Z STREET

These were the notices where people entered the building. The Z STREET Charter was handed out.

The entrance area where people signed in to come to the Z STREET event.

 

          Mitchell Bard speaking to a packed room.

Here I am, giving a brief overview of Z STREET, and introducing Mitchell Bard, seated to my left. 

A Penn Student turns during Mitchell Bard's speech, watching other students filing in.

 

 Friends of Z STREET.Students outside the Z ST event.

Ed Rosen, a Hillel board member, listens intently.  Rosen

is a great friend and supporter of Z STREET.

Here are some articles written about the J Street Local roll-out.

This first story reveals the strategy of J Street and its roll-out to local groups and on campuses.  As with other anti-democratic organizations which pose as "progressive," the strategy is a nefarious one of insinuation into the local groups, followed by assumption of control and ending with  subversion.  The idea of anyone above college-age using Alinsky's methods as a serious model for social change is pathetic, especially now, given the meteoric rise, but then rapid deflation, of the current US administration's efforts to radically change US policies.  It is a strategy doomed to defeat, conceived in messianic hubris.

Korn's story is very useful. Read the next one as well.

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Philadelphia meeting 'confers ordination' on radical 1960s theorist
Posted: February 05, 2010
9:43 am Eastern
By Benyamin Korn 
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

PHILADELPHIA – Paying tribute to "our rabbi" – the radical 1960s theorist Saul Alinsky – leaders of the left-wing Jewish lobby J Street launched what they hope will be a national mobilization, before an audience of about 175 people at the University of Pennsylvania Hillel center last night.

After he "conferred" rabbinical ordination on Alinsky, Temple University professor Elliot A. Ratzman used rhetoric from the late father of community organizing about "organizing people and mobilizing resources" to inspire conference attendees, which included many veteran activists of the Jewish left.
Ratzman, it was announced, will head the new "Philadelphia local" of J Street, along with well-known Jewish "peace" organizer, attorney Steven Masters.

In his own remarks, Masters said J Street had already amassed a war chest of $4 million to promote its agenda.

Masters also announced he was formally merging the peace group he founded in the mid-1990s, Brit Zedek V'Shalom, or Covenant of Justice and Peace, into the J Street organization. In past publications, Masters claimed Brit Zedek had the support of 1,000 rabbis and 40,000 lay members.

J Street's founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has acknowledged receiving seed money from left-wing billionaire activist George Soros. J Street has also come under fire for accepting funds from numerous Arab sources as well as pro-Arab organizations.

Yesterday's event took place in the facilities of Hillel, which promotes itself as the largest Jewish campus organization in the world and is known as the center of mainstream Jewish life on campuses across the U.S. J Street conference leaders said they were simulcasting the keynote speech of Ben-Ami to 20 remote locations, including 400 in attendance in New York and "over 200" in Boston.

In his broadcast remarks, Ben-Ami struck a moderate tone, telling activists to engage in a "respectful dialogue" with mainstream Jewish groups. He said J Street wants to pressure Congress and the Obama administration to pursue "a two-state solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this is a position the mainstream Jewish community, President Obama and successive Israeli governments already embrace.

Nonetheless, "this administration came into office promising to make a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict its first priority, and we intend to hold them to that promise," Ben-Ami declared.
In a question-and-answer session following the broadcast, Ben-Ami acknowledged a lack of student turnout for the kick-off event. But he stressed the importance of student and faculty involvement and said J Street had already launched a campus program it is calling "J Street U."

All three speakers were enthusiastic about using the Alinskyian tactic of "mobilizing" clergy and religious congregations, in this case rabbis and synagogues, to promote their political agenda, which they vociferously insist is pro-Israel.

J Street brands itself as pro-Israel. It states on its website it seeks to "promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically."

But the group also supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israel's anti-terror military offensives.

A group opposing J Street called Z Street staged a simultaneous counter-program at Penn Hillel, which organizers said attracted about 100 people, including about 20 students. Penn is home to a large and active Jewish student population. There were no public confrontations at last night's conference between the two groups.

Alinsky is widely regarded as the founder of modern community organizing. He founded and trained community organizations to follow his methods, including organizations in South Chicago, where President Obama credits his political beginnings. The Washington Post reported Obama was hired shortly after graduating from college by a group of Alinsky's disciples to be a community organizer on Chicago's South Side.

