Additionally, J Street has hosted speakers who have justified and echoed the sentiments of Hamas and Hezbollah, like Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. J Street thus promotes positions which are inimical to human rights, and yet claims its human rights are being violated when it is questioned and critiqued. This is a deliberate inversion of the truth that turns bullies into victims and vice versa, swapping fact for fiction and proclaiming that lies are axiomatic.
But does J Street even realize the paradox that it promotes?
In the blog on its website, J Street writes “We will not tolerate harassment of our student leaders, and we see no reason for us to have any further interaction … with those peddling in slander.” Yet J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami has said of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that he has been engaged in “peace diplomacy and negotiation” the majority of his life. This is the same Abbas who has been serving in his post longer than he was elected to do so and has thrown Arabs in jail for critiquing him and his government on social media platforms.
According to the Arab based Independent Commission For Human Rights (ICHR), the Palestinian Authority has sanctioned death to apostates who leave Islam. Its report,which was released in January of this year, also indicated that the Palestinian Authority has engaged in torture of its own citizens and, according to the Boston Globe, the Palestinian Authority has sanctioned the systematic rape of and honor killings perpetrated against Arab women in the region.
So J Street will not tolerate “harassment” from a student who disagrees with its viewpoints but it will indulge a soft tyrant who has oppressed his people, embezzled billions of dollars, and dictated that selling land to a Jew is punishable by death.
For J Street, engaging in civil discourse over relevant issues is apparently reflective of “consistently and consciously cross[ing] that line” that must never be crossed, yet investing billions of dollars into a propaganda campaign that broadcasts to Arab children descriptions of Jews as apes and pigs elicits no such outrage.
According to its website, J Street has no problem engaging with Hamas since “one makes peace with one’s enemies not one’s friends.” Thus, J Street is willing to engage in dialogue with a genocidal Islamist internationally recognized terrorist organization that calls for the annihilation of all Jewry, hangs homosexuals in the public square, and perpetrates human rights abuses against women. But God forbid people should ever speak to a 21-year-old junior at Brandeis University who commits the egregious crime against humanity by blogging about politics.
The absurdity would be comedic if it wasn’t so morally reprehensible.
One thing is certain. Because of its clear disregard for human rights as well as its shameful adoption of bullying tactics to silence its critics, J Street has no authority to dictate who should and should not be spoken to. If it sincerely desires to stand for the values it claims to represent–”Peace” “Israelis” and “Palestinians”—it would behoove J Street to not promote organizations that engage in murder, anti-Jewish, and anti-Arab activity.
In the meantime, it is time to end this hypocrisy. People’s lives are literally at stake.