to a two-state dead-end

The following excerpt is from an article by me and my partner Zoe Zenowich that was originally published on Alternet.  You can read the full article here.

When the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street launched in 2008, it was big news. Coupled with a new presidential administration pledging sustained engagement on Israel/Palestine, the thought many had was that this was the moment a lasting peace deal could be forged between the Israelis and Palestinians.

J Street’s “No. 1 agenda item,” as founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami told the New York Times in September 2009, was to “do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.” J Street’s strategy of advocating “for urgent American diplomatic leadership to achieve a two-state solution” seemed on mark, given that President Barack Obama told the world in Cairo in June 2009 that he intended to “personally pursue” the two-state solution.

The goal of a two-state solution, in which Israel and a Palestinian state exist side-by-side, remains J Street’s message as around 2,400 activists gathered in Washington, D.C. last weekend for the group’s second annual conference. “It could not be more urgent for the administration to seize the initiative right now on peace and a two-state solution,” said J Street spokesman Isaac Luria.

But what happens when that goal, and the strategy of strong American leadership on the issue, seems out of reach? For some on the left, the current political situation means that J Street needs to adjust to the reality of fading prospects for a two-state solution.

While it’s clear, as blogger M.J. Rosenberg put it, that J Street has “opened up room” in the debate over Israel, progressive critics have called for new strategies to pressure Israel, such as the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Indeed, even some of J Street’s own constituents are frustrated with the Obama administration and are exploring more forceful ways to change Israeli behavior.

Read the full article here.

Mona Eltahawy’s speech signals shift in mainstream discourse that Zionists don’t want

Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy’s speech at the J Street conference was more than just another good speech–it’s a further indication of the shift in discourse on the Middle East following the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and around the region.  Slowly but surely, alternative narratives about the Middle East and Israel/Palestine, voiced by Arabs, are making a dent on how Americans think about the region.

Eltahawy didn’t mince words in speaking to the liberal Zionist lobby group, and she received a standing ovation.  She called the 2008-09 assault on Gaza a “massacre” and told the audience that Arab “hatred for Israel… will not end until you lift the siege on Gaza and treat Palestinians with freedom and dignity.”  It’s a message that, coming from a woman who has become one of the corporate media’s go-to people on the Middle East, is significant, and not something you would hear at some of the other J Street panels (Nachman Shai of Kadima said that Israel won’t lift the siege until Gilad Shalit is freed).

Eltahawy’s star speech at the conference is part of what is shattering the Zionist narrative on Israel/Palestine, and they’re not liking it one bit.

Ron Radosh at the neoconservative Pajamas Media goes after Eltahawy here. And Ben Sales, writing for the Jewish student magazine New Voices, derides the response Eltahawy got by saying the J Street crowd was “clapping for hate.”

Eltahawy’s speech is concerning to Radosh and others because it exposes Israel as what it is:  a state that is in deep trouble, a state that is an occupier state, a state that committed war crimes in Gaza.  Indeed, as Phil Weiss put it, “the Egyptian revolution is coming–to the USA.”  And Eltahawy is one of the leaders.

‘Progressive Zionist’ group in U.S. calls for settlement boycott

The liberal Zionist organization Meretz USA is calling on American Jews and Israelis to boycott West Bank settlements.

While distancing itself from the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the statement represents a significant stand among left-leaning American Zionist groups who profess their belief in the two-state solution.

Even more significant is the fact that Meretz USA is closely linked with J Street, the liberal group that has taken great pains to distance itself from the BDS movement.  Meretz USA was a partner in J Street’s first annual conference, and the Union of Progressive Zionists, which Meretz USA helped to found, was “reorganized” as J Street U, the group’s college wing.

J Street’s official position on a boycott of settlements is more nuanced than their total rejection of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, but the organization has refused to come out in support of a settlement boycott.

The February 15 statement from Meretz USA, titled “Buy Israel–Don’t Buy Settlements (They’re not the Same)” reads:

We believe it is of great importance to actively oppose the policies of Occupation and settlement while at the same time struggling to defend Israel against those seeking its destruction.  Consequently we:

• Support the actions of Israeli performers, directors and writers who refuse to participate in performances held in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Support the actions of Israeli university professors who refuse to teach at or have professional ties with institutions of higher education in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Believe that American Jews, in order to express their support for the brave Israeli citizens refusing to cooperate with settlement policy, should refuse to purchase any goods or services, including tourism services, made in or by the settlements.

• Believe that American Jews should express their support for Israel’s continued existence within the Green Line by purchasing Israeli goods and services that are made within the Green Line.

