---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Sat, May 31, 2014 at 6:42 AM Subject: re:China Moves to Calm Restive Xinjiang Region To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Deportation and dispersion is an ancient stratagem to destroy a conquered People. Sennacherib's Assyrians visited it on the ten lost tribes of Israel in the 8th century b.c.e. But in the modern world, this is not only a violation of self-determination of Peoples. What more basic right can a People have than to live among one's own? It is an embrace of barbarism. If in Xi Jinping's mind the Uighur are not Chinese, it is for him to give them autonomy, whether inside China or outside.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, May 30, 2014 at 10:37 PM Subject: re: U.S. Strategy to Fight Terrorism Increasingly Uses Proxies To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
In September 2001,demonstrations in capitals around the world--including a million men in Teheran--marched in solidarity with the U.S., and in revulsion at the attacks of 9/11. At that moment, the U.S. could have led a broad international law-enforcement drive to apprehend the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and no one would have stood in our way. Instead, George W. Bush preferred to cast himself as a war-time leader and to seize extraordinary powers. Calling for "crusade" he alienated crucial allies. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran could not join such a project, much as they wanted al-Qaeda destroyed.
To speak of "proxies" in president Obama's strategy is to accept too quickly the view that the U.S. is the sole protagonist here. We should remember that we are but one of al-Qaeda's targets, and we should be sharing this fight not with proxies but with allies.
President Obama at West Point on Wednesday, outlining a shift in counterterrorism strategy.CreditGabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — During the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military often carried out dozens of daily operations against Al Qaeda and other extremist targets with heavily armed commandos and helicopter gunships.
But even before President Obama’s speech on Wednesday sought to underscore a shift in counterterrorism strategy — away from the Qaeda strongholds in and near those countries — American forces had changed their tactics in combating Al Qaeda and its affiliates, relying more on allied or indigenous troops with a limited American combat role.
A decade of military and intelligence operations have battered Al Qaeda’s headquarters in Pakistan and reduced the likelihood of a large-scale attack against the United States, counterterrorism officials say. Buta more decentralized terrorist threathas heightened the danger to Americans abroad, putting at greater risk diplomatic outposts such as the mission in Benghazi,Libya, or commercial sites like the shoppingmall in Nairobi, Kenya,that the Islamist extremist group theShababattacked last year, killing at least 67 people.Navy SEAL or Army Delta Force commandos will still carry out raids against the most prized targets, such as the seizure last fall of a Libyan militant wanted in the 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa. But more often than not, the Pentagon is providing intelligence and logistics assistance to proxies, including African troops and French commandos fighting Islamist extremists in Somalia and Mali. And it is increasingly training foreign troops — from Niger to Yemen to Afghanistan — to battle insurgents on their own territory so that American armies will not have to.
“We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat — one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments,” Mr. Obama said in his speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
To confront several crises in Africa, the United States has turned to helping proxies. In Somalia, for instance, the Pentagon and the State Department support a 22,000-member African force that has driven the Shabab from their former strongholds in Mogadishu, the capital, and other urban centers, and continues to battle the extremists in their mountain and desert redoubts.
“Our basic premise is that it’s Africans who are best able to address African challenges,” Gen. David M. Rodriguez, who leads the military’s Africa Command, said this year.
In the Central African Republic, American transport planes ferried 1,700 peacekeepers from Burundi and Rwanda to the strife-torn nation earlier this year, but refrained from putting American boots on the ground.
The United States flies unarmed reconnaissance drones from a base in Niger to support French and African troops in Mali, but it has conspicuously stayed out of that war, even after the conflict helped spur a terrorist attack in Algeria in which Americans were taken hostage.
In addition to proxies, the Pentagon is training and equipping foreign armies to tackle their own security challenges. In the past two years, the Defense Department has gradually increased its presence in Yemen, sending about 50 Special Operations troops to train Yemeni counterterrorism and security forces, and a like number of commandos to help identify and target Qaeda suspects for drone strikes, according to American officials.
Across Africa this year, soldiers from a 3,500-member brigade in the Army’s First Infantry Division are conducting more than 100 missions, ranging from a two-man sniper team in Burundi to humanitarian exercises in South Africa.
Since 2006, the Defense Department has spent about $2.2 billion in more than 40 countries to train and equip foreign troops in counterterrorism and stability operations, according to the Congressional Research Service. This year alone, the Pentagon is spending $290 million on programs that include border security assistance to Lebanon and a counterterrorism battalion in Niger, in West Africa.
Mr. Obama on Wednesday proposed a Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion to “facilitate partner countries on the front lines.”
In explaining the rationale for the fund, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, said: “We’re dealing with networks, and not just regional networks, but global networks of terrorists. So this fund would be used to deal with all of our efforts on counterterrorism.”
A senior administration official suggested that the drawdown in the Afghan war, which cost $10 billion to $15 billion a month, could save money that could be reallocated to these types of funds.
In his speech, Mr. Obama reserved the right to use unilateral military action to protect Americans and core American interests.
Last October, for instance, American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized a suspected Qaeda leader on the streets of Tripoli, Libya, while on the same day a Navy SEAL team raided the seaside villa of a militant leader in a firefight on the coast of Somalia. The Navy commandos exchanged gunfire with militants at the home of a senior leader of the Shabab but were ultimately forced to withdraw.
The Libyan militant captured in Tripoli was indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The militant, born Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas al-Libi, had a $5 million bounty on his head; his capture at dawn ended a 15-year manhunt.
Mr. Ruqai was taken to Manhattan for trial after being held for a week in military custody aboard a Navy vessel in the Mediterranean, where he was reportedly interrogated for intelligence purposes. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in November.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:35 AM Subject: re: U.S. Seeks to Censor More of Memo That Approved Drone Strike on American To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
If ours is to be "a government of Laws, and not of men" as our Founding Fathers intended, our Executive must "take care that these Laws be faithfully executed" as our constitution requires. And "these laws" are the products of our Congress in open session, not the memos generated in a basement of the Executive's own Department of Justice.
If our public servants point to memos coming out of the OLC as legal justification for actions in our name, we must know what those memos say in their entirety. A bit of artful redaction could e.g. make our constitution say "Congress shall make no law".Such a redacted memo can confer no legitimacy on the president's actions.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, May 22, 2014 at 3:36 PM Subject: re: The Senate Foolishly Rushes In To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
"The public has the right to know precisely how Mr. Barron, and the White