J Street president and founder Jeremy Ben-Ami was not among the hundreds of guests invited to attend last week’s AIPAC policy conference for free. Instead, the leader of the self-described “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” lobby took in the key speeches from a laptop in his Washington, DC, office. These days Ben-Ami and his staff are spending a lot of time at the office as they prepare for J Street’s annual conference at the end of the month.
The Times of Israel’s Washington correspondent, Ari Ben Goldberg (a former AIPAC spokesperson), sat down with Ben-Ami following the AIPAC conference and Netanyahu’s high-stakes visit to Washington, at the height of the Israel-Gaza flare-up.