• Disagree with calls to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel proper (within the Green Line), which we believe are misguided and ineffective.  Such a broad set of actions amounts to a blunt punishment of all Israelis, rather than a targeted approach that focuses on the issue of settlements and Occupation, and is incapable of bringing those polices to an end.

• Denounce the use of BDS whenever employed as a tactic to bring an end to the State of Israel.

 

The truth that the ‘Palestine Papers’ has broken into the mainstream: Israel is the obstacle to peace

The release of the “Palestine Papers,” Al Jazeera’s leak of thousands of documents relating to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, is creating space in the American mainstream for this central truth:  it is Israel’s fault that there has not been a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, writes that “hundreds of leaked confidential Palestinian documents confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observers that the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on the Israeli, not Palestinian, side.”  This fact, which has been obscured by Israeli propaganda since the collapse of the Camp David talks, is pushing its way into U.S. media coverage as well as into the reactions of liberal American Jewish groups to the papers.

The Washington Post reports:

For Israel, the documents could prove problematic because they show the earnestness with which the Palestinians pushed for a deal, despite Israeli protestations that they have no partner for peace

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, told the Jerusalem Post that the documents highlight “the ongoing intransigence of the Israeli government.”

In a statement, Americans for Peace Now said:

These documents — if authentic — highlight a reality that peace process cynics have long sought to deny: Israel has a far more real “partner” than it has ever been willing to admit. The documents underscore the fact that, sadly, Israel has not capitalized on the opportunity for peace this partner represents.

The Los Angeles Times‘ Edmund Sanders similarly writes:

For one thing, the documents show that Palestinian leaders appeared to be far more willing to cut a peace deal than most Israelis — and even many Palestinians — believed.

In contrast to Israelis’ portrayal of Palestinian leaders as rejectionists, the Palestinians come across in the papers as the side best-prepared, with maps, charts and compromises, even broaching controversial tradeoffs that went beyond what their own people were likely ready to accept.

Even the Wall Street Journal has something similar to say:  Charles Levinson writes that “Israel, meanwhile, is portrayed in the documents as slowing the Mideast peace process by turning down unprecedented Palestinian concessions.”

The only major American newspaper that didn’t report this central theme that has emerged from the “Palestine Papers” is the New York Times, which published Ethan Bronner’s “analysis” claiming that the documents “open a door” on peace talks.

While this initial coverage is just a start, the release of the “Palestine Papers” should, and has to potential to, upend U.S. media’s understanding of the conflict

J Street Responds To Questions Regarding BDS Meeting with Israel’s Foreign Ministry

I should have contacted J Street and asked for further information and clarification regarding their executive director’s comments to Hadassah magazine that he held “a meeting with people from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on how to address the BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] movement.”  I didn’t, and wrote something up criticizing J Street before hearing what they had to say, and I apologize for that.  Writing something up fast without thinking of getting a response from the organization you’re critiquing is not good journalism, and that’s part of the perils of blogging and not having an editor every time you publish.

Adam Horowitz, the co-editor at Mondoweiss, did contact J Street after my post was published at Mondoweiss, and received a response from the lobby group:

A spokesperson said Kane was drawing the wrong conclusions about the meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry if he is to suggest J Street is participaiting in an Israeli-led effort to combat the BDS movement. Rather, the statement Ben-Ami brought to the meeting was that ending the occupation would be the most effective way to counter the deligimitization efforts Israel faces.

They pointed me to the following letter to the editor in the Forward from a J Street member that they said articulated their perspective:

“Exclusion of Critics Gives Fodder to Foes

There can be no more striking illustration of the myopia and self-delusion of the organized Jewish leadership regarding global efforts to delegitimize Israel than the fact that no less than five separate panels on this subject at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly contained not a single critic of Israel’s policies (“Federations Find Youth Outreach Tricky Terrain at Yearly Meeting,” November 19).

They would have us believe that the gathering strength of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign — which, while ominous, is both ineffectual and totally one-sided — is purely a manifestation of anti-Semitism or misplaced anti-colonialism and has nothing to do with Israel’s behavior, such as its relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank and encroachment on Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

Unless the new JFNA-sponsored Israel Action Network is prepared to acknowledge and confront Israelis and American Jews with this reality and work seriously, if quietly, to mitigate it, I fear that Israel will continue to provide fodder to those who seek to delegitimize and isolate her.

Gil Kulick New York, N.Y.”

My post did seem to imply that J Street may be working with the Israeli government to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and that was a fair assumption to make without hearing J Street explain it.  J Street has now explained, and if Jeremy Ben-Ami, their executive director, did tell the Israeli government that “ending the occupation would be the most effective way to counter the delegimitization efforts Israel faces,” then I say good for them.

