J Street vs. AIPAC: when David takes on Goliath

At its creation in 2008, the French and European media grew enthusiastic about a new American lobby, J Street, which claimed to be at once pro-peace and pro-Israel. Conscious of the crucial role played by American diplomacy and, by extension, by the American Jewish community in the advancement of the peace negotiations in the Near East, the Europeans applauded the initiative, hoping that it would bring a breath of fresh air into a Washington fishbowl saturated by the pro-Israel consensus. Intoxicated by the possibility of developing a Jewish pro-Israel and pro-peace movement around the world, the Europeans responded two years later by conceiving JCall, a Brussels-based pressure group with ambitions similar to J Street’s. Although there is no formal link between the two organizations, it is clear that the hope aroused by J Street — the hope, for the Jews of the diaspora, of managing to “set themselves apart from their all-too-often systematic alignment with Israeli policy”¹ — was a source of inspiration across the Atlantic.

Three years later, however, one is led to wonder whether the Europeans did not take their dreams for reality. While J Street does indeed answer a demand within the American Jewish population to change the terms of American engagement in the Near East, the lobby does not come up to the ankle of its giant big brother in size, in power, and in influence — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known by its acronym AIPAC. Far from succeeding in counterbalancing the influence of the AIPAC machine, J Street just barely manages to exist.

It must be said that AIPAC has, to its credit, more than half a century of virulent lobbying in favor of Israel. Founded in 1954, the lobby originally had as its ambition to offer the American Jewish community the possibility of expressing itself with a single voice in Congress on Israeli questions. In cooperation with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, created in 1953 to be the central coordinating organ of American Jewish organizations, AIPAC had as its mission to guarantee that Congress provide constant, homogeneous, and faithful support to Israel. After modest initial results, AIPAC’s aura began to grow as the United States lengthened its economic and military aid to the small Jewish State, notably after the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.

In the opinion of many specialists, it was on a political defeat that AIPAC inaugurated an unprecedented cycle of influence². In 1981, President Ronald Reagan confronted the fierce opposition of the pro-Israel lobby over the question of the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. While the sale was unacceptable in the eyes of Israel and AIPAC, the Republican president prevailed and Congress approved the agreement. Although the lobby had clearly lost, the battle revealed its strengths, its networks, its extraordinary capacity for mobilization and influence. Henceforth, Congress had to reckon with this prodigious political force, devoted to a single objective: that of supporting and protecting the small Jewish State. Today, AIPAC’s reputation — “the royal road of pro-Israel militancy”³, “the preeminent power of lobbying in Washington”⁴ — is well established. The great organizations of the American Jewish establishment (American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents…) for the most part encourage the action of the great lobby. The American political class is, in its very large majority, in close relation with AIPAC’s lobbyists, and crowds in each year to the great gala that celebrates the friendship between the two countries. AIPAC has become one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, rivaling the gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, and AARP, the lobby of retirees.

There is nothing underhanded or reprehensible in this: in order to maintain its dominant place, AIPAC relies on effective lobbying methods (mobilization, expertise, professionalism), seasoned to the vagaries of the political world, and on an intelligent political strategy. First, its team of lobbyists of excellent caliber facilitates the task of the legislators and their staff by furnishing them with reliable and precise information on the problems of the region and with ready-to-use elements of legislation. The lobby’s positions are known to all, do not vary suddenly, and are easy to follow.

Second, at the heart of the AIPAC strategy lies the idea that supporting Israel falls within the American national interest. By hammering home year after year that the Jewish State is the most loyal and the most reliable ally of the United States in the region, indeed in the world, by demonstrating that the proximity between the two countries is advantageous to the Americans, by affirming that support for Israel conforms to American democratic values, AIPAC places a solid argument at the disposal of American politicians, men and women alike. They can thus defend Israel in all serenity. Likewise, thanks to its networks and its influence, the great lobby has managed to make Israel a politically remunerative question. Year after year, it has demonstrated that an elected official’s positioning on the question of Israel can have strong electoral consequences, positive or negative — all the more so as there is, so to speak, no dissident voice to oppose it. It is therefore, for the elected officials of the American Congress, a position of low cost and high return on investment. The theorem is simple: a stable and faithful support of the Israeli government in all circumstances combines “good policy and good politics,” that is to say, it guarantees that one is conducting both a good foreign policy and a good electoral policy.

Third, AIPAC has made the shrewd political calculation that it is entirely contrary to its interests to become a partisan question. It therefore offers equivalent support to all pro-Israel elected officials regardless of their camp. Thus, insensible to the changes of political color in Washington, AIPAC is a rock on which the members of Congress can always lean. To guarantee an even greater stability, the lobby also does not involve itself in the political debates in Israel. Its watchword is to align itself with the government in place in Tel Aviv and to conform to its positions. In case of internal disagreement, for example over the settlement of the West Bank, the lobby remains silent and takes no position.

