JERUSALEM — Left-wing and progressive groups are waging a campaign to demonize Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after his stunning comeback in last month’s election, according to some experts in the Middle East’s only democracy.
Amid Netanyahu’s efforts to cobble together a complex coalition of religious, conservative and ultranationalist parties, a left-wing American organization, J Street, went on the offensive this week.
“The potential for specific actions this could take [Israeli] government, these are times when the relationship between the majority of American Jews and the state of Israel begins to unravel,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, told The Associated Press.
On December 1, J Street posted an announcement on its website that “the US must act now to counter extremist Israeli officials and political moves.” J Street defines itself on its website as a “pro-Israel” organization.
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Former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to supporters inside a truck modified with bulletproof glass during a campaign event on October 29, 2022 in Bnei Brak, Israel.
(Amir Levy/fake images)
In that same Associated Press report, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the composition of the incoming coalition included some of “the most extreme voices in Israeli politics.” As the leader of what the AP said is the largest Jewish group in the US, Jacobs continued: “What will be the trajectory of a new Israeli government with such voices in key leadership roles is a deep concern.”
Caroline Glick, an American-born Israeli columnist and author, told Fox News Digital that J Street is “trying to cause a crisis by spreading lies. J Street is not a pro-Israel organization. They support the Iranian regime.”
Glick, author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Middle East Peace,” said that “J Street has very warm relations with the Biden administration, and that’s puzzling.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on December 4 delivered an address to the National J Street Conference.
“J Street’s enduring commitment…continues to inform our thinking,” Blinken said, adding that J Street is a “remarkable organization.”
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Benjamin Netanyahu is about to become Israel’s next prime minister. Here he greets his supporters at the 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 government of Israel vehemently opposes.
Israel argues that the atomic deal only places temporary limitations on the Islamic Republic’s right to build a nuclear weapons device and funnels hundreds of billions of dollars into Tehran’s coffers.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program is an existential threat to the Jewish state.
Blinken told J Street during a recent speech that the US wants the Iranian regime to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name of the Iran nuclear deal, and ruled out the previous administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign targeting Islamic theocrats. condition.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks as his image is displayed on a large screen behind him at the J Street National Conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC on December 4, 2022.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Netanyahu advocates that all levers of pressure be applied, including a genuine military option, to stop Iran’s race to build an atomic bomb.
Blinken, in an oblique reference to some of the Israeli agitators who are slated to serve in Netanyahu’s cabinet, said: “We will assess the [Israeli] government by the policies it pursues rather than by individual personalities”.
Traditionally, Israeli governments have shunned J Street and its president because of their alleged anti-Israel policies.
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The main pro-Israel organization in the US, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) bluntly tweeted that “J Street is many things, but it is not pro-Israel.”
Glick said progressives in the US are fueling disinformation against Netanyahu that is “almost identical to the campaign progressives are running against parents who oppose the awakened indoctrination of students on school boards.” He said the “awakening ideology” that pervades many American schools is “un-American.”
Glick argued that the new conceptual framework for understanding the daily attacks on Israel’s legitimacy is “demonization” and “it is the new fig leaf for adopting anti-Israel policies because the peace process is dead.”
(From left) Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right Israeli lawmaker and leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, and Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right Israeli lawmaker and leader of the Religious Zionist Party, attend a rally with supporters in the city of Sderot, in southern Israel, on October 26, 2022.
(Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians over the disputed West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, has reached a dead end for many Israelis.
Glick criticized J Street and two elites in the Washington, DC foreign policy establishment, who wrote a Washington Post commentary urging sanctions on Israel.
“They hate Israel,” Glick said. “They want to damage the ties between Israel and the United States. And this undermines the main interests of the United States. Israel is America’s most loyal ally.”
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Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox News Digital: “I think J Street does not speak for the majority of American Jews on this issue. The best way Americans can To help expand the Abraham Accords to include Palestinians is to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to curb its corruption, stop its relentless anti-Semitism, and end its policies of paying to kill Jews.”
The Trump administration brokered the landmark normalization agreements, the Abraham Accords, between Israel and four Sunni Arab countries (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan).
A Palestinian man uses a catapult against Israeli troops during a protest against new Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.
(Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists and the families of terrorists who have attacked and killed Israelis. Critics argue that the Palestinian policy promotes terrorism.
Fox News Digital asked the US State Department to respond to criticisms that Glick and Cooper leveled at J Street.
“As our predecessors have done, this administration routinely engages with American and Diaspora Jewish groups to underscore our strong commitment to and partnership with Israel, which has never been stronger,” the department said.
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“Israel is America’s trusted friend and ally, not its 51st state,” Cooper said. “It is a bustling democracy whose electorate voted in the last elections for parties that created a coalition that included Israeli Arab parties. Now the same electorate has voted for parties that are to the right of center and smaller parties that include hardliners furious at the incessant Arab protests. terrorism and some with extremist views that are outside the mainstream of Israeli society.
Shlomit Ravitzky Tur-Paz, director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Sharing Partnership at the Israel Democracy Institute, told Fox News Digital: “Israel is a Jewish and a Democratic country, and it is possible that new policies that affect core characteristics and shared values create tensions.
US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo visits the US Embassy in Jerusalem with US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman on March 21, 2019.
(Hum Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“A potential sticking point between competing worldviews could be found in two extreme examples. The proposed changes in the Ministry of Education raise the question of the place of diversity: Will Israeli children be provided with different choices about how to be Jewish? And will they be able to embrace different relationships with the Jewish tradition, or will the orthodox view be the only possibility? Another example touches on the path to becoming a Jew.”
He added that a thorny issue will center on whether a new right-wing government “will continue to recognize reform and conservative conversion as valid to confirm Judaism, and therefore automatic Israeli citizenship, according to the Interior Ministry, though not by the Rabbinate.” . “
Progressive critics of Netanyahu’s scheduled coalition partners say there is an anti-LGBTQ streak within party leader Noam because he wants to ban the gay parade in Jerusalem.
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Netanyahu strongly rejected efforts to undermine his pro-LGBTQ record. Israeli media reported that he said “there will be no harm to pride parades or the status quo on LGBTQ rights.”
Glick criticized some groups for accusing Israel’s right of being anti-gay.
“You don’t see gay people hanging on the streets of Tel Aviv, but the Palestinians just murdered a gay person,” Glick said.
Fox News Digital called and sent several press inquiries to J Street.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
