Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI: www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
In its latest fundraising email, J Street denounces "the West Bank settlement movement" as "a moral stain on the Jewish people and a threat to Israel’s future."
Let’s consider the human impact of J Street's position.
The Ilan Residential Home for Handicapped Young Adults is located in what J Street considers a "West Bank settlement," the Gilo neighborhood on the southern edge of Jerusalem. So is the Beit Or Home for Young Autistic Adults.
Is it a "moral stain on….. " to assist physically handicapped or autistic young people?
And I wonder how the leaders of Conservative Judaism feel about having their institutions slapped with that "moral stain" smear?
The Conservative movement's Shevet Achim congregation and its 'Tali' School are located in Gilo. The congregation of Ramot Zion is situated in Jerusalem’s neighborhood of French Hill, much of which is, according to J Street, a "West Bank settlement."
There is also a Conservative ‘Tali’ school Pisgat Ze’ev, and Conservative congregations in Ma’ale Adumim and Har Adar.
For that matter, I wonder how Israel’s leftwing Labor Party feels about being called "a moral stain on the Jewish people and a threat to Israel’s future"?
After all, it was Labor governments that established many of the original Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria, including Kiryat Arba, Ofra, Kedumim, Ma'ale Adumim, and the various towns in the Gush Etzion bloc.
Labor governments built the Jerusalem neighborhoods that J Street regards as being in the "West Bank," including French Hill (established 1969), Neve Yaakov (established 1924, rebuilt in 1972), Gilo (1973), Talpiot Mizrach (1973), and Ramot (1974).
And Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor-led government, which took power in 1992, continued the policy of building homes within existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (aka "West Bank."). The government of 2021-2022, in which Labor was a coalition partner, also built there. So does that mean every Labor-built home, school or nursery in the territories is also "a moral stain on the Jewish people and a threat to Israel’s future."
J Street's war against Jewish families who live in Judea-Samaria is not just a matter of ugly rhetoric. And it is far from wrong to call it a "war", since J Street just appealed for donations by saying "Your support is critical as we ... fight the settlement movement in the West Bank".
J Street's work against Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria has also taken the form of lobbying the U.S. Treasury Department to remove the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status of American institutions that assist "West Bank" communities.
That would spell complete disaster for the Ilan Residential Home for Handicapped Young Adults, for the Beit Or Home for Young Autistic Adults, and for many other caregiving, educational organizations.
All of which underlines, once again, how J Street has positioned itself far outside the mainstream Jewish community-and it reminds us why both of the major Jewish umbrella organizations, the Conference of Presidents and the American Zionist Movement, have rejected it.
These important umbrella groups understand that J Street has become so extreme that it evidently considers disabled and autistic young people expendable in pursuing its radical political agenda.
(And, btw, it is not illegal for Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, ed.)