Former 1960s radical and FrontPageMagazine Editor David Horowitz describes Alinsky as the "Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States."

Horowitz writes in his 2009 pamphlet, "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution. The Alinsky Model":
"The strategy of working within the system until you can accumulate enough power to destroy it was what sixties radicals called 'boring from within.'.... Like termites, they set about to eat away at the foundations of the building in expectation that one day they could cause it to collapse."

As WND reported, Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky's radical tactics – to pen a letter of recommendation for him when he applied to Harvard Law School. Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama said he got the "best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School."

 In a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Alinsky's son praised Obama for stirring up the masses at the Democratic National Convention "Saul Alinsky style," saying, "Obama learned his lesson well."
The letter signed L. David Alinsky closed by saying, "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124234

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AND HERE'S ANOTHER ONE:
J Street Meets Stop Sign at University of Pennsylvania

Published: 02/05/10, 10:41 AM / Last Update: 02/05/10, 11:00 AM
by Avi Yellin

(IsraelNN.com) J Street, the Washington lobby with strong connections to the Obama administration, held an event at the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday evening, February 4th,  amidst local and nation-wide controversy over the group’s “pro-Israel” credentials. The organization, which advocates strong American pressure to force an Israeli surrender of Judea and Samaria as well as the forced expulsion of all Jewish residents from these lands, created a stir in the Jewish media and blogsphere for two weeks with the planned visit of director Jeremy Ben-Ami to the University’s Hillel building.

Z Street, a local pro-Israel organization initially attempted to pressure the University to withdraw its invitation to J Street’s Ben-Ami but when Hillel responded with claims that it was merely renting space to the powerful Washington lobby, Z Street settled for a room in the Hillel building to hold a simultaneous pro-Israel event. The group brought Mitchell Bard, who attracted most of the students concerned with events in the Middle East, and left J Street an audience comprised mainly of elderly Jews from the Philadelphia area.

Roz Rothstein of the California based pro-Israel StandWithUs organization, traveled to Pennsylvania to attend the J Street event and confronted Ben-Ami with her concerns about his activities. “For me, there were several unanswered questions,” she told Israel National News following the event. “First, how does J Street justify pressuring the democratically elected government of another country to change its policies through lobbying elected officials in the United States? Second, how can people living in the safety of the United States make policy decisions for another country, possibly endangering its citizens? I tried to find out what Ben-Ami thought. I asked him the questions that were on my mind but did not get answers.”

Brian Finkel, founding president of the University of Pennsylvania’s Zionist Freedom Alliance chapter, organized student activists to stand by the entrance to J Street’s event handing out flyers revealing information about the influential Washington lobby, including the massive donations it accepts from people with clear and public anti-Israel agendas. In an interview with Israel National News, Finkel said that for two weeks he and fellow Zionist students coordinated with other organizations – including Z Street, Americans For a Safe Israel and the Zionist Organization of America – to plan an appropriate response to J Street’s visit to their campus.

“J Street asked Hillel staff for permission to use the main auditorium in the Penn Hillel building for a local launch and national webcast to its followers. Permission was granted, but without any consultation with Hillel students. This unilateral action by Hillel staff was met with tremendous anger and frustration from students, whose voices and opinions were entirely ignored in the process. ZFA decided to give those students a voice.”

Finkel, who previously served as Hillel’s Israel chair, described J Street as “an extremist Washington group that lobbies the United States government to impose policies on Israel.” On Wednesday evening, Finkel brought Dan Pollak, Director of Government Relations for the ZOA in Washington, to speak about why J Street poses a danger to the State of Israel. The event drew students and Philadelphia community members alike, prompting a lively debate about J Street’s true motives.

During the period that the Z Street sponsored Mitchell Bard event attracted students away from Ben-Ami’s presentation, the ZFA distributed flyers explaining why the school’s pro-Israel students were opposed to – and ashamed of – J Street’s presence at their Hillel. The flyers included many anti-Israel statements made by J Street leaders and showcased how J Street seeks to undermine Israel’s sovereignty and security by imposing its political agenda on an independent state. Several members of J Street unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the distribution of the ZFA flyers. After handing out all of their material and speaking to the local media, the Zionist students entered the event but were prevented from asking questions.