AIPAC’s extraordinary influence raises many suspicions and arouses many jealousies. Criticisms fly, some of which sometimes border on conspiracy theory or primary antisemitism. But others resonate more strongly and shake a little the self-confidence of the giant. Recently, it was a pamphlet by the Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published in the form of an article (2006) and then of a book (2007)⁵, that stirred up controversy. Despite its imperfections, the work of the two professors poses the question of AIPAC’s actions and methods, accusing it above all of censoring the debate on Israeli questions and of defending a policy contrary to the American national interest. On the first point, no one can really accuse the lobby of manipulating the legislators or of maneuvering illicitly (even if from time to time a scandal comes to tarnish its polished image, as was the case in 2005 when two AIPAC employees were indicted for the transmission of secret information to the Israeli government). AIPAC’s dominant position on Near Eastern questions in the American capital is above all the fruit of its remarkable mastery of the political game. On the second point, by contrast, AIPAC’s positioning is far more vulnerable. The idea according to which unconditional support for Israel is the best policy for the United States to defend — or even for Israel — can be the object of a genuine substantive debate. And it is this debate that was incarnated in the creation of J Street.

Periodically, those dissatisfied with the status quo denounce the practices and/or the results of the lobby and affirm the necessity of providing a counterweight to the giant AIPAC. This balancing exercise could hardly come from the Palestinian or Arab camp, which is divided and has a reduced electoral base and a reduced reservoir of sympathy in the United States. There do exist other groups offering an alternative vision, such as Americans for Peace Now, founded to support the peace camp in Israel, or Israel Policy Forum, which campaigns for a strong engagement of the United States in favor of the peace process, but their positioning was deemed too angelic or too restricted.

In 2008, a group of progressive American Jews, relying on a network of activists and small donors mobilized thanks to the new technologies, wanted to offer an alternative to AIPAC’s domination by creating J Street, a pro-peace and pro-Israel pressure group that campaigns for an active diplomatic engagement of the United States in favor of peace. For greater effectiveness, J Street endowed itself with the legal status of “lobby,” offering a wide range of possibilities for action to influence the legislators, and created a PAC (Political Action Committee), JStreetPAC, which has the possibility of raising funds to finance candidates or parties directly.

The objective of J Street is not only to multiply the legal capacities of the American pro-peace camp. Its raison d’être rests on a simple observation: the positions of the American Jewish community on Israel are defended by an unrepresentative fringe of the community, and most American Jews have no vehicle for making their voice heard on this question. According to its founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street comes to compensate for this lack, by allowing the “silent majority” to express itself⁶. In fact, the lobbyists who speak in the name of all American Jews in Washington are in reality disproportionately drawn from the ideological right, whereas the majority of American Jews more readily espouse progressive political ideas⁷. Polls commissioned by J Street showed that 75 percent of American Jews are favorable to an active involvement of the United States in the peace process even if this means displaying a public disagreement with Israel or putting pressure on the Jewish State, and that 59 percent of them would support an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank⁸. The ambition of J Street is to furnish a channel of expression for a new generation of American Jews, more critical of Israel but also more determined to find a solution to a sixty-year conflict.

Now, for some years, in particular since the Lebanon War of 2006, a growing number of American politicians, men and women, have rallied to the idea that a rapid and durable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an absolute necessity. Bogged down in the Iraqi and Afghan wars, preoccupied by an Islamist contagion in the Middle East, ill at ease before the use of force by Israel that they deemed disproportionate, they showed themselves more and more convinced that the “miring” of the situation of the Palestinians was poisoning the region. On the Republican side, President Bush himself had perceived this change and engaged a belated process of negotiations, called the Annapolis process, without however arriving at any significant result. Among the Democrats, in particular within the most progressive fringe, the alignment of Congress with the policies of the Likud was wearing thin. This is why the creation of J Street was received with a relative benevolence, as a via media, a breath of idealistic and optimistic air on a subject that is usually distressing. In the aftermath of the election of the new American president, all hopes were permitted. Very quickly, Barack Obama, himself convinced that a little public disagreement with Israel could not harm the relationship⁹, put his troops into battle order, and the process seemed relaunched. This time, the tone had hardened toward the Israeli ally, and the American Administration allowed itself to break with the complaisant silence of its predecessors and to demand a freeze on settlement.

But the anticipated takeoff did not occur. The American Administration, overwhelmed by two wars and a catastrophic economic situation, did not put the necessary resources into a genuine resumption of the negotiations. It must be admitted that the position of the Democratic president is delicate. Although he has always declared himself for a resumption of the peace process, he knows that he has very little to gain from spending political capital on the resolution of this conflict. Any attempt is politically dangerous and not necessarily profitable on the plane of national security, in any case in the short term. Why would he take this risk when he needs political space to carry out his other reforms on the domestic plane? In this context, the work of J Street was put in difficulty.

