J STREET - The New Smiling Zionist Lobby (Part 1)
bio
by Mark Bruzonsky*


[Washington, DC - 29 October 2009]    AIPAC, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has done its job for more than half a century.   The Israeli Zionists, including those who masterminded the new J Street creation, appreciate that and know it will continue pushing and enforcing, threatening and intimidating.  The Big Bad Cop is not going away, and in fact is more powerful than ever.

Still, the Israeli Zionists, themselves of somewhat different shades, also know that different times call for different measures and different tactics.  They know as well that  different people respond to different approaches and that the great majority of American Jews are liberal, not conservative and certainly not neocon, and are solidly behind Obama.  They know as well that liberal American Jews are increasingly uneasy about an Israel too much in the negative news and a "Jewish Lobby" too harsh and exposed.

And so, with the new J Street, it's not so much that they are hedging their bets, rather they are simply playing all sides of the street.  It's a high-stakes political game that has been going on for some time actually, J Street the latest big twist.

After the 1982 war the Israeli Zionists and their American Jewish minions realized it was time to seriously start diversifying.  AIPAC, the Capitol Hill giant, then created the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which became it's media and think-tank arm.  Years before, JINSA, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, had been spun off to to deal with the Pentagon.  Other organizations, including ADL (seriously misnomered as the Anti-Defamation League) and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, were further bulked up to deal with the White House and State Department.   Jewish/Zionist officials were pushed into other branches of the U.S. government not so visible but quite important, including the Treasury Department, the CIA, Voice of America (VOA), and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/EL).   Many major magazines and media organizations became controlled, and in some cases bought outright, by Zionist personalities -- a few biggies like Marty Peretz, Mort Zuckerman, Bill Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz actually publicly stating they were pledged to help and defend Israel.

The Israeli/Jewish Lobby story has long been one far beyond AIPAC in fact, though you would not know it from the J Street approach.   In the past thirty years it has spun off multiple organizations with different portfolios, different targets, different styles, but one overall goal -- nurturing the U.S. "Special Relationship" with Israel and making sure massive amounts of political, military, and economic support for the Jewish State keep flowing through multiple pipelines and mechanisms no matter what.

The post 9/11 world, on top of the "Peace Process" collapse, presented new dangers, challenges, and opportunities for further Zionist expansion and diversification in the U.S.

AIPAC, JINSA, WINEP, ADL, and the Presidents Conference, especially in combination, have been wildly successful; but even so they have become more and more associated with the Jewish Neocons and the more hard-line Zionists.   The same for the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) which now play different roles with different constituencies in Europe, in foreign capitals, and with the media.

The more centrist and greatly shrunken "liberal" Zionists needed new front groups of their own, and "liberal" American Jews needed to be given some less hard-line and less antagonistic organizations to absorb their monies and energies -- as well as to prevent any tough-minded, truly independent, and non-Zionist-controlled movements from taking root.  

J Street is the latest Zionist ploy, no matter what kinds of false challenges about its bona fides are out there. 

Needed for critical historical context is a quick review of other Israeli Zionist doings in Washington in more recent years.

Right after 9/11, via Ariel Sharon's billionaire friend Haim Saban, the Israeli/Jewish lobby infiltrated the Brookings Instituttion, created the Saban Center, and turned it over to the same man who had first led WINEP years before, Martin Indyk.   Walla!  The Good Cop, 'left wing', Democratic Party "think-tank"  had come into being.   Meanwhile Martin's buddy, Dennis Ross -- now in the Obama White House working in tandem with the other big-time Zionist operative, non other than Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- was again put in charge at WINEP.  He had been on leave for a long "Peace Process" run in both the Bush 41 and Clinton Administrations where he also worked closely with Indyk as well as Aaron Miller, now dispatched to another controlled think-tank, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars..

Then a few years ago, aware how the powerful yet shrinking American Jewish community was being challenged on the edges by churches, students, and activists, the Zionist machine realized it needed to expand, block, and counter even more.   Walla!  Energized by legions of Bible Thumping Fundamentalists, Christians United For Israel (CUFI) was midwifed directly by AIPAC and has quickly become a major political/financial force.  The CUFI conference a few months ago was far larger and more powerful than J Street, filling the Washington Convention Center and drawing not only the Israeli Ambassador but also the Prime Minister by satellite.   It's a marriage of convenience of course, putting aside long-time severe ideological and religious differences; but even so a very potent and astute one.