ZFA told Israel National News that their protest was not only directed at J Street but also at the Hillel staff who, in their view, pushes an extremist political agenda. In recent years the Penn Hillel has brought fringe groups to campus such as Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence, each of whom receive generous funding from European governments hostile to the Jewish state.

“Its time for us to take back our Hillel and give students a voice again,” Finkel said. “Hillel exists so that Jewish students can have a safe haven on campus. It is hard enough to advocate for Israel on campus without your own Hillel giving space to dangerous and manipulative anti-Israel groups like J Street. Israel is an independent state with its own government and leaders. The people of Israel can and do make their own choices. What right do American extremists like J Street have to impose their will on a foreign country?”

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador the United States, refused J Street's invitation to speak at their annual conference several months ago, arguing that the organization's activities are harmful to the Jewish state.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135875

****************
And one from the Jerusalem Post

J Street to 'expand notion of pro-Israel'
BY E.B. SOLOMONT
07/02/2010 01:23

PHILADELPHIA – Jon Grabelle Herrmann grew up in a mainstream American Jewish family. He attended summer camp and traveled to Israel on a teen tour, but largely sat on the sidelines of Israel advocacy.

"I have never been involved in a Jewish event before, other than marrying a rabbi," he joked on Thursday night, addressing some 200 people gathered in Philadelphia for the kick-off of a local J Street chapter.

As a lively klezmer band quieted down for the main event, Herrmann described how he became involved in J Street after attending this fall's policy conference, where he found a place to express his views on Israel. Now co-chairman of Philadelphia's chapter, he said, "I think that my story may be emblematic of many other supporters."

As J Street seeks to mobilize its Internet support base into grassroots activism, its message – like Herrmann's – focused on the kind of "pro-Israel, pro-peace" advocacy the group says is missing from the current discourse.

On Thursday night, J Street said nearly 2,000 people turned out in more than 20 cities for simultaneous events to kick off J Street Local, the vehicle for members to carry out educational and advocacy work in their communities.

"We made a pledge in October that we would be silent no more when it comes to Israel," said J Street's executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami, in a speech that was broadcast to the other events.

In nearly two years, J Street has amassed 140,000 online supporters and hopes to spur them to action, following the recent merge with Brit Tzedek V'Shalom. "Tonight we are opening a new chapter in the struggle for tzedek and shalom, justice and peace in the world," Ben-Ami said.

He said J Street and J Street Local seek to inject new voices into foreign policy discussion, express support for Israel in accordance with Jewish values and promote a more open debate about Israel in the American Jewish community. In particular, J Street seeks to "expand what it means to be pro-Israel."

During a question-and-answer session, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where the event was held in space rented from Hillel, asked Ben-Ami about reports that J Street's university arm was dropping "pro-Israel" from its messaging.

"We absolutely never, ever dropped the pro-Israel part," Ben-Ami said.

Later, he told The Jerusalem Post that J Street and J Street U share mission statements that support the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. "The question is whether or not every single group has to use the phrase, pro-Israel," he said. "If they feel they can get more students to turn out using different words, they don't need to put that in 48-point letters in everything they do.

"As long as their mission statement is clear, we're going to give them some latitude in how they market their events," he said.

Ben-Ami said J Street was injecting gray into an arena that previously was black and white. "We think we're doing a service to the Jewish community," he said.

Leading up to the event, the local Jewish community was divided over the decision by Hillel to rent space to J Street for the kick-off.

Despite mentioning Israeli security, Ben-Ami did not mention the Iranian nuclear threat during his speech. In an interview, he told the Post that while J Street is on record supporting the Iran Sanctions Act, there is no shortage of Jewish advocates working on the Iran issue. (J Street opposes military action against Iran.)

"The real threat to Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic home is if we don't solve this [Arab-Israeli] conflict," he said. "We have said that this threat is more likely to undermine Israel's existence than Iran."

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a Hillel board member who opposed renting space to J Street, held an event at Hillel the same night for her organization, Z Street. She called J Street's positions "delusional, although very seductive," and said her event was designed as an opportunity "to educate people about the reality of creating peace."

Penn students circulated a flier accusing J Street of undermining Israel's right to defend itself and attempting to dictate Israeli national policy.

"Although J Street calls itself 'pro-Israel,' the group's policies, statements, and actions provide ample evidence to the contrary," the flier read. "J Street is not only misrepresenting what it means to be pro-Israel, but they are tarnishing the good name of our Hillel in the process."

