Israel Matzav

ECI writes a letter to Dennis Ross

In an earlier post, I reported that Dennis Ross, President Obama's senior adviser on the Middle East, would be speaking at J Street's weekend conference this weekend. The Emergency Committee for Israel has sent a letter to Ross, which essentially says, "I don't understand why you're giving them credibility by doing this, but if you're going to do this, please stay true to your own and America's values."

You have devoted your career to helping Israel find peace with her neighbors. In high-level positions in administrations of both parties, you have been a leading presence in the peace process for over two decades. Because you possess such a detailed knowledge of the conflict and the attempts to resolve it, you are capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, helpful criticism and destructive activism.

It is thus with some surprise that I learned you would be speaking at this year’s J Street conference. Speaking, that is, before a group that has worked diligently over the past three years to become a voice for weakening the U.S.-Israel alliance, for pressuring Israel to accept policies that Israeli voters have rejected as dangerous, and perhaps most important, for giving Jewish support to a global campaign of delegitimization directed against Israel and Zionism.

J Street has spent much of the last two years opposing sanctions on Iran while demanding that Israel refuse to consider military self-defense; it has partnered with leaders of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement; its inability to draw distinctions between Hamas and the IDF during the Gaza War was so striking that the president of the Union for Reform Judaism called the group “morally deficient” and “appallingly naïve.” And, more recently, the group was exposed as having dissembled for years about its sources of funding (much of it foreign) and about its support for the Goldstone Report. Rep. Gary Ackerman recently ended his relationship with the group in exasperation, writing that J Street is “so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out.”

The conference at which you will be speaking is titled “Giving Voice to Our Values.” J Street’s values are most clearly articulated by the speakers it has selected for its conference. These include:

Continue reading here.

Labels: Dennis Ross, Emergency Committee for Israel, J Street, Noah Pollak

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:33 AM