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Guest Column
Editorials
J Street Without Spin
Israel's Desalination
- A Game Changer?
j
Street describes itself as the "pro-
Israel, pro-peace" lobby, and many
news outlets accept that self-por-
trait without scrutiny. That's a mistake.
Rabbi Daniel Gordis challenged J Street's
2011 leadership mission to
Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. Gordis, a National
Jewish Book Award winner for
Saving Israel: How the Jewish
State Can Win a War That May
Never End, recalled that J Street
lobbied Congress against a reso-
lution condemning Palestinian
incitement; that the organiza-
tion immediately called for a
cease-fire in December 2008
when Israeli forces attacked
the Gaza Strip to counter years
of rocket and mortar fire; and that J Street
invited representatives from the anti-Israel
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)
movement to its annual conference.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, past president of the
Union for Reform Judaism, told J Street its
implied equivalence of Palestinian terror-
ism and Israeli self-defense in Gaza was
"morally deficient, profoundly out of touch
with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly
naive:'
The group's president, Jeremy Ben-Ami,
says it never set out to be an alternative to
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (more precisely, to be the anti-
AIPAC). But its founding funder was bil-
lionaire George Soros, a fact J Street denied
for several years.
Why the falsehood? Perhaps because
Soros is on record blaming Israel as a
key factor in the Arab world's problems.
Perhaps because he has been critical of the
success of AIPAC, the largest, most influen-
tial pro-Israel lobby. Maybe because Soros,
a Jewish Holocaust survivor, has said he
feels distant from the idea of Jewish people-
hood.
According to an article in the Washington
Jewish Week, Ben-Ami rushed to defend
former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) from
charges of being anti-Israel when he was
nominated as secretary of defense. The J
Street head reportedly cautioned Hagel that
the latter's remark, "the Jewish lobby intimi-
dates a lot of people" in Congress would be
turned into "a blanket smear:'
But Hagel's "Jewish lobby" comment
was hardly his most disturbing. As syn-
dicated columnist Charles Krauthammer
wrote, with Palestinian terrorists blowing
up Israeli buses at the height of the second
intifada, Hagel wrong-headedly declared,
"Israel must take steps to show its commit-
ment to peace:'
Prior to his nomination, Hagel opposed
not only military action against Iran's pre-
sumed nuclear weapons program but also
unilateral American economic sanctions. In
2000, he was one of only four senators not
to sign a letter to President Clinton affirm-
ing U.S. solidarity with Israel in the face of
Palestinian aggression.
In a 2011 Washington Post
Op-Ed, Ben-Ami urged Israel
"to proactively take bold, even
risky, steps to establish a state of
Palestine based on the pre-1967
lines with land swaps:" Ben-
Ami's recommendation was as
if Israel hadn't entered the 1993
Oslo process intending to reach
"final status" talks in 1998; as if
in 2000 and 2001 Israel and the
United States had not offered
such a settlement in exchange
for Israeli-Palestinian peace and
received the second intifada in response; as
if Israel alone didn't repeat the proposal in
2008.
In 2009, J Street defended Theater J —
based in the District of Columbia's Jewish
Community Center — for its staged reading
of Caryl Churchill's Israelis-as-Nazis playlet
Seven Jewish Children. James Kirchick, then
assistant editor at the New Republic, wrote
"there is something perverse and masochis-
tic about a self-described 'pro-Israel' group
going out of its way to lend support to the
airing of luridly anti-Semitic propaganda."
In 2010, J Street attacked Elie Weisel.
Weisel had placed full-page advertisements
that criticized President Obama's opposition
to housing construction for Jews in east-
ern Jerusalem in a major U.S. newspaper.
J Street countered with ads implying that
Weisel was ignorant of current events and
guilty of messianism.
