Recent Blogs

• What A Visit Down Memory Lane Told Me About Trump

  Today, I am very sad to see a president who completely fails to recognize the historic role the United States has played – and should still be playing – in the world as a force for democratic values, human dignity and peace. I am sad to see a secretary of state who seems determined to gut the State Department and our ability to project soft power around the world. I am sad to see a president who makes crude threats and throws casual insult around the world as if his words mean nothing. I am sad to see this same president intimidate, belittle and bully the media, lawmakers and private citizens who dare to cross him.

• Why the Iran Deal is Good for Israel: A Conversation with Uzi Arad, Former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu

  On Monday, J Street hosted a briefing call with Uzi Arad, a veteran Israeli intelligence leader who served as Prime Minister Netanyahu's national security advisor from 2009-2011. He spoke about why he strongly supports maintaining the Iran nuclear deal, what the deal has accomplished - and why he disagrees with the prime minister on this critical issue.

• Embarrassment on the World Stage

  Over the course of my career, I’ve seen many presidential speeches. Some have been soaring and inspiring in their rhetoric, while others have been mediocre and disappointing. But none were like President Trump’s last Tuesday.

• L’Shana Tova

  As we approach the High Holidays this year, we find a world in turmoil. At home, the Trump administration continues to push policies and rhetoric rooted in hatred and discrimination, undermining our democracy and sowing fear and divisions. In its approach to the world, our government has largely adopted a bombastic and threatening tone, hardly reassuring us that it can cope with crises and threats across the world.

Trump doesn’t understand Iran. He’s making policy based on a caricature, Washington Post

“Iranians — and that includes many government officials — long to be a ‘“normal’ country, with and without disputes and disagreements with neighbors and other nations. The nuclear deal is itself evidence of that. And if, through that deal, brand new Boeing airliners appear at Tehran airports in Iran Air livery next year, while they might not lift the standard of living of most Iranians or offer them new jobs, they will, after a decades-long absence, after a devastating eight-year war, after years of sanctions and of Iranians holding passports that were unwelcome and suspicious in most countries in the world, after feeling deeply misunderstood by Westerners, to Iranians it would signal that their country is becoming normal. Trump’s raining on that Iranian parade will not change Iranian ‘behavior’ in the region, it will not eliminate one ballistic missile, will not encourage nuclear caution and likely will not bring about peace in the Middle East. It will, however, risk greater proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, signal to allies and adversaries alike that American negotiators are not to be trusted and validate the hard-liners inside Iran while undermining the reformists and pragmatists. Sadly, it can also turn what many writers, journalists, observers and travelers have described as the most pro-American population in the region — one that has pushed its successive governments to resolve their country’s differences with the United States — into potentially one of the most anti-American.”

The Right-wing Assault on Israeli Democracy, Haaretz

“The breaking and smashing frenzy, which is slated to peak in the Knesset’s upcoming winter session, is shared by cynical politicians and true fanatics. The former are looking for headlines that will grab their incited voters but the latter represent a comprehensive world view that derides Western and liberal values and seeks to replace them with an authoritarian regime in which Jews reign supreme. They want to discriminate between Jews and Arabs without knee-jerk liberals getting in their way, to grab Palestinian land while the High Court cowers in the corner, and to continue managing the occupation in darkness, without the rays of disinfecting sunlight occasionally shed by NGOs such as Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem. This aggressive campaign is fed by the right wing’s perpetual self-victimization, orchestrated and conducted by Netanyahu himself, and by the arrogance of Likud politicians – and those from the national-religious Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party even more so – who show no compunction about undermining the values that made Israel what it is today. Maybe their amok is a function of an urge to erase the last remnants of the Israel in whose creation and consolidation their political movements played only a minor role. After the mission is accomplished, the internal destroyers and demolishers of the Zionist revolution which created the state can continue pretending that they are its children and successors.”