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[Adventurer]

Page last updated at 11:21 GMT, Wednesday, 16 April 2008 12:21 UK
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US Jewish lobby gains new voice

By Max Deveson
BBC News, Washington


Are liberal Jewish voices in America being drowned out by powerful conservative lobbyists? A group of prominent left-leaning Jewish-Americans thinks so.

They have launched a new lobbying organisation, called J Street, which they hope will redress this perceived imbalance.


America's relationship with Israel has often sparked debate
"The term 'pro-Israel' has been hijacked by those who hold views that a majority of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, oppose," says executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.

He says J Street will campaign for a two-state solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

Its political fundraising sister group - J Street PAC, for political action committee - will raise money and donate to sympathetic politicians.

Furious debate

The group is billing itself as a counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the most prominent Jewish lobbying organisation in the US.

J Street says Aipac does not reflect the liberal views of a large number of its existing donors, let alone the mainstream of Jewish-American opinion.

The role of the pro-Israeli lobby - and of Aipac itself - in American politics has been the subject of furious debate in recent years.

JEWISHTHOUGHT

[agentX]

This is interesting news, indeed. AIPAC takes a lot of heat for a variety of reasons, from having too much influence to outright spying.
A while back, there was an AIPAC lobbyist who said that he could take a dinner napkin, make a few phone calls and have 70 signatures of senators on it.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11856

It may be a while before they're able to erode AIPAC's power base, but they will have an impact. The question will be how big or small and when.

[bacasper]

It's about time. What took them so long?

[RJjr]

[Adventurer]

You have to understand though you think of Jews as liberal, there are many elements in the community who will ostracize you and treat you almost like an apostate for criticizing Israel at all as if the believe in Judaism is the belief in what Israel does, so people sometimes fear criticizing Israel, but many groups have been springing up in the US and Canada in the Jewish community and are challengin the status quo. People wrongly assumed that Jews uniformly supported what Israel did.
That's not true.

They just didn't want to get involved in the mess, if you know what I mean. By the way, my formatting when typing is often off. Can anyone explain why. You can't exactly type in normal paragraph form. So what's up? I should have asked about that before.

Thank you, Tauda, Merci...