In 2014, we wrote an article titled “The Blind Alley of J Street and Liberal American Zionism.” At the time, Benjamin Netanyahu was in his sixth continuous year as Israel’s prime minister, while Barack Obama was well into his second term. And J Street, an emerging organization of Jews aligned with the Democratic administration, had momentum as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.”
From the outset, ever since its founding in 2007, J Street has implicitly offered itself as a liberal alternative to the hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was established more than four decades earlier. An avowed purpose of J Street has been to seek a humane resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while maintaining fervent allegiance to Israel as “the Jewish state.”