In 2011, after the slaughter of five mem-
bers of the Fogel family in a Jewish settle-
ment on the West Bank, four dozen mem-
bers of Congress sent a letter to President
Obama condemning the Palestinian culture
of hatred that "damages prospects" for
peace and "encourages terrorism:' J Street
lobbied against the letter.
Early that year, Rep. Gary Ackerman
(D-N.Y.), learning of J Street's call for the
Obama administration not to veto a U.N.
Security Council resolution that would
blame only Israel for the Israeli-Palestinian
stalemate, said, "America really does need a
smart, credible, politically active organiza-
tion that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is
pro-Israel. Unfortunately, J Street ain't it:'
The pro-Israel tent is big. Even so, and
unfortunately for J Street, it's not made of
Silly Putty.
❑
Eric Rozenman is Washington director of
CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-
based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America. Opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
C
ould Israel be
in store for, oh
my, a water
surplus? The answer is
a free-flowing yes!
The desert state isn't
there yet. But it could
be soon if desalina-
tion plants continue to
sprout, which is likely,
and drought stays away,
Lake Kinneret is Israel's largest provider of
which is not so likely.
freshwater.
Israel faces the
unusual prospect of
possibly producing enough potable
nation ever since IDE opened the
water via the process of removing
first plant in Ashkelon in 2005. The
salt and waste from seawater, mainly company owns three of Israel's four
that from the Mediterranean. It's
plants and 400 plants worldwide,
a process that could solve Israel's
so it's a proven player in the busi-
dearth of freshwater and address
ness of desalinating. At the moment,
the need in other growing lands.
the process provides 40 percent of
It holds unlimited life-supporting
Israel's total water needs, a figure
potential.
expected to rocket to 80 percent
Israel Desalination Enterprises
next year.
(IDE) is opening the Sorek
Desalination doesn't come cheap-
Desalination Plant in Palmachim
ly. An oversupply of freshwater
this year with hopes of generating
could be a financial drag. On the
nearly 7 million gallons of potable
other hand, it would keep Israel's
water to Israelis near Tel Aviv every
rivers and streams as well as Lake
hour, markedly slashing dependence
Kinneret full. Israel also could sell
on rainwater and easing the need to
freshwater, in short supply through-
conserve at any cost.
out the Middle East, to its neighbors,
This plant and others like it along
at least those civil enough to deal
Israel's coast are confronting the
with the Jewish state.
country's unabated struggle to
The threat of drought far exceeds
provide precious freshwater. Lake
concern over too much drinking
Kinneret, the top freshwater source,
water. Sorek executive Fredi Lokiec
fell to uncomfortably low levels amid
captured that logic in telling JTA
seven straight years of drought start-
that "we'll always be in the shadow
ing in 2004. With the lake now at
of a drought," but that drawing from
near-full levels, the Israeli government the Mediterranean is like extracting
can focus on actually storing and des-
"a drop from the ocean."
ignating excess water.
Desalination is a technological gift
Israel has been high on desali-
that keeps on giving.
❑
Mayoral Vote Will Matter
E
mergency Manager Kevyn
Orr, busy trying to fix
Detroit's financial crisis,
commands the spotlight, but public
attention shouldn't ignore the city's
Nov. 5 general election, at which a
new mayor will be elected. The next
mayor will be around long after Orr
has moved on.
The number of Jews living in
Detroit has dwindled along with the
city's total population. But more
Jews are moving back and many
young Jews are moving in, drawn
by the lure of an urban lifestyle and
the hope for a better tomorrow.
Challenges aplenty confront the
Motor City: crime, blight, dropouts,
corruption, racism. For the last cen-
tury, dating at least back to Fred
Butzel, Jews have been instrumen-
tal in elevating Detroit amid times
of duress.
Today, that support – whether
investment, philanthropy or vision-
ing – originates from Jews through-
out the metro area.
Jews are sure to influence the
2013 mayoral race through their
grasp of the issues and faith in the
dream of this flawed, but still great
city.
❑
July 4 • 2013
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