More in ‘Jeremy Ben-Ami’

In a Boston Globe column, Jesse Singal articulates the notion that some American Jews may have drifted away from strong support for Israel, or its policies—but not in ways that doom the Democratic Party to shed Jewish voters, or that doom Israel to declining baseline American support.
The premise of the piece—titled “The New American ...

Earlier this week, Sarah Palin went on Nightline and told Barbara Walters that she disagreed with the Obama administration’s policy of pressuring Israel to freeze new construction in Jewish settlements on the West Bank, in part because “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” ...

J Street has devoted much of its young life to trying to convince the conservative segments of the Jewish community that it’s not a left-wing organization. And indeed, nowhere at the left-leaning Israel lobby’s first conference this week did J Street organizers give an indication of being anything but staunch supporters and lovers of Israel—though ...

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, delivered a keynote address on the final day of the J Street conference this afternoon. Jones, who drew cheers for saying he was “honored to represent” Obama at the left-leaning Israel lobby’s first convention, got the crowd to its feet by saying that he thought reaching ...

At the opening session last night of the first Washington conference hosted by J Street, the upstart liberal Israel-focused lobbying group, the group’s major players all took turns at the podium to welcome the whooping crowd—except one. Jim Gerstein, a prominent player in Democratic and progressive political circles whose polling firm handles the organization’s opinion ...

About 1,000 people arrived last night at a Washington, D.C., Hyatt for the opening night of the first national conference hosted by the liberal pro-Israel lobby group J Street. Founder Jeremy Ben-Ami and others emphasized the desire among left-leaning American Jews to see a secure Israel at peace, but a number of speakers—including prominent Reform ...

Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic correspondent (and Tablet magazine contributing editor), and J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami had a long conversation yesterday about all kinds of controversial issues: the nature of Zionism, the political orientation of the American Jewish community, and the arguments of Stephen Walt, the academic who has argued the Israeli lobby hurts ...

In politics, almost saying something isn’t quite the same as actually saying it. Over the weekend, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israel’s Washington embassy had “communicated” with J Street, the dovish year-old Israel lobby, about the Israeli government’s concerns that J Street’s policies could “impair Israel’s interests.” The unusually frank statement, issued by embassy spokesman ...

J Street, the year-old progressive “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobbying group, has its official coming-out party in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Writer James Traub paints a sharp contrast between J Street ‘s upstart team of “netroots”-savvy whiz kids, led by Jeremy Ben-Ami, and the staid leadership of the old-guard Jewish organizations—the Conference of Presidents, the ...

Nearly every David since the actual David has professed, usually loudly, to relish the challenge of playing the scrappy underdog. But, in truth, most Davids secretlyjust want to be a Goliath. To wit: J-Street, the dovish political-action group founded in 2008 to challenge the behemoth American Israel Political Action Committee announced this morning that they ...