Founded in 2007, the advocacy group J Street bills itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” and it is designed to counter the supposed right-wing leanings of major American Jewish organizations when it comes to Israel. It has paid particular attention to supporting the creation of a Palestinian state in all or most of the West Bank and Gaza, and to supporting the U.S nuclear deal with Iran. Surveying J Street’s recent positions and activities, Alan Baker finds little evidence that it is interested in supporting the Jewish state at all:

J Street has failed to welcome and promote the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, apparently because they downgrade the [importance of creating] a Palestinian state. The organization has actively lobbied against military aid to those Arab states that normalized relations. As such, J Street is clearly undercutting any genuine concern for Israel’s security and is, in fact, undermining Israel’s right to defend itself.

J Street has failed to call upon the Palestinians to stop completely the payment of salaries to terrorists, even though such payments violate internationally accepted counterterror conventions, as well as central commitments in the Oslo Accords.

J Street’s website is replete with anti-Israel propaganda and blanket, one-sided condemnations of Israeli security actions, presented out of context, all of which reads more like a summary of UN Israel-bashing resolutions. Its website even reproduces and attempts to fuel the false accusations claiming that Palestinians “living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza” do not have access to COVID-19 vaccines and have not been included in the Israeli government’s current vaccination plans.

While logical and substantive criticism of any particular action or policy by Israel may well be legitimate, J Street, by its actions and policies, has redefined itself as an anti-Israel organization. What is perhaps even worse is that through its activities and incitement, J Street is permitting itself to be a tool for use by Palestinian and European organizations hostile to Israel, which utilize its ostensible “concern” for Israel to bolster and enhance their own credibility and status.

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.