Last week, I went on Pod Save America to talk about J Street and our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s an important platform with an audience that largely overlaps with ours – Democrats and politically engaged progressives. Ten years ago, this would have been an easy interview. There was much more agreement: Israelis and Palestinians both deserve freedom, equality, security, and prosperity – and we need to do all we can to bring about that outcome.
But now things are more complicated. We have all experienced ten more years of an Israel led by Bibi Netanyahu that every day seems to move further away from the liberal values that define our worldview. In the aftermath of the horrors we all saw in Gaza, many of us are reassessing the US-Israel relationship.
For J Street, that has meant continuing to fight for the vision of a liberal Israel we are deeply attached to and want to see thrive, and being willing to apply greater American leverage and pressure on the Israeli government than we may have supported in the past to move in that direction. But given where things stand, many other Pod Save America listeners are asking why we should bother with a US-Israel relationship at all and questioning if it is possible to have a Jewish state that does not discriminate against and oppress Palestinians.
We need to be able to have honest and constructive dialogue about these differences inside the Democratic coalition. I’ve been thinking about that conversation with Tommy Vietor, the feedback since, and how I want to respond going forward. This is still very much a work in progress, but here are a few core points.
J Street is advocating for something fundamentally different that has never been tried before. This is not the “same old peace process” dressed up in new language.
One of the more frustrating critiques I hear from the left is that J Street is simply putting a more progressive face on the same old policy. During my interview with Vietor, he framed J Street’s policy as part of the old peace process approach that has failed for the past 30 years.
That’s just wrong.
The policies we’re advocating today are fundamentally different from what the United States has done before.
We are calling for conditioning military assistance to Israel – something that had long been treated as untouchable in American politics. And we are doing something about it, recently lobbying for votes in the Senate that would block armed bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. Forty senators voted to block the bulldozers, and 36 voted to block the 1,000-pound bombs.
We are not just responding to settlements as previous U.S. governments have done by wringing our hands and putting out mildly angry statements. We are supporting sanctions on violent Israeli settlers and the networks that sustain them. These sanctions can meaningfully change behavior.
We have backed the recognition of a Palestinian state.
We have abandoned the traditional peace process model – bilateral Israeli-Palestinian talks mediated by the United States, where America’s role is to strictly reassure and support Israel, pre-cook solutions with Israel before sharing them with Palestinians, and refrain from ever applying meaningful pressure. We are calling for bringing in the Arab states, Europeans, and others, and fundamentally changing the model of negotiations.
And most recently, we’ve argued that it’s time to responsibly and rapidly phase out the $4 billion annual financial subsidy to Israel for military equipment, even while maintaining security cooperation in ways that serve both of our countries’ interests.
That is not business as usual. It’s a real shift in policy. One that has never been tried before. And I believe using our influence and leverage to change behavior and forge a better future for both Palestinians and Israelis has a better chance of working than punishing Israel and cutting off the relationship altogether.
The path forward that will result in lasting, meaningful change isn’t choosing between Israelis and Palestinians – it’s backing moderates in both societies who want a better future and helping them defeat the extremists.
It is understandable (even if painful for those of us in the pro-Israel community) that years of Israeli government policies of occupation, discrimination, and violence against Palestinians have turned many against Israel. This backlash is even harsher because at every step of the way, the U.S. government has stood beside Israel or at least looked the other way.
But the solution to this behavior is not to just condemn Israel and cut it off, which might feel good and just.
It’s about recognizing that in both societies, the central struggle is between extremists and those still fighting for a better future.
The extremists feed off each other. Hamas’s suicide bombings in the 1990s brought Benjamin Netanyahu to power and derailed the Oslo process. Netanyahu, since returning to office in 2009, has pursued policies that empowered Hamas while weakening more moderate Palestinian actors. Allowing Qatari cash to fly into Ben Gurion Airport and be driven into Gaza while withholding billions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority wasn’t an accident. It was part of a strategy. Weaken the moderates. Empower the extremists. Make a two-state solution impossible.
As in most conflicts, there is a minority of extremists on one side. There is also a minority of hardcore peacemakers on the other who will keep fighting for coexistence and freedom for all Israelis and Palestinians. In the middle sits the majority: People who just want freedom, security, and opportunity for themselves and their loved ones. Depending on the situation, they can be swayed in either direction. In the 1990s, they believed peace was the best way to achieve those goals. Today, with extremists ascendant on both sides, the majorities in the middle of both societies are jaded. In poll after poll, a majority of Israelis see permanent occupation as the only way to security. And a majority of Palestinians see armed struggle as the only way to freedom.
