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http://www.jstreetjive.com/2009/09/s...n-and-zoa.html

From news article:
The J Street official Jeremy Ben-Ami is quoted as saying: “We’re trying to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel. You don’t have to adopt the party line.”

Suddenly there is a “party line,” whereas in fact a spectrum of views have been represented for years by mainstream Jewish organizations, and that spectrum has not included the positions espoused by J Street. For example, left-of-center and right-of-center Jewish groups supported Israel’s Gaza operations against Hamas in January, but J Street did not.

This is apparent when one considers the results of a Global Marketing Research Services poll in July of self-identified American Jewish Democratic Party supporters, which found that 55 percent believe President Obama is naïve to try to set up a Palestinian state, whereas only 27 percent take the opposite view. Moreover, they believe by a margin of 52 percent to 37 percent that Jews should be allowed to build homes and move into existing communities in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

No amount of spinning can conceal the fact that, on these two major issues, clear majorities of Jewish Democratic supporters disagree with Obama. J Street is entitled to its views, but not to its pretension that it represents a large slice of liberal Jewish opinion on Israel. Clearly, it doesn’t.

MORTON A. KLEIN
National President
Zionist Organization of America
New York