 

What’s J Street Doing Meeting With Israeli Officials On BDS?

The lobby group J Street has a somewhat muddled policy on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

An interview in which their executive director says that he’s meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry on “how to address” the movement adds to the confusion.

On their website, J Street explicitly says that it is “greatly concerned by the goals and tactics of the formal global BDS Movement” and that it opposes the BDS movement because “they fail explicitly to recognize Israel’s right to exist and they ignore or reject Israel’s role as a national home for the Jewish people.”

J Street was slammed by Palestine solidarity activists–including Israelis–for actively working with organizations such as the right-wing David Project, Stand With Us and the Jewish National Fund against the landmark divestment effort at the University of California, Berkeley.  After that episode, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, said that “J Street will not be signing on to letters with organizations like that in group settings again,” apparently conceding that J Street was wrong to do so.  And last June, during a Jewish debate on the BDS movement, J Street board member Kathleen Peratis said she would support the boycotting of settlement products (although this is clearly not J Street’s position).

But in a just-published interview with Hadassah Magazine, Ben-Ami says that “this very afternoon I have a meeting with people from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on how to address the BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] movement.”

What exactly is J Street doing meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry over how to “address” BDS?

The Israeli government has a very unconfused, clear policy on the BDS movement:  it’s a threat to the State of Israel, part of a growing “delegitimization” campaign.  And they’re actively working to neutralize it.

Last summer, the Israeli Knesset began steps to pass what Adalah, a group that works to protect the rights of Palestinian citizens living in Israel, describes as a bill “to outlaw any activities promoting any kind of boycott against Israeli organizations, individuals or products.”  And the well-connected Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, gave a presentation to the Israeli cabinet last winter on the need to “direct substantial resources to ‘attack’ and possibly engage in criminal ‘sabotage’” against the BDS movement, as Ali Abunimah reported.

In the most recent prominent move taken against the BDS movement, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Where does J Street stand on all of this?  Does it support the undemocratic nature of the Israeli bill that seeks to criminalize boycotts against the state?  Does it support throwing millions of dollars to undermine a campaign that seeks to ensure that the human rights of Palestinians are respected?  And just what were they meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry about concerning the movement?

Israeli Beauty Products Company Ahava Complicit in the Sins of Occupation

This article originally appeared in Alternet:

Walk into any Ricky’s store, a beauty shop chain in New York, and you will find a shelf filled with Ahava products. For $28, you can buy mineral toning cleanser; for $22, Dead Sea liquid salt; and for $9, purifying mud soap. The products made by Ahava (which means “love” in Hebrew) seem innocent enough, perfectly enticing for anyone fond of beauty products.

But looks can be deceiving. As activists from the peace group CodePink’s Stolen Beauty campaign are fond of chanting at protests, Ahava can’t hide its “dirty side.”

For nearly two years, an international campaign spearheaded by Palestine solidarity activists has targeted Ahava and the various stores that carry its products, including Ricky’s, calling for a boycott. The boycott campaign has heated up recently, eliciting push-back from Jewish organizations around the country and a response from the CEO of Ahava.

While Ahava labels its products “made in Israel,” they are actually manufactured in a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in Palestine. According to the Stolen Beauty campaign, the company exploits Palestinian resources from the Dead Sea.

Under the Geneva Conventions, and various United Nations resolutions, all of Israel’s settlements–which house about 500,000 settlers–are illegal, as is excavating natural resources in an occupied area. Israel has occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since the 1967 Six-Day War. The settlements are widely seen as an obstacle to the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

“[The boycott] is about a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Nancy Kricorian, CodePink’s coordinator for the Stolen Beauty campaign. “The situation on the ground there is dehumanizing and demoralizing and terrible.”

Ahava, which rakes in profits of nearly $150 million a year, according to a Dec. 2009 CNN report, is owned by entities deeply involved in Israel’s settlement project in the occupied West Bank. According to Who Profits? 37 percent of the company is owned by Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal settlement located in the eastern West Bank; another 37 percent by the private investment fund Hamashibr Holdings, which also is a major shareholder in two companies that export produce made in settlements; 18.5 perent by the U.S.-based Shamrock Holding, owned by the Roy E. Disney family of Walt Disney fame, and which is a shareholder in a company that manufactures electronic detection systems that are used on the West Bank separation barrier; and 7.5 percent by the West Bank settlement of Kalia.

In an interview, Kricorian acknowledged that Ahava is a huge target, and likened the Stolen Beauty campaign to a “game of whack-a-mole,” as new places where Ahava products are sold pop up frequently. But Kricorian says it isn’t just about hurting the company’s sales.