If we actually want a different outcome, we need to invest in and empower the people working toward it. That means supporting organizations like Standing Together that bring Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel together to advocate for peace, equality, and an end to the occupation. It means featuring leaders like Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, who spoke at the first night of J Street’s recent national convention.
It also means rejecting approaches that isolate or weaken those allies, such as the anti-normalization and BDS movements. When Peter Beinart was criticized by supporters of the BDS movement recently for speaking at Tel Aviv University to an audience of people who were likely mostly aligned with his broader goals of equality and freedom for Palestinians, it raised a real question: How does this help Palestinians? How does it strengthen the people inside Israel who are fighting for change to boycott them?
You see this same dynamic when people talk about Israel as if it’s a monolith. They ignore the hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets against the war, for the hostages, and for democracy. They also ignore senior leaders like Yair Golan, Tzipi Livni, Bogie Ya’alon, and Ehud Olmert, who spoke out publicly against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Writing off Israeli society entirely doesn’t advance peace. It sidelines the very people we need to be working with.
Finally, our primary focus should be on solutions that improve Palestinian lives. Part of that means looking for leverage and applying pressure on Israel, including through withholding or conditioning arms sales, but that cannot be the entire frame of the argument.
There’s no shortage of outrage towards the Israeli government right now, and much of it is justified. The suffering in Gaza is real. The inequities, the violence in the West Bank, the expansion of settlements are serious and ongoing problems. The answer is not to ignore them or just keep supporting Israeli policies. Pressuring Israel to change its behavior is part of the answer, but it cannot be the whole answer.
We need actual answers that help Palestinians. During our interview, Tommy Vietor grilled me on whether a two-state solution was dead and why we should even continue to support it. When I responded that, as J Street, we are focused on the 23-state solution that regionalizes the negotiation and creates much stronger incentives for peace and a better future for both peoples and for the entire region, he grilled me on whether that was even plausible. Fair question.
But what I found frustrating was that Tommy didn’t really offer any alternatives. If you don’t believe that Israel will ever give up the West Bank and Gaza, which make up 22% of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, then how can you realistically advocate for a state in which Israel gives up control of all the land by agreeing to a binational state where eventually Jews will be the minority? That, to me, is much more fanciful than a regional peace that involves the creation of a Palestinian state.
At J Street, we’ve tried to focus on concrete steps that can actually shift realities on the ground.
That includes supporting legislation like the West Bank Violence Prevention Act to sanction extremist settlers and the institutions that support them. I find this approach preferable to broad sanctions that would cut off all of Israeli society, including those advocating for peace.
It includes advocating for conditioning U.S. assistance through measures like the Ceasefire Compliance Act to incentivize changes in Israeli behavior instead of arms embargos that could leave Israeli civilians open to attack by withholding short-range rocket and ballistic missile defense systems.
It includes supporting the key forward-moving provisions of the Trump Administration’s 20-point plan for Gaza and pushing to enable the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza as part of a viable alternative to Hamas. Some of the ways in which the administration has implemented this plan are deeply problematic. For example, insisting that all reconstruction for Gaza be contingent on Hamas agreeing to disarmament first, instead of as part of a process. And they have also neglected its implementation as they’ve been distracted after starting a war against Iran that has been disastrous for U.S. interests. Still, in my mind, supporting the plan is better than just saying the ceasefire isn’t working (or isn’t a ceasefire at all), without offering an alternative while Trump is in power.
Anyway, these are just some initial thoughts. I welcome feedback on this discussion, and I know that I, and many of us at J Street, will continue to wrestle with the hard questions that are now being raised in this debate on the American Left.
The sad truth is that Israelis reject this new-and-improved J-Street vision for Israel.
The sadder truth is that American supporters of Israel continue to blind themselves to that fact.
While Hamas bus bombings in 1996, right after Rabin assassination, indeed caused Israelis to elect Netanyahu in reaction, and killed the peace process, and destroyed the peace camp in Israel and the US, was it not also the immediate prior assassination of Rabin by the Netanyahu/Likud/extreme right camp that caused the initial derailment of the peace train? Even then, in 1996, Hamas and Netanyahu seemed to be working together to derail the then pending two state solution, as both extremist actors have done consistently ever since. Both of these immoral actors are existential threats and obstacles to a just 2 state solution. Both must be held accountable, and overcome, and out-voted by both Palestinians and Israelis broadly. the reasonable middle must overcome both simultaneously at all times.