After having lost its political support, J Street had to confront the opposition of the pro-Israel establishment of Washington. As was to be expected, the latter looked with a jaundiced eye on the rise to power of a new actor whose avowed objective was to provide a counterweight to the most influential lobby of the community. As the historian Pauline Peretz affirms, J Street is, in many respects, an “anti-AIPAC”: resolutely anchored on the left, close to the Obama Administration, J Street finances, via its PAC, candidates that AIPAC deems too critical of Israel and rejects alliances with the religious right¹⁰.

On a certain number of points, its very existence imperils the principles at the heart of the AIPAC strategy. J Street openly contradicts the great lobby by hammering home that the United States sometimes has an interest in disavowing Israel or in putting pressure on it to bring it to make difficult concessions. The young lobby aspires to have the United States regain the freedom of its own choices on Near Eastern questions. Now, for AIPAC, to equate unconditional support for Israel with the American national interest is an absolute necessity. Without this, its lobbyists run the risk of being accused of privileging Israel over the United States and of being puppets in the service of the Jewish State.

By its positioning on the political chessboard and its proximity to the American left, J Street erodes the bipartisan tradition dear to the great lobby. Over the course of the last decade, faithful to its principle of supporting the Israeli government in place without contesting its political choices, AIPAC espoused the theses and the positions of the Israeli right, dominant since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. In the United States, it drew closer to the neoconservative right, spontaneously pro-Israel. Despite this, AIPAC managed to preserve a bipartisan base, the result of a constant effort to involve the members of both parties in support for Israel. But the creation of J Street offered the American progressive left a solution for remaining pro-Israel while distinguishing itself from AIPAC’s most right-wing positions.

Thus, despite courteous relations on the surface, the two lobbies wage a ferocious war on each other. J Street constantly criticizes the single-mindedness and the status quo advocated by AIPAC, and the latter accuses its young competitor of dividing the American Jewish community and of not being truly pro-Israel. The two lobbies seem in constant opposition on the whole set of subjects relating to Israel: the military operation against the Turkish flotilla, the resumption of construction in East Jerusalem, and so on. Each AIPAC initiative — letters to Congress, press releases, legislative initiatives — is almost always countered by one from J Street, and vice versa. Only the question of Iran remains for the moment spared. The battles were particularly virulent when J Street decided to condemn, to the great displeasure of the American Jewish establishment, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and then applauded the highly critical report of Judge Richard Goldstone on the operation.

This internecine war reflects the divisions that tear American Jews apart and the unease they feel before Israel. J Street’s problem comes from the fact that its analysis of the Jewish community has no tangible transcription. In theory, and according to the polls, a majority of American Jews ought to be ready to support the young lobby. But it is a passive majority, and the lobbying system favors noisy minorities at the expense of silent majorities. Thus, although a majority of Jews approve of its action, this does not translate into political, electoral, or financial weight.

Moreover, J Street’s efforts are hampered by another aspect: Israel, traditionally receptive to American Jewish groups, showed itself wary, even hostile, toward this one. In March 2010, a delegation of members of the American Congress led by J Street was received coldly in Israel. Daniel Ayalon, former ambassador of Israel to the United States and deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, refused to receive them. Despite the declarations of a certain number of Israeli diplomats and intellectuals in its favor, J Street does not manage to restore its negative image. AIPAC, for its part, continues to maintain excellent relations with the Israeli government but also with new partners in the United States, such as the Christian Zionists, mainly drawn from the ranks of the evangelical Protestants who make up nearly 30 percent of the American population. The Christian Zionists are, by religious duty and political philosophy, fervent supporters of the Jewish State. While they do not yet have strong organizational power, they have, thanks to their networks of churches and para-religious organizations, a growing influence on public opinion. Their principal pressure group, Christians United for Israel, maintains execrable relations with J Street, which never ceases to denounce their right-wing positions.

Finally, many American Jews, although pro-peace, are ill at ease before the idea of criticizing Israel. They most often consider that it is not for them to impose or to imagine the contours of a solution in the region but for the Israelis, vulnerable on the front line. They want at all costs to avoid being accused of weakening Israel. In an essay published in 2006 by the American Jewish Committee, Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld accused a part of the American Jewish community, the “progressive” Jews, of being itself antisemitic, affirming that “some of the arguments for the elimination of the Jewish State — the cherished dream of every antisemite — come from Jews themselves.”¹¹ The attack is brutal, and effective.

Accused of weakening Israel and of dividing the community¹², the work of J Street proves delicate. Isolated, assimilated to the radical left, limited by its still modest means, J Street struggles to gain in influence. Although the lobby tirelessly recalls its attachment to defending the existence and the security of Israel, it has for the moment largely lost the trial of intentions brought against it by AIPAC, but also by the whole of the American Jewish establishment, a large part of the Israelis, and many of Israel’s non-Jewish supporters in the United States. It will take time for J Street to make them understand that its contribution to the debate does not consist solely in putting spokes in the wheels of the envied big brother.

Notes