DOES THE 'J' IN J STREET SIGNIFY 'JERKS?'

By Schmoel Yitzhak

Gimme a break!

That should be the singular reaction from any who believes that J Street actually is a "pro-Israel" and "pro-peace" outfit as it so piously claims.

Then again old-time carnival Snake Oil salesmen barked that their product could cure everything from backaches to heartaches. 

Some folks actually bought their product only to later discover that the only thing it cured was a few bucks from a sucker's pocket.

All signs suggest that J Street has deceived a bloc of otherwise sincere, well-meaning American Jews into believing that it is, in fact, pro-Israel. 

However, the facts are damning in another direction and if you don't believe me, check out the machinations of J Street's founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami. 

From the get-go Ben-Ami & Co. has appeared to be more like a PLO propaganda machine than a supporter of the Middle East's only true democracy. 

Why then would Ben-Ami have produced a fallacy-filled op-ed column on December 24, 2011 that read like something that had been delivered by Mahmoud Abbas' printing press. 

Ben-Ami called it "Redefining 'pro-Israel" and produced a number of absurd suggestions to produce Arab-Israeli peace. 

For openers the J-Street maestro urged Israel "to proactively take bold, even risky steps to establish a state of Palestine based on the pre-1967 lines with land swaps." (Now if that isn't out of the Barack Obama playbook, I don't know what is.)

My response: Gimme a break!

Or, to put it in more animalistic terms, was Ben-Ami doing an ostrich imitation when the 1993 Oslo process was designed to lead to final-status talk on the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 1998. As we all know, Palestinian terrorism sabotaged that utopian plan.

What else has Ben-Ami forgotten? 

Eric Rozenman of the Committee For Accuracy In Middle East Reporting In America (CAMERA) cites plenty more of J Street's mistakes. 

CAMERA'S Washington director points to the joint Israel-U.S. proposal in 2000 for a West Bank and Gaza state with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return the Arabs would make peace with the Jewish state. The PLO's response was the al-AQSA intifada. That war produced more than 1,000 Israeli dead and 4,000 on the Palestinian side. 

"Ben-Ami," wrote Rozenman, "was silent, too, on the 2006 triumph of Hamas in Palestinian elections. He also said nothing about Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip the next year."

Likewise J Street's leader remains singularly mute when it comes to the endless rocket barrage delivered from Gaza into Israel not to mention the incessant anti-Israel incitement that echoes from every point in Gaza.

"Where have you been, Mister Ben-Ami?" asked Rozenman.

I put it another way: Ben-Ami gimme a break!