Obama Should Embrace J-Street

Since 1967, when Israel invaded and occupied Eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, more than 2,000 Israeli civilians have been killed and more than 15,000 have been injured by terrorism. Since 2003, when the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed serving there. Neither occupation has done anything regarding the wider problem of anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorism except stoke hatred of America and Israel in the Muslim world. Both America and Israel need leaders who will lead them out of this mess.

Barack Obama has already shown he has the guts to challenge knee-jerk foreign policy and differentiate himself from both the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton, when he said that if elected president, he would open discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This took guts. Obama was immediately attacked - by Clinton and by others - for being "naive," for showing "weakness" by saying he would "talk to our enemies." In 1979, President Carter and Prime Minister Begin had the wisdom to talk to America and Israel's enemies and brought about a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel - a victory for Israeli security that no one expected, and that would never have been possible if Carter and Begin had believed that "talking to your enemies is a sign of weakness."

The junior senator from Illinois now has a remarkable opportunity to differentiate himself even further from his opponents.

Prior to April 2008, Jewish-Americans, who are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats, were represented in Washington by a single pro-Israeli lobby called AIPAC - a right-wing organization with ties to the Republican Party and to the neoconservative architects of the Iraq Invasion.

AIPAC has used its endowment of more than $100 million to promote its narrow vision of what constitutes "pro-Israeli" foreign policies, such as American support for an indefinite occupation of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, or outright American military occupation of Arab countries. This squares with the neoconservative vision of the war on terrorism as a new "cold war" between Islam and the West, rejecting the theory that the threat of terrorism could ever actually be defeated, and opting instead for a series of Bay of Pigs invasions and Vietnams.

Now, there is an alternative. Thanks to the formation of a new pro-Israel lobbying group called J Street, Jewish-Americans and other pro-Israeli citizens have the choice of supporting Israel without supporting knee-jerk foreign policies and military occupation. The group has the support of former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a pragmatic centrist who has frequently crossed party lines.

At the very least, this should allow for a healthy debate regarding what kind of policies best promote Israeli interests. Until now, no American politician or Jewish-American could disagree with AIPAC without seeming disloyal to Israel, whose continued existence and security are rightfully a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spoken before AIPAC during the course of their campaigns, offering their support for the American-Israeli alliance.

Now, Barack Obama has an opportunity to speak again on the subject of the American-Israeli alliance, and reaffirm his commitment to Israel's security in front of an audience better-suited for outlining a new kind of foreign policy - one that could actually undermine and put an end to terrorist networks such as al-Qaida.

The success of the Sunni Arab "awakening" that has sent al-Qaida in Iraq running makes plain as day the missing element in the American and Israeli war on terrorism: the support of the Arab masses. No insurgent network has ever survived without the support of a civilian population. The same is true for al-Qaida in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The same is true for other anti-Israeli and anti-American armed groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. These groups all rely on popular support for their very existence.

One of the leaders of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has had the courage to state the obvious: "The most pro-Israel thing any American politician or policy maker can do is help to bring about a two-state solution and a comprehensive agreement between Israel and her neighbors." Coming from an ardently pro-Israeli figure, that's a breath of fresh air.

Imagine a future where Israel had comprehensive peace treaties with not only Egypt and Jordan, but all five of its major neighbors - including Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Imagine a future in which anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment was nonexistent.

It's true, you wouldn't be imagining a future in which Israel held on to all the territory it occupies today. You'd be imagining a future in which the city of Jerusalem had been peacefully partitioned, handing the Arab eastern half of the city along with Muslim holy sites over to Palestinian control, thus stemming the flow of angry recruits into the ranks of Hamas and al-Qaida. You'd be imagining a future in which the Golan Heights had been handed back to Syria, thus ending that country's support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

The hard-line right, including AIPAC, is unlikely to be won over to a vision of land-for-peace. That is, unless they can actually convince themselves that Israeli blood is worth more than Israeli territory.

On the opposite side of the debate is a pacifist fringe, who don't acknowledge the threat of religious fanaticism and believe that all Israel and America have to do is make territorial concessions and wait for the Age of Aquarius. This ignores the very real threat of terrorist minorities, who have to be fought with a combination of intelligence operations and intelligent security measures such as the construction of physical barriers against suicide bombers.

The true path to peace involves a combination of two pincers - the intelligent use of force and the intelligent use of the olive branch. Neither can work without the other. The first involves a robust commitment to the types of military and police actions that damage terrorist networks without strengthening them - such as targeted arrests and the erection of physical barriers - while rejecting aggressive invasions and any occupation of Arab land. The second is a peace process that can actually result in peace, by addressing the status of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

If Barack Obama is serious about making our foreign policy in the Middle East more intelligent, he needs to get down to J Street and give a speech. The politics of hope is nowhere more desperately needed than in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war on terrorism. The senator should think hard about outlining a new foreign policy, a new global strategy in the war on terror, and move beyond baby steps such as acknowledging the fact that we need to "talk to our enemies."

The success or failure of this new initiative could determine the ability of the U.S.-Israeli alliance to secure the only goal that ought to be on everybody's mind - the security of America and Israel.