Founded in 2011 as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group that could provide a counterweight to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), J Street has recently taken to attacking Birthright—the nonpartisan and nondenominational program that arranges free visits to Israel for young Jews. David M. Weinberg comments:

[Rather than simply] partnering with the mainstream Israeli political left to build support in Washington for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, . . . J Street has become . . . an organization that spends almost all of its time and money besmirching Israel, smearing AIPAC and other leading American Jewish organizations, boosting U.S.-Iran relations, and backing political candidates for whom promoting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is a badge of honor.

J Street is not happy with Birthright because it, and many other trips that bring some 50,000 students on tours of Israel [every year], . . . “omit Palestinian narratives in their programming and erase Palestinians and the occupation from our collective consciousness.” I’m quoting here verbatim from J Street campus propaganda. . . . “These trips therefore perpetuate the attitudes and politics that help make demolitions [of the houses of terrorists] and occupation possible.” They might, God forbid, lead “our communities to feel no compulsion to speak out on behalf of Palestinian rights.”

J Street claims it wants to reform Birthright, but it hasn’t approached Birthright with thoughtful, constructive educational ideas; it’s just sought to sabotage the program. Dozens of campus professionals in the field tell me that activists from [the organization’s campus branch], J Street U, work assiduously to undermine Birthright recruitment drives. They make life hell for potential participants.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”