So, This Is J Street?

Is this a perceptive analysis of today's J Street? (thanks to LM for the idea and GD for reminding me):-

It should be borne in mind that Israeli foreign policy is the policy of a democratically elected government, representing what the majority of Israelis believe to be in their best interest. Since this belief is backed by their willingness to die, or to serve great stretches of army service, in its defense, it ought to be treated by their unthreatened American Jewish friends with respect, if not awe. Members of J Street have been accusing the “rightist establishment” of various indelicacies. Surely there has been nothing quite so indelicate in American Jewish life of recent years as this widespread assumption on the part of our new political philanthropists that “we know better than you what is in your best interest.”

But if J Street has been insensitive, it has lately also grown dangerous. Like the Russian maskilim (“enlighteners”) of the 19th century, who went to the Czar with a list of reforms to be foisted on their less enlightened Jewish brethren—because they knew what was in the Jewish interest even if the Jewish majority did not—so J Street now approaches the American government to convince Americans that they must bring pressure to bear on an Israel that does not know what is in its best interest. And like the maskilim, members of J Street are convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority in taking this treacherous step. But we know, as the enlighteners ought to have known, that the Czar worked in his interest, not in the interest of the Jews, and used whatever Jewish support he could get neatly to camouflage his ends. The decision of a Jewish group to appeal to the powers-that-be against the perceived self-interest of Israel (and the Jewish body politic) now, when as Mr. Shattan rightly says, “the political fortunes of the state of Israel have reached perhaps an all-time low,” is dangerous, to use the mildest available term.

American Jews, acting as Jews, can only protect Israel’s right to self-determination. When they begin to subvert that right, the constituted community has not only the right but the duty to expose their actions and to condemn them. In so doing it is not being “Mc-Carthyite” or even vengeful, just minimally responsible.

No.

But it sounds very familiar, right?

Here is the original in Commentary, June 1977:

It should be borne in mind that Israeli foreign policy is the policy of a democratically elected government, representing what the majority of Israelis believe to be in their best interest. Since this belief is backed by their willingness to die, or to serve great stretches of army service, in its defense, it ought to be treated by their unthreatened American Jewish friends with respect, if not awe. Members of Breira have been accusing the “rightist establishment” of various indelicacies. Surely there has been nothing quite so indelicate in American Jewish life of recent years as this widespread assumption on the part of our new political philanthropists that “we know better than you what is in your best interest.”

But if Breira has been insensitive, it has lately also grown dangerous. Like the Russian maskilim (“enlighteners”) of the 19th century, who went to the Czar with a list of reforms to be foisted on their less enlightened Jewish brethren—because they knew what was in the Jewish interest even if the Jewish majority did not—so Breira now approaches the American government to convince Americans that they must bring pressure to bear on an Israel that does not know what is in its best interest. And like the maskilim, members of Breira are convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority in taking this treacherous step. But we know, as the enlighteners ought to have known, that the Czar worked in his interest, not in the interest of the Jews, and used whatever Jewish support he could get neatly to camouflage his ends. The decision of a Jewish group to appeal to the powers-that-be against the perceived self-interest of Israel (and the Jewish body politic) now, when as Mr. Shattan rightly says, “the political fortunes of the state of Israel have reached perhaps an all-time low,” is dangerous, to use the mildest available term.

American Jews, acting as Jews, can only protect Israel’s right to self-determination. When they begin to subvert that right, the constituted community has not only the right but the duty to expose their actions and to condemn them. In so doing it is not being “Mc-Carthyite” or even vengeful, just minimally responsible.

Ruth R. Wisse
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec

And from Ben Halperin there:

...Ambivalence, in one mix or another and in varying proportional intensities, is the common element in the Jewish involvement in Breira: the radical student Zionists, the Hillel rabbis and the Sh’ma coterie, and the veteran mavericks long dedicated to upholding alienation in dispersion as a way of life especially designated for the Jews. What they have in common is a shared detachment and disenchantment vis-à-vis the so-called Jewish establishment...

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