In his most recent display of poor diplomacy, Deputy FM Danny Ayalon snubbed an American congressional delegation visiting Israel today with J Street.
After the incident last month with Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, I’m honestly surprised (though I shouldn’t be) that Mr. Ayalon had the chutzpah to essentially give the diplomatic finger to an American congressional delegation simply because he doesn’t agree explicitly with the group hosting them in Israel. Moreover, the notion that J Street is misrepresenting itself by identifying as “Pro-Israel” is simply ludicrous. Admittedly, J Street has a specific political agenda, but in plain English in their statement of principles, they declare: “J Street represents Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland.”
Ayalon’s narrow world view and petty politics are getting old as far as I’m concerned. Its time to get some fresh blood into the most important chairs of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
An aside:
J Street, a relatively new lobby in Washington, describes itself as Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace. For those interested (and I’m plugging my own group here a bit), check out J Street U Middlebury, an affiliate group here on campus.
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This is interesting, and it may reveal the greater difficulty that J-Street is going to face: from the point of view of those–such as the current Israel government–who support the current America-Israeli relationship and the way that things have been done in the past, why do you need J-Street when you have AIPAC? Because wouldn’t J-Street be doing the same thing? But if you take the view of many of J-Street’s supporters that it is an American organization that sympathizes with Kadima, the political opposition of the current Israeli government, then why should Ayalon want to meet with them? It may be ludicrous from J-Street’s perspective (and my own) question their support of Israel, but from the perspective of the current Likud government the platform that J-Street is supporting—one which, if I understand it correctly—questions the value of the settlements in the West Bank and even perhaps East Jerusalem, goes completely against what they believe is in Israel’s interest. In the case, then, Ayalon’s snub shouldn’t really be placed in the same light as his comically poor mishandling of the Turkish ambassador, where he placed unnecessary tension on an important strategic alliance. With J-Street on the other hand, he’s simply sending a not so subtle message to Congress as to which US Jewish lobbying groups Netanyahu’s government favors.
For another example of Ayalon’s logic (If you support criticism of the Israeli government, you are not a Zionist), see this recent piece by Danny Danon, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Parliament: http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3850957,00.html
By the way, very good post with some comment on this over at Informed Comment:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/02/decline-of-israeli-right-and-increasing.html