From Augean Stables:

The Contempt of the “Right-Thinking” Peacock Rhinos: J-Street goes after Wiesel.

Elie Wiesel published a major ad, “For Jerusalem,” in several US newspapers, prompting President Obama to meet hastily with him and reassure him that he understands the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street responded with his own ad featuring a counter-attack by Yossi Sarid, one of the unrepentant architects of the Oslo process, that dismissed Weisel as misinformed, misled, deceived, and, worst of all, “imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues.”

This last accusation is particularly significant. Any religious affection for Jerusalem on the part of Jews appears on J-Street’s radar as messianic attachment, and since, by J-Street’s analysis, compromise on Jerusalem is a sine qua non of achieving peace, such feelings are impediments to reaching a “rational” solution.

Now one of my greater gripes with J-Street concerns the inconsistency with which they apply their principle that pressure should be put “on both sides.” When in doubt, their motto seems to run, squeeze Israel. I am open to correction, but I am unaware of one formal position that they have taken in which Palestinian concessions are the principle target of their actions or declamations.

So here, the fact that the Muslim claim to Jerusalem is not only historically weak, but filled with messianic overtones, indeed Jihadi messianic ones, at the core of an unrestrained apocalyptic struggle, has no bearing for him.

Only the Jews should be restrained from messianic urgings; indeed they should restrain their messianic yearnings to make room for those of the Muslims. Then we’ll have peace.

Barry Rubin, in a brilliant study of Assimilation and its Discontents, pointed out how Jews, eager to succeed in the modern world, found their talent for self-denial one of their most valuable tools, and, for example, would champion any people’s liberation cause but that of their own people. J-Street steps right into the mold, and in so doing, reveals just what levels of contempt it feels for anyone whose sensibility gets in the way of their own sure-fire recipe for peace.

And what if… what if such a strategy of self-denial and sacrifice for the sake of peace ends up backfiring? The fact that J-Street would have Israel carve up its capital to make Palestinians happy, without any attention to the religious stakes for Palestinians, speaks eloquently for a perspective I think as cruel to Jews as it is unwise.

For J-Street, Palestinians need not compromise on Jerusalem as their “capital,” despite the fact that when it lay in Arab hands, Palestinians showed no interest in making it their capital. It matters not that their attachment is part and parcel of a violent and irredentist demand for Palestine from the “river to the sea” for both Fatah and Hamas. It matters not that, in their demand for control of the sacred precincts of their “third most holy city,” Muslims treat Jewish claims with dismissive contempt.

Question for Jeremy and Yossi Sarid, and all the other believers that unilateral compromise will bring peace: What if Israel’s agreement to share Jerusalem, pressured by the Obama administration, produces the opposite effect on Palestinians? What if, rather than empower the moderates to produce matching Palestinian concessions, as you seem to fervently believe, it strengthens the position of the irredentists who argue “East Jerusalem today, Palestine from the River to the Sea” tomorrow?

J-Street: Is there a plan B here?

This got me about something. Yossi Sarid was, as mentioned above, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, which basically was the trigger to the disastrous idea of giving autonomy to the Palestinians. As history has shown us, over the past 15 years, the grave mistake of bringing in chief terrorist Yasir Arafat has proven to be the absolute worst decision the State of Israel has ever made.

Since the Accords were signed, the Palestinian Authority has renege in every single agreement, including:

1. Recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.
2. Renounce the use of terrorism and punish those who commit terror.
3. Remove those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist.

It's been over 16 years and not one of these three main points of agreement have even been attempted to be kept. Instead, Arafat (and then Abbas) launched a second Intifada, refused to remove the language in PLO charter calling for Arab control over the entire region and refrained from having a revolving door policy in the imprisonment of terrorists.

None of this, however, was really ever expected by the many Jews who fought against this folly. Most of us understood that Arafat and the POL could never be trusted. Yet Yitzchok Rabin - with tremendous pressure by President Clinton and Shimon Peres - signed this suicide pact with the modern day Hitler.

If you asked any Israeli on the street what they think of the Oslo Accords, you'll be lucky if you're not spit at. The Israeli population understands how disastrous this stupid idea was. And yet, we have to still suffer the outrageous idiocy of two people who were intricately involved in the greatest blunder in Israel's history.

Look, J-Street (to most Jews) is a joke. The only reason for it's existence is to serve as a cover for President Obama's disastrous policy regarding Israel (and by extension, the Jewish community). Like "Organizing for America," it is wholly owned by the far-left liberal end of the Jewish world. These people are nowhere near the mainstream Jewish community. But that doesn't matter to Obama. He simply uses them as his cover. If he wants to screw Israel over - which he is currently doing - he simply can say that J-Street supports his actions.

In my opinion, the tools at J-Street are modern day Korachs. He was Moses' antagonist in the desert who led the Jews to sin at the Golden Calf. While in Egypt, he had a position above the slaves because he was counted on to support the Egyptian taskmasters, at the cost of Jewish lives. Of course, when the time came for the Jews to leave, he had no desire to do so. But to the Egyptians, they just considered him a Jew and sent him packing with the rest.

The same happened during the Holocaust. A number of Jews thought they could ensure better treatment by the Nazis by telling on their fellow Jews. For a while, they were "accepted." Of course, when their services were no longer needed, they were sent to the gas chambers along with everyone else.

These are the members of today's J-Street. As long as Obama is able to use them as his cover, they will be accepted. Once he no longer needs them (perhaps when either Obama forces Israel's complete surrender, or when Obama is finally thrown out of office), they will no longer be so well received. It's a horrible shame to see Jews acting this way. Whether it be guilt or fear, they are doing more damage to Judaism than even Yasir Arafat ever did.

And anyone who still considers what Ben-Ami, or Sarid, has gospel should look inside themselves and ask whether or not they too are dangerous to their fellow Jews.