Jeremy Ben-Ami is the President of J Street, bringing to the role both deep experience in American politics and government and a passionate commitment to the state of Israel. Ben-Ami’s family connection to Israel goes back 140 years to the first aliyah when his great-grandparents were among the first settlers in Petah Tikva. His grandparents were one of the founding families of Tel Aviv, and his father was an activist and leader in the Irgun, working for Israel’s independence and on the rescue of European Jews before and during World War II.
His political resume includes serving in the mid-1990s as the Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor in the White House to President Bill Clinton and working on seven Presidential and numerous state and local campaigns including helping to manage a Mayoral campaign in New York City in 2001. For nearly three years in the late 90s, Jeremy lived in Israel, where he started a consulting firm working with Israeli non-profit organizations and politicians. Ben-Ami received a law degree from New York University and is a graduate of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Finally, the day after …
This moment requires change and leadership on all fronts.
What Netanyahu won’t tell you at the UN tomorrow
The path toward peace and diplomacy threatens the two things Netanyahu values most – his coalition’s survival and his ideological refusal to allow Palestinian freedom and self-determination. That’s why he is working to sabotage it, rejecting allies and undercutting consensus.
Partisanship is blinding us to our humanity
For all its brutality, political violence only drives us further from the solutions we desperately need. Cycles of vengeance and retaliation spiral until they consume everything in their path.