Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

J Street Opens With 2,000 Participants, Still Struggles To Define Itself

The three-day J Street conference that opened in Washington on Saturday night was the group’s largest gathering so far and underscored the dovish, pro-Israel lobby’s fast growth since its inception less than three years ago. But it also provided a glimpse into J Street’s ongoing struggle to define itself.

This message was delivered forcefully in the opening speech by Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center. While declaring himself “among J Street’s most fervent fans,” Saperstein did not shy away from highlighting his worry about J Street’s recent attempt to block an American veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy.

“The recent decision to oppose the veto raises concerns,” Saperstein said, arguing that it put the lobby’s supporters “in a difficult position” and could cause J Street problems in the long run. “If you alienate your mainstream support you risk losing everything,” he said, explaining that if J Street leaned too heavily to the left, it could lose its clout within the political system.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, said the lobby’s support of Israel was a core value. “We are passionately and unapologetically pro-Israel,” Ben-Ami said in a pointed statement aimed at critics who have argued that the lobby cannot be defined as a pro-Israel group.

But Ben-Ami also made clear the lobby believes it can and should speak out against the policies of the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ben-Ami also took issue with members of the organized Jewish community for what he described as their belief that Israel can do no wrong and their refusal to publicly debate J Street.

The group honored three individuals on its opening night. Chosen were columnist Peter Beinart, who stirred a debate in the Jewish world with his article questioning the community’s commitment to liberal values as they relate to Israel; Sara Benninga, an Israeli activist from the Shiekh Jarrah solidarity movement, and Dr. Izzeldin Abulaish, a physician from Gaza who lost three daughters in an Israeli raid during Operation Cast Lead.

Benninga, who represents the left end of J Street’s “big tent” policy, won big applause for her remarks. She described actions by the Israeli government as “ethnic discrimination” against Arabs living in East Jerusalem, and argued that Israel “shamelessly delegitimizes sections of its own citizenry.”

In an emotional presentation, Dr. Abulaish said he “would love, for a few seconds, if [his] daughters would come out of their grave and see that their blood was not wasted.”

But beyond the plenary speeches and the panel discussions, Washington conferences are measured by the number of participants, and in the case of the dovish lobby, by a comparison to its centrist rival, AIPAC.

J Street organizers said the conference this year had attracted a record 2,000 participants, an increase over the more than the 1,500 that last year attended the group’s inaugural conference. But this year’s record attendance is still a far cry from AIPAC’s 6,000 plus members who attend their conferences annually.

J Street chose to hold its parley this year in the Washington Convention Center, a huge downtown complex that annually houses the AIPAC’s conferences. But while the more established pro-Israel lobby easily occupies the entire building, J Street’s conference took up only one floor of meeting rooms.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected]

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.