“A boycott campaign is strategic, and it’s a long-term thing,” she said. “It’s not just about hurting the company’s sales. It’s also about educating the public about, in this particular case, the company’s illegal practices and sullying the company’s name and reputation.”

The campaign to boycott Ahava, in both the United States and around the world, has racked up some important victories. In August 2009, activists successfully pressured Oxfam International to drop Sex and the City star Kristin Davis as a spokeswoman because she was also working with Ahava. In November 2009, the Dutch Foreign Ministry agreed to investigate Ahava’s manufacturing and labeling practices. Costco, a large U.S. retailer, was pressured into halting the sale of Ahava products at its stores in January 2010. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, has included Ahava products in its boycott of settlement products campaign, confiscating and destroying products made in West Bank settlements. Recently, four activists in London were acquitted on charges of trespassing after direct actions in 2009 in which they locked themselves onto oil-filled drums inside an Ahava shop.

AHAVA did not respond to inquiries for comment.

The Stolen Beauty campaign, which began in the aftermath of the brutal Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008-’09, is part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that grew out of a 2005 call by a vast swathe of Palestinian civil society groups for BDS against Israel. Modeled on the anti-apartheid movement that targeted South Africa, the Palestinian-led BDS movement demands that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, implement equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and recognize the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1947-’49 Arab-Israeli war.

“The BDS campaign has become the most effective, morally consistent, nonviolent form of solidarity with the colonized Palestinians against Israel’s apartheid and colonial rule,” Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, wrote in an e-mail. “The Stolen Beauty Campaign against Ahava, led by our partner CodePink, is a truly inspiring BDS campaign, as it is creative, focused, well-researched and very effective in conveying the message across to and, more crucially, in mobilizing BDS action in a wider, more mainstream audience.”

The Israeli government has taken notice of the growing BDS movement. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a preliminary reading of anti-boycott legislation that would impose fines on Israeli activists promoting boycotts of Israel. A February 2010 report by the Reut Institute, an Israeli think-tank with close ties to Israel’s government, identified the BDS movement as an threat to the state.

In the United States, the BDS movement, and the campaign against Ahava, has also generated controversy. After a Washington, D.C.-based group protested in July 2010 against Ahava products being sold in Ulta, a beauty store, the Jewish Community Relations Committee of Greater Washington urged supporters to buy Ahava products.

Brooklyn’s Ricky’s shop has also become the epicenter of a dispute over the Boycott Ahava movement. After a July 9 protest outside the store led by CodePink’s Stolen Beauty and Brooklyn for Peace, which signed onto the campaign in May, a group of rabbis in Brooklyn drafted a letter in response, urging people to buy Ahava products and denouncing the campaign. The rabbis’ letter claimed that “CodePink ignores the history and legal status of Mizpeh Shalom” because it is located in “‘Area C’, a huge section of the West Bank over which Israel, again by joint agreement, was granted full control, except over Palestinian civilians.” (The Area C designation comes out of the 1993-era Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Area C incorporates all West Bank settlements.)

“Local Jewish leaders find the idea of a boycott of Israel to be a misguided and one-sided approach to a complex and deeply troubling conflict,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman, a signatory to the letter and a member of the liberal group J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet. “The problem with a boycott is there’s one side that’s all right and another side that’s all wrong. If that’s what the boycotters think, then there really is nothing to discuss. But if not, then why not boycott Palestinian business for years of rejecting peace accords?”

So far, Ricky’s has not budged, and continues to sell Ahava products. Dominick Costello, the president of the store, refused to comment.

The relentless targeting of Ahava hasn’t gone unnoticed by the company. A letter that has recently been circulated by Ahava to its business partners states that “our company and products have been the subject of unfortunate, ugly and clearly politically motivated smear attacks” that are being pushed by a “couple of small radical fringe organizations, which are part of a larger and more insidious campaign aimed against the State of Israel.”

The surge in attention to the boycott campaign is a sign that “we’ve gotten attention to issue of settlements like we never got before,” said Naomi Allen, an activist who sits on Brooklyn for Peace’s board and is involved in the group’s Israel/Palestine committee. Beginning this month, Brooklyn for Peace plans to hold protests outside the Ricky’s shop in Brooklyn on the last Tuesday of every month.

“This is not an argument that we’re going to lose, because [what's] right and international law are on our side,” Allen said. “The issue of Ahava is a clear-cut issue. There’s no excusing the fact that this is occupied territory which is being stolen from the rightful owners and exploited for profit that isn’t being shared with the rightful owners.”