The Israeli Zionists were not content however to feed and energize the hard-liners and right-wingers among them, especially as they realized they were now entwined with the modern-day Christian Crusaders led by John Hagee.

They realized as well that they needed a major organization for the "liberal Jews" who had now been seduced by the simplistic, not to mention outdated, "Two State Solution" mantra.   They also needed some place for all those "Birthright Israel" graduates to associate themselves, as many were not comfortable taking the same hard-line AIPAC route of their parents.   So former Knesset members and Israeli operatives were dispatched and walla once again, in addition to Americans For Peace Now and Jewish Voices for Peace already on the scene (different stories to each of these) a new organization, B'rit Tzedek V'Shalom (BTV), was created in the years before J State.  The two by the way will soon merge combining both the grass-roots and Washington lobby into one energized and J Street operation.

This latest addition to the Israeli/Jewish Lobby, J Street, formally launched this week with 1200 enthusiasts, repeated and incessant professions of "love for Israel", and a well bankrolled 3-day convention at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.   It too is a creation of Zionist agents without whom it never would have come to be -- the two key operatives Daniel Levy, trained by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, and David Kimche, long-time Mossad and Israeli Foreign Minstry apparatchik.

There are lots of nuances and details to this convoluted story that can't be so quickly covered.   But overall J Street is a kind of smiling and engaging Jewish Lobby, yet one still following the themes and under the thumb of the Israeli Zionist machine.  J Street purposefully has a different personality, style, and attitude -- Obamaesque in fact.   Indeed the conference opened with a ringing endorsement from none other than the President of Israel himself, Shimon Peres, followed by Tzipi Livni, the leader of Ariel Sharon's last party and the receipient of the most votes in the last election.  Then at the banquet King Abdullah from Amman toasted J Street as did a significant Saudi official along with a few Arab Ambassadors who came to show their support but declined to be publicly identified or to speak.  A few hours before to give a "keynote speech" the Obama Administration sent none other than National Security Adviser General James Jones.

To sum up:

When thinking J Street think Israeli Zionist mainstream -- which is actually now in the government as well as in the opposition at the same time -- and think Democratic Party, today the ruling U.S. party.

And when thinking AIPAC continue to think Israeli government -- which today is headed by Netanyahu, Barak, and Lieberman as well as the Army and Mossad establishments that transcend electoral politics and are coordinated by the notorious Uzi Arad -- along with a large collection of American Jewish power-brokers, money men, business and publishing tycoons, military-industrial complex types, Jewish Neocons, and Christian Zealots, all linked with key people in power positions in both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

And so walla once again.  The Good Cop, "left wing", smiling Israeli/Jewish Zionist lobby has come to be in Washington in the age of Obama.  They say they have his back, but actually they are there to push him forward, cheer him on, and make him their front man via those who control his party and his White House for what now should be called "The Two State Deception".

In fact, connect a few more dots that the J Streeters insist on covering up, and you find that even as they purport to be so different from AIPAC, their own strings are actually being pulled by two of the longest-time and most entrenched AIPAC-connected Washington Zionist personalities of all time -- that's none other than Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Ross now in tandem in charge of all matters Israel-connected in the White House.

And one more thing!  Don't be seduced by all the talk about "peace" and "process"; the real preparations are for conflict and war.   Indeed, one of the most senior Israeli figures at the J Street Conference told me very clearly though very privately that there's not going to be a real Palestestinian State, "it's just not going to happen!".   And when Obama's General Jones took the stage at the conference he never even mentioned that the largest ever joint U.S-Israel war games were taking place throughout the very days of the J Street/Israel love-a-thon.



upcoming exclusively at MiddleEast.Org and WashReport.com:    
      
 
 J STREET and the 'Two State Deception"  (Part 2)
J STREET - Sons of Irgun  (Part 3)
J STREET - Obama's Back or Front?  (Part 4)
J STREET - Known by the Company You Keep  (Part 5)
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* Mark Bruzonsky is a writer and speaker specializing in U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.  He was the first Washington
Representative of the World Jewish Congress and is intimately familiar with the situation in Israel and among American Jews.
As a young journalist he met alone with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and helped convince him to make his historic trip to
Jerusalem that changed Middle East history.  Bruzonsky's bio is at http://www.MarkBruzonsky.com.   

Mark@Bruzonsky.com  /  (202) 495-1235 /  My status contact on Skype at all times