‘Right time’: J Street, Reconstructionist movement join liberal Zionist call for ceasefire
People inspect damage and recover items from their homes following Israeli air strikes, on March 3 in southern Gaza. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld March 6, 2024
A coalition of leading liberal Zionist groups are backing a “bilateral ceasefire,” including the release of Israeli hostages, to end the Israel-Hamas war. The ten members of the Progressive Israel Network, which includes J Street and the Reconstructionist movement, made the call in a Tuesday letter to President Joe Biden.
“We firmly believe that there is no military solution to this conflict,” the coalition wrote in the letter. Other prominent members include the New Israel Fund, T’ruah and Americans for Peace Now.
The letter marks a notable shift among liberal Zionist groups, many of which have been loath to use the term “ceasefire” even as some of them soured on Israel’s war effort, which began following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, months ago.
J Street said in December that it did not support a ceasefire “because we do not see a viable path to a stable, peaceful future” so long as Hamas controlled Gaza. It shifted that stance in January, backing a “negotiated stop to the fighting,” but did not use the term “ceasefire,” which has been a left-wing rallying cry since October.
Adina Vogel-Ayalon, J Street’s vice president, said the organization had stayed away from the phrase out of a fear that people would believe it was “a unilateral call for Israel to lay down its arms.”
“Sometimes a function of time allows for you to be better understood and not misunderstood,” she said.
While J Street previously expressed its support for Israel to “confront and defeat Hamas,” Vogel-Ayalon added that there could be a diplomatic route to removing Hamas from power in Gaza following a negotiated ceasefire.
Reconstructionist movement weighs in
The coalition letter marks the first detailed statement on the war by the Reconstructionist movement, which released an accompanying letter to Reconstructionist Jews about why it signed on.
Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the president of Reconstructing Judaism, said that she recently returned from a Reconstructionist rabbinical conference where attendees largely supported the thrust of the letter. In addition to a “bilateral ceasefire that brings a stop to fighting” it also calls on the White House to support “a release of all hostages, and a surge in humanitarian assistance” to Palestinians in Gaza.
“It felt like the right statement at the right time,” Waxman said.
Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 while at least 246 Israeli soldiers have died since the war began, according to Israeli officials. The Israeli military has since killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.
Other signatories to the coalition letter included ALEPH, Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America, New York Jewish Agenda and Partners for Progressive Israel.
Some of these groups have previously called for a ceasefire.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