The Israel debate and the failure of J Street

The following originally appeared at Salon.com:

The Emergency Committee for Israel, an advocacy group launched by Bill Kristol and other neoconservative activists, and J Street, the 2-year-old outfit that bills itself as a liberal “pro-Israel, pro-peace” voice, recently aired dueling ads about Joe Sestak, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania.

The Emergency Committee went first, with a menacing spot that asked, “Does congressman Joe Sestak understand Israel is America’s ally?” J Street’s defensive response was telling. “In Congress, Sestak consistently votes to aid Israel,” the group informed Pennsylvanians.

The ad, needless to say, didn’t bother to question why the U.S. should be spending so much money on Israel in the first place. So much for challenging the assumptions of the pro-Israel establishment.

J Street, which launched in April 2008 to great fanfare under the helm of Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, was founded in part to “ensure a broad debate on Israel and the Middle East in national politics and the American Jewish community.” That debate has largely been dominated by unquestioning supporters of Israel and all its actions.

But despite the hysterical rhetoric from the likes of Alan Dershowitz and Commentary magazine, who like to claim that J Street is agitating for radical policy change, the new group has done little to broaden the constricted U.S. debate over Israel/Palestine.

Instead, J Street has largely given a liberal cover to more right-wing groups like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, whose line seems to be one of supporting Israel no matter what.

The Goldstone report, a landmark U.N. document that accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to pressure Israel to live up to its obligations under international law, are two areas where the J Street line has differed little from AIPAC.

The debate over the Goldstone report was an early indicator of things to come for J Street. When a largely fact-free congressional resolution denouncing the report was about to pass, J Street, which aired some concerns about the resolution and urged Congress to modify it, still ultimately agreed with the thrust of it: “J Street supports passage of a resolution by the U.S. Congress calling for the United States to oppose and work actively to defeat one-sided and biased action in the United Nations when it comes to Israel and the Goldstone Report.” That statement was similar to AIPAC’s position on the report, who called it “deeply flawed” and “rigged.”

J Street’s acquiescence to the establishment line on Israel/Palestine reached its zenith during the University of California at Berkeley debate in March/April 2010 over a student effort to divest from two companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. When the president of the student government at Berkeley vetoed the measure, which was passed earlier by an overwhelming margin, J Street joined AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the local Israeli consul general in pressuring the student government. J Street joined a wide coalition of groups such as the David Project and the Jewish National Fund that authored a letter labeling the divestment measure as “misleading” and “dishonest.” (J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has since said that the group won’t be signing on to similar letters with “organizations like that in group settings again.”) Their effort worked — a measure to override the veto failed by just one vote.

This timidity has earned J Street harsh criticism from the left. An Israeli-authored letter circulated on an activist listserv called on the group to “stop trying to gain political capital at the expense of dedicated peace activists.”

It is also creating a vacuum that older, more left-leaning groups like Jewish Voice for Peace are poised to fill. This third pole, which has emerged underneath the surface, is challenging the pro-Israel lobby’s hold on the debate. The future battle, especially in the Jewish-American community, will not be J Street vs. AIPAC, but rather the pro-Israel lobby vs. critical Jewish groups who are questioning the desirability of the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.”

The divestment debate at Berkeley and the criticism of J Street is a prominent example of the new battle that is coming to a head within the Jewish community over Israel/Palestine and the Palestinian-led call to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. The BDS movement started in 2005, and calls on global civil society to use the tactics of boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israel until it adheres to its obligations under international law. The movement demands that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, implement equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and recognize the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1947-49 Israeli-Arab War.

The debate over BDS is heating up. Recently, Jacob Weisberg, the editor in chief at Slate, called the BDS movement “a weapon designed not to bring peace but to undermine [Israel]” and “hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism.” The smearing of the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, though, is increasingly losing credibility, especially because groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and others are backing aspects of the movement. In its latest issue, Tikkun magazine published a debate on BDS between Ben-Ami, Jewish Voice for Peace’s Rebecca Vilkomerson and others, an indication of the growing importance of the movement.

During the Tikkun debate, Ben-Ami argued that those opposed to the Israeli occupation should not engage in BDS tactics that alienate Israelis and should instead “double down on our movement to try to get particularly President Obama to be deeply and actively engaged to outline what a solution is.” But with peace talks at a standstill, and President Obama averse to pressuring Israel, the BDS movement will only gain steam — with or without J Street on board.

The momentum was evident just a few months ago, after the Israeli Navy raided an aid flotilla on its way to Gaza and killed nine people, when a wave of music acts honored the cultural boycott, and garnered attention from major media outlets like the Associated Press and CNN.

While it’s hard to predict when mainstream discourse will allow candid discussion about Israel/Palestine, cracks in the wall are appearing, and they’re only going to get bigger.