Other students, including some who do not agree with J Street's positions, said they do not want to stifle anyone's expression of free speech. "I'm all for the debate, even if I don't support it in the least bit," said Jeffrey Rollman, a freshman at the university's Wharton business school.

Hillel leaders made clear that by renting space to J Street, they were not taking a position on the organization's policies.

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=167975

Do you want to really be "Pro-Israel?"  How about not only refusing to capitulate to terrorists, but also strengthening those who protect Israel?  J Street is the embodiment of what Judaism warns us about: "Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind."  Yeah, that about sums them up.  Let's use their arrogance to inspire us to do exactly what they fear most - show Israel's soldiers how much we care and to whom we think the kindness should be shown.

Try this:

Yashar LaChayal is an organization in Israel dedicated to providing necessary goods for  the IDF troops serving on high risk assignments in high risk areas.

Goods such as warm socks, thermal underwear, fleece jackets and hats are delivered directly by Yashar to the bases of soldiers serving in areas that are brutally cold, and for which the soldiers are otherwise unprepared.  For those soldiers serving in the desert heat in full battle gear, Yashar brings them soap, athlete’s foot ointments and even unit air conditioners.

Please donate whatever you can - no amount is too small - and show the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect Israel that we care about them and want to make their time in the IDF a little less difficult.  While they are protecting us, let’s support them.

Click on our Paypal link on the home page and in the donation process state the $ is for Yashar LaChayal, or mail a check to us at Z STREET  P.O. Box 182  Merion Station, PA  19066,  and put in the memo line: Yashar LaChayal.  100% of all donations will be used to make the lives of Israeli soldiers a little less difficult.

Or, just go to the YL website, http://www.yasharlachayal.org

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 17, 2009
CONTACT: Lori Lowenthal Marcus 
WWW.ZSTREET.ORG


“PEACE GROUP” SLAMS BIBI FOR REJECTING RACIST POLICY

    The Israeli refusal to implement a “no homes for Jews” plan has incensed the false peace groups such as Americans for Peace Now.  That group wants Israel to bar the building of homes for Jews in Gilo, a southern neighborhood of Jerusalem currently home to more than 33,000. 

    The so-called peace group is outraged that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, refuses to tell Jews (but not Arabs) that they can’t build homes in a neighborhood in which they have lived for more than 35 years.  Netanyahu explained “that Gilo is an integral part of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”  Building in Jerusalem, as is the case in most civilized places in the world, does not require approval based on race or religion.

    Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also said he refused to impose a religious-based ban on construction.  Barkat explained that construction in Jerusalem will continue “in every part of the city for Arab and Jews alike.”

    The new Zionist organization Z STREET condemns the racist demands of Americans for Peace Now and are appalled at the criticism aimed at Israel’s refusal to embrace a racist restriction, while failing to focus on the core issues of Arab Palestinian incitement and support for terrorism. 

    “The racism displayed by Americans for Peace Now is multi-layered,” said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, co-founder of Z STREET.  “One, the group embraces a racist ‘no homes for Jews’ building policy, but two, virtually every other nation in the world, including Israel, permits non-nationals to reside there.  It sounds as though Americans for Peace Now are promoting the idea that no Jews should be permitted to live in the Palestinian state APN seeks so desperately to create.”

    A public review of the Gilo building plan is expected to be approved by the Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee within the week.

Tell Israeli leaders you support their resolve to withstand the pressure:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
Tel: 972.2.6705555
Fax: 972.2.5664838
http://www.pmo.gov.il
email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat
Tel: 6297720
Fax: 6296014
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

The Washington conference of the new organization “J Street” took place on October 25-28. It was a fascinating but scary cultural experience.

For three days I watched hundreds of intensely pious people sitting under an awning that reads “pro-Israel, pro-peace.” But by far the dearest hopes of the folks on J Street were for the well-being, and especially the sovereignty, of a people whose leadership has stated repeatedly that its goal is to destroy Israel and murder Jews.

I saw two overarching themes defining this conference: one, Iran is not a problem we care about; and two, a Palestinian State must be created now (What do we want? A Palestinian State! When do we want it? Now!), and both the Israelis and the Palestinians are so dysfunctional that only the Obama administration can achieve it. Palestine Now! was the battle cry of the conference, but the utter lack of concern regarding the Iranian threat is the real proof that J Street is not at its essence pro-Israel.

First, a fact: although it is difficult to get Israelis to agree on anything, there is one issue on which there is near unanimity among them: Iran presents an imminent and devastating threat to the existence of the State of Israel. It is the single biggest security concern amongst nearly all Israelis of every political and religious stream.

The J-Conference organizers devoted only one of the thirty-two sessions to the issue of Iran, and that session focused solely on the success of diplomacy. The speakers and the moderator of that session were aggressively anti-anything-other-than-diplomacy, so there was nothing for audience members to consider as a legitimate alternative.

But most disturbing was the nearly complete silence about Iran other than by Israeli speakers and a few American politicians who, presumably, assumed a “pro-Israel” gathering would want reassurances on the topic. Those politicians were wrong.

In other words, the overwhelming majority of those who came to the J Street conference understood the code words “pro-Israel” to have no bearing on what Israelis might find most important to their security. The threat of Iran to Israel simply plays no role in the narrative that motivated so many hundreds of people to identify with and join the J Street team.

Think of it: an oil-rich nation near Israel pursues nuclear power, refuses to eschew nuclear weapons, denies the Holocaust from the podium of the United Nations, and threatens to wipe Israel off the map — and the enormous audience the J Street leadership claims as its own, an organization calling itself “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” doesn’t really give a hoot.

This was too hard even for Obama political appointees to grasp. U.S. National Security Advisor General James Jones, in his keynote address attended by nearly all conference participants, did mention Iran as a threat to Israel. Jones assured the sandwiched-in crowd that the United States stands with Israel in facing Iran.

But there was little audience response. A far different reaction — rapturous applause — met nearly every mention of alleviating Palestinian suffering and the “Palestine Now!” mantra.

I heard one or two mentions of Iran by non-Israeli “experts.” Each time it was discussed in the context of that country’s hostility to Israel being “neutralized” by the immediate creation of a Palestinian State.

The link between Iran and the posthaste demand for a Palestinian State, the lectures went, was that taking that bold step would not only quell unrest amongst Palestinians and Israelis, but it would also stabilize the entire Middle East and end global terrorism.

A straight-up articulation of this Palestine Now! equals Global Peace theme was by Salam al-Marayati, a source of acrimonious controversy in advance of the conference. (Al-Marayati had immediately pointed to Israel as the likely source of the attacks on the World Trade Center.) At J Street, Al-Marayati informed his audience that the absence of a Palestinian State is a major source of the current violence in Pakistan, and that it is the central issue “critical to the hearts and minds” of all 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.

But it was not only controversy-generating Muslims who were intoxicated by the desire for a Palestinian State. Former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shlomo Ben-Ami explained that it is only President Obama who can achieve this because “there is no chance whatever to reach settlement by ourselves; it is entirely out of the question.” This is because both Israel and the Palestinians have such “dysfunctional political systems.”

Several other Israelis who were once members of Israeli governments, or who are aligned with former (but not current) leaders pushed the presto Palestine line. Virtually every one of them was heavily invested in the Oslo Accords and the Geneva Initiatives, both peace plans that literally blew up. Of course, to the extent the failures of these “peace” efforts were acknowledged at all, their failures were attributed to Israel’s not having capitulated far and fast enough. Like the food in the Jewish resort described long ago: it tasted terrible and the portions were too small.

The desperation driving some of the rhetoric worked itself out in the form of veiled threats. Ron Pundak, whose ink is on both the Oslo Accords and the Geneva Initiative, and who is currently the Director General of the Peres Center for Peace, was practically frenzied.

Pundak went beyond merely promoting Palestine Now! as a sure way to soothe the Iranians and bring regional peace — he said “the only real answer to the Iranian threat is peace with the Palestinians.” Pundak claimed that if such a state is not created immediately, Arabs will live in ghettos in situations even worse, possibly, than those of blacks in South Africa during the eighties and nineties.

Many anecdotes have been reported about the conference, but I believe these two themes offer an important insight. How does J Street’s claim of “pro-Israel” square with being deaf to the threat Iran poses to Israel’s security, and what does it mean for a group to be so utterly invested in Palestine Now! that the participation of the parties and even the peace process itself is jettisoned? Could it be that these themes are complementary? The immediate creation of a Palestinian State will mean the end of Israel, and therefore Iran will not pose a problem.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the co-founder of Z STREET