RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Fraud that is J Street

J street, the self-declared pro-Israel organization which is nothing of the kind, was a fraud from its beginning to its now probable inglorious end. Bruited about as an organization representing a significant portion of Jewish opinion on Israel, recent revelations show it to be a manufactured facade built on George Soros largesse.

Ed Lasky at American Thinker describes Soros as “one of the big sugar daddies of the Democratic Party. He also is the ruler of an archipelago of so-called 527 groups that pose as non-partisan activists groups, but in fact are often hyper-partisan such as MoveOn.Org, and are often employed by Democrats to influence elections.”

George Soros is also viewed as someone not very friendly to Israel. In fact, his involvement is seen as toxic by many in the Jewish community, so it’s no surprise that J Street would not want him closely identified in their nascent venture. But he was. Not just closely identified, but in actuality its major source of funds. And about that J Street not only didn’t tell the truth, but also tried to hide it.

Eli Lake at the Washington Times uncovered the ongoing charade late last week. He not only disclosed Soros as a major source of J Street’s funding, but also found another proportionately large donor to J Street in Hong Kong. An $800,000 contribution from an unknown Consolacion Esdicul. No small amount by any set of standards and certainly not a typical grass roots donor to a Jewish cause.  All this along with a long list of Arab contributions and funds from similarly unlikely groups and individuals create a murky picture of what was represented as a mainstream Jewish organization. J Street’s role as a frequent visitor to the White House and tireless supporter of Obama initiatives in the Middle East has to come into question too.

Activist organizations are normally created by an interest group attempting to coalesce existing opinion into a viable entity that can effect the process. Stripped bare by the revelations of Soros funding — and the attempts to hide that information — J Street looks like nothing more than a group put together for the express purpose of giving the President cover for his designs on Israel’s security, safety and existence. Intertwined in all of this along with Soros is White House chief of Staff David Axelrod who has made his living setting up these ‘astroturf’ sham groups and inserting them into the public dialogue as authentic expressions of opinion.

Here’s how James Kirchik of the New Republic characterizes the Obama White House’s use of J Street: “And who better to counter the influence of the so-called  ‘Israel  Lobby’  than other Jews? J Street and the constellation of far-left ‘pro-Israel’ organizations put a kosher stamp of approval on Obama’s bizarre hectoring and moral equivalence. By casting Israel as the obstructionist, ….”

Ed Lasky quotes The New York Times saying that “J Street shares the Obama administration’s agenda including opposition to settlements and sanctions on Iran.”

“Is this a coincidence?” Lasky asks.  “Very few things are coincidences when it comes to politics — especially as practiced by George Soros and David Axelrod.”

It’s also no coincidence that the same names that surround J Street are very much the same names that surround the White House and the Obama campaign. For example, there is Soros-funded Robert Malley, a foreign policy adviser to the President; Eli Pariser of Soros-sponsored Moveon.org; Daniel Kurtzer known for pressuring Israel to toe the Soros policy line.

There’s one other participant in this fraud that should not go unmentioned. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, JTA, was an active promoter of J Street from the very beginning. Even though it was launched very recently in 2008, J Street was JTA’s go-to group for an opinion on everything Israel. Readers of JTA material rarely saw an article on Israel without a J Street quote in it. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, a friend of ours ran a search of JTA’s use of J Street as a source, versus the number of times it used AIPAC, a well established group that truly reflects a segment of Jewish opinion, and found that JTA mentioned J Street more than 80 times and AIPAC was turned to approximately 20 times. In retrospect, the so-called ‘Voice of the Jewish People’ turned out to be more like the voice of George Soros.

JTA still doesn’t get it.  A recent JTA article on this whole sordid J Street/Soros episode quotes liberally from the latest J Street press release/apologia, instead of critically looking at the many sources now shedding light on this deplorable situation. JTA totally ignores its own role in this manipulation of opinion. The Jewish community has been poorly served.

In any event, we’re indebted to those in the media, such as Eli Lake, Ed Lasky, Jennifer Rubin, James Kirchik and others, who do not accept that things are as they seem and made the effort to seek the truth.

-nrg