Why J Street?

I am not, and have never been, a “joiner.” While the instinct to lose oneself in the crowd and take part in mass spectacles is naturally human, it seems to have largely skipped me: Whether it’s a genetic defect or a design feature of my cultural Anglo-Americanism, I feel as though I’m not doing my job if I can be easily reduced to a type.

This spring break, I brushed up against the limits of my category-phobia and confessed, rather happily, to being a J Streeter. After months of correspondence and flirtation with J Street U, the university arm of “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” I attended a national summit in Washington, D.C. and was instantly sold.

For quite some time, I had been in line with the moderate, common-sense principles of the five-year-old organization—a two-state solution, concern for Israeli security, an end to the occupation of the West Bank, and belief in political pragmatism—but was too shy to commit the nuances of my realist, Israel-aligned voice to any particular organized camp. What I found at J Street was a home for students in the thoughtful, nuanced middle who bravely resist the reduction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to “the Arab culture of hate” or “the Zionist colonial enterprise.”

As the former co-president of Harvard Students for Israel, an eminently moderate group by most accounts, I often found myself deeply uncomfortable with the categories foisted upon me: “Israel advocate,” “hasbarist-in-training,” “vanguard of the battle for truth on American campuses.” At regional advocacy sessions, which I tried assiduously to avoid, I found myself awash in a sea of red herring arguments—for example that propagandistic streaks in Palestinian textbooks gave Israel the green light to go on occupying. I was disappointed by the uncritical acceptance of my fellow advocates, whose stock language assumed a sixth-grade understanding of Middle East politics. Serving falafel and waving flags is fun, I suppose, but as a realist, I had to ask: What was I accomplishing?

J Street, contrary to the claims of certain right-wing sectors of the American lobbying community, is the only political action group in Washington and on campuses across the continent that speaks for Israel’s interests (which turn out to align remarkably well with Palestinian interests) while also inhabiting the realm of terrestrial reality. Organized in 2008 with an eye toward countering the establishment influence of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, whose nominal endorsement of a two-state solution is subverted by its unconditional support of Israeli government policy, J Street represents Americans who agree with Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, and The Gatekeepers that the creation of an independent, prosperous Palestine alongside Israel is the only way to secure the latter’s future as a Jewish and democratic state.

Among the diverse choir of voices I had the pleasure of hearing at J Street U’s summit were Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, who lambasted Palestinian groups opposed to Israel’s existence as a state, Tamar Zandberg, a leftist member of Israel’s parliament committed to social justice and grassroots peace activism, and Bernard Avishai, a professor and prolific author who envisions Israeli-Palestinian peace as a win-win social and economic gambit. In classic Jewish form, though nearly all attendees had the same moderate aims in mind, every panel and workshop was a veritable contest of ideas on how to broaden dialogue on campuses, engage mutual adversaries in conversation, and construct a mutually beneficial reality on the ground.

But perhaps most impressive to me was the dynamism, both intellectual and organizational, of a group that only half a decade ago existed in mere theory. In stark contrast to the hasbarists-in-training and Boycott Divest Sanction pipe-dreamers I’d previously met at campus events, my J Street U counterparts were undaunted by complexity, aware of the challenges faced by the two-state project, and possessed of exactly the kind of humanistic realism that earns my respect. Owing to its successful organizing and the impressive scale it has attained, J Street has become not just a place—but the premier place—for voices in support of a more sober American approach to helping Israelis and Palestinians craft a peace in the interest of all but the most extremist parties.

In light of this understanding, I am currently working with the backing of Jews, Arabs, politicos, and peaceniks to formally organize J Street U at Harvard. As the descendant of Revisionist Zionists and a staunch believer in my people’s connection to the land of Israel, I come to J Street not out of Jewish weakness, but rather out of studied political realism and contact with the human side of Palestinian statelessness. And on a campus where the majority of Middle East-engaged students are pragmatic, supportive of a two-state solution, and tired of zero-sum bickering about flyers, op-eds, and op-ed responses, I suspect that we can make it happen. All we need is a few more joiners.

Joshua B. Lipson ’14, a Crimson editorial writer, is a Near Eastern languages and civilizations concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Mondays. Follow him on Twitter @Josh_Lipson