J Street, Iran and everything in between

More Focus U.S.A.

Among the recent snow, and some more snow, the dashing healthcare reform and Toyota recalls, among the headlines coming from the U.S. there are some interesting Jewish updates as well.

Michael Oren: Happy to meet J-Street?

For those who weren't following the undiplomatic scandal in Israel, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon declined to meet a delegation of five Democratic Congress members led by Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) last week, sponsored by the J Street Education Fund and Churches for Middle East Peace.

The reason for Ayalon's decision to snub J Street-sponsored delegation was presented during his Q&A session at the Conference of Presidents in Jerusalem, where Ayalon said: "The thing that troubles me is that they don't present themselves as to what they really are. They should not call themselves pro-Israeli."

Delahaunt's delegation route indeed did not resemble that of AIPAC-led delegations - the five-day trip included meetings with the Palestinian and Jordanian officials.

But the Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren seemed to backpedal from the Israeli government's position on J-Street, while appearing yesterday at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum in Dallas, Texas.

During the Q&A session, Oren explained that he never boycotted J-Street, and that his concerns regarding some of the dovish lobby's policies "have been ironed out through open dialogue".

"We, I want to be as inclusive as possible. In fact, I look forward to interacting with them," he said.

"As far as I'm concerned, J Street calls itself a pro-Israel organization and I am happy to interact with J Street on that basis and I look forward to future interactions."

The Israeli Embassy's spokesman Jonathan Peled denied that the Israeli government conveys double message regarding J Street.

"Our position is that J Street defined itself as a pro-Israel organization, and the Ambassador intends to continue a candid communication with them," he said Monday.

At the same JCPA plenum, Ambassador Oren referred to "Women of the Wall" incident. "There are good solutions for the issues at the Kotel," he said and added that "at the end of the day, it will require compromise on everyone's behalf."

Minister of Diaspora Yuli Edelstein during his recent visit to Washington, promised to take care of the issue but we are still waiting for some concrete steps to be taken.

Students protest ZOA call to boycott their University

While the Israeli envoy seems to reconcile J-Street bickering, there is an ongoing debate following the protests during his lecture at the University of California in Irvine, during which he was called "killer!"

Israel is used to the sporadic calls to boycott its academic institutions, but it's quite rare to witness the same calls aimed towards the American academic institution - originated at the American Jewish community. The Zionist Organization of America has urged donors to stop making contributions to the University of California, Irvine, and has also urged students to refrain from applying there.

"The university has for years enabled bigotry, discrimination and the violation of civil rights by failing to condemn longstanding anti-Semitic and Israel-bashing speech and conduct on campus, and failing to enforce its own policies against the perpetrators," the ZOA claimed.

"For years, UC Irvine's Muslim Student Union has been promoting hateful falsehoods about Jews, Zionism and Israel. As just one among many examples, one Muslim Student Union-sponsored speaker last May compared Jews to Satan, and characterized them as slick, sneaky and conspiratorial. Despite being repeatedly asked to publicly condemn the speech and its promoters and organizers, UC Irvine's Chancellor Michael Drake did not do so."

The ZOA listed some more questionable activities initiated by the University's Muslim Student Union, and concluded that "UC Irvine must now pay the price for its inaction. We call on all decent people, both Jews and non-Jews, to stop supporting, with their money and enrollment, a university that has been complicit in promoting bigotry."

Some Jewish groups protested the call for boycott:

"We are surprised that those who call for a boycott fail to recognize that it is a double-edged sword that legitimizes a tactic so often used against Jews and Israel, particularly in academic settings. We believe academic boycotts are inappropriate, harmful and counterproductive, and will not work to resolve the situation on campus," said ADL chief Abe Foxman.

Now it's students groups turn to react. Five UC Irvine Student-Group Presidents, including Chabad and Hilel at UCI, as well as Anteaters for Israel, issued today a letter protesting ZOA's position.

"As students at UCI, we respectfully disagree with the ZOA's position that students should stop attending UCI, and that donors should stop supporting the many programs at the school.

"This is both counterproductive and one of the worst ways to deal with the Muslim Student Union (MSU) at UCI."

"Instead, we believe the best response to their hateful speakers and programs is to be proactive by engaging in positive dialogue and peace-seeking efforts. An important part of this is to bring more students to the campus who are interested in making progress towards peace between groups on campus as well as in the Middle East," they wrote.

"We applaud the UCI Police Department for arresting the students who broke the law. We also applaud the university administration for swiftly beginning the student conduct judicial review process which can result in suspension or expulsion. We know that this process may be lengthy, and we patiently await the outcome.

The ZOA also criticized Chancellor Drake for not exercising his own freedom of speech and publicly condemning the MSU's regular programs and their members' actions during Ambassador Oren's speech. While the authors of ZOA?s statement were not present at the program, we were, and Chancellor Drake did in fact publicly speak out against the disruptions, and subsequently released a statement on the school's website."

We can all agree that MSU's consistent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic programs are reprehensible, offensive and embarrassing for the university. However, this is not reason enough to advise prospective students to stay away from attending UCI, and recommend to the school?s donors to stop their financial support. Without such support, it would not have been possible to make our community on campus as thriving as it is today?.

Will the sanctions work?

And the Iran issue that became particularly frustrating for the Israeli UN Ambassador Professor Gabriella Shalev. Asked during the meeting with reporters in Washington, organized by The Israel Project, "Why Israel is so calm recently regarding Iran?" she said: "We are very anxious. But we are not a part of the Security Council, we have no economic power over Iran, we don?t deal with them. If the Security Council will not impose on Iran what Secretary Clinton called 'crippling sanctions,' we'll have the individual states working together on this issue".

Pressed on the possibility of the Israeli preemptive strike, she smiled: "Luckily, I don't have to decide on it. It's one of the options and all the options are on the table. It's one of the bad options, though we don't think it's as bad as Iran having nuclear weapon. For us it's an existential threat. Iran is training and equipping Hizballah and Hamas. They are not even smuggling weapons - they are transferring them."

Secretary Clinton was asked in Qatar whether the U.S. will attack Iran and she said "no." Are you sure Israel is still on the same page with the U.S. on this issue?

"I'm sure we are on the same page and we cooperate and have a good fruitful dialogue with the US and they fully understand the threat. And until we get to this complicated decision - we are going to consider all other options. There are 2 very bad possibilities - that Iran will go forward and end up with a bomb - just imagine that terrorist groups on our border will have this terrible weapon; the second is war, and we hope none of these possibilities will come to the table."

She said the Israeli mission hoped the new round of sanctions will be imposed by the UN Security Council during France's presidency. "My feeling is that we won't be able to achieve it in February. The next President of the Security Council is Gabon and we don't know how they'll act. Although the announcement of Ahmadinejad on the enrichment of uranium made Russians resolved to agree to sanctions, China is still a mystery. There was a change of their Ambassadors to the UN, and I think it's going to complicate this play. The UN is paralyzed - the General Assembly has no power of enforcement. It's just a free arena for bashing Israel. The Security Council can be paralyzed because of the veto power the permanent members have. There are 5 new members of the Security Council, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Muslim country, Gabon, Brazil".

'It took some time for the new U.S. administration to figure out that the UN is not what they hoped for. Now they realize the complexities, that it is a place with a lot of hypocrisy and double talk. It took me some time to realize that but now I know that for sure. Who is preaching to us about the human rights? Iran? Senegal? Sudan?"

So will the sanctions on Iran be effective?

"We know now diplomatic overtures have not been effective," Shalev answered. But Iran is very much dependent on its oil, so we these sanctions must be effective. We are not enemies of the Iranian people - we have a conflict with the Iranian regime - Ahmadinejad, the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian people suffer themselves and we saw what happened during the elections."

Asked about the Goldstone report, she assumed that it will be raised again by the Arab countries at the Assembly and later on at the Security Council.

"It caused us a lot of damage," she admitted. "If it will be brought to Security Council, I'm sure the permanent members will understand that this kind of war against the terrorist group that ignores all kinds of war rules, might affect them as well. We ignore the Goldstone report. We respect very much the UN and we provided to the Secretary General elaborated reports regarding the investigations that were done after Gaza war that were independent and transparent that checked the conduction of the Israeli military during the operation, - but this discussion shouldn?t take place at the UN, it should be bilateral issue."