More than 100 former J Street staffers and campus activists blasted the group’s push for a hawkish Israel resolution that ignores Palestinians.
While Israel continues its war against the Gaza Strip, over 100 former J Street staffers and representatives from its network of university groups are pushing their former organization to join mounting calls for a ceasefire.
The letter comes in response to J Street’s push for a congressional resolution that pledges unconditional support to Israel’s war in Gaza. The group, according to a report in The Intercept, is threatening to withhold its endorsement from Democrats who refuse to sign on. The resolution — led by Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and now backed by more than 420 members of Congress — makes no mention of Palestinian civilians, of which Israel has now killed over 2600, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
“As former staff and student representatives of J Street — many of whom are mourning the losses of family and friends in both Israel and Palestine — we condemn the organization’s alignment with pro-war forces in America,” the signatories wrote. “J Street’s mission was to be a bulwark against the forces in American politics that seek to entrench the occupation and blockade, and lack any regard for Palestinian lives.”
“With the imminent threat of mass atrocities and civilian casualties in Gaza, J Street should join leading Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups by immediately calling for a ceasefire and de-escalation,” the former staffers said in the letter, which is below in full, “and urging elected officials to do the same.”
“In this defining moment, we are looking to J Street for leadership and it is failing all of us.”
Some of the former staff worked with J Street as far back as 2008, shortly after its founding as a self-proclaimed “pro-peace, pro-Israel group.” Some were involved with J Street as recently as this year, and many worked with the group for five years, some for more than a decade.
“In this defining moment, we are looking to J Street for leadership and it is failing all of us,” said Zoe Goldblum, who was the president of the group’s campus branch, J Street U, from 2016 to 2017. “J Street should throw its weight behind calls for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire, instead of efforts like the McCaul–Meeks resolution which beats the drums of war while Palestinians in Gaza face threats of genocide.”
Goldblum, who signed the letter, continued, “Intentionally or not, J Street is pushing American political leadership more firmly towards unconditional support for war.”
Progressives Avoid “Ceasefire” Language
On Friday, leading progressives on Capitol Hill put forward a joint letter urging the Biden administration to appeal for Israel to follow international law, minimize civilian casualties, and ensure that Gazans have access to food, water, and electricity, which Israel, which controls the territory’s borders, cut off in advance of its bombing campaign. (Reports suggest that Israel resumed pumping water into Gaza on Sunday.)
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Prem Thakker is a politics reporter for The Intercept. His interests include climate and the environment, corporate and political corruption, civil rights and justice, and labor. Prem previously worked at The New Republic, The American Prospect, and CNN. He grew up in North Dakota and now lives in Washington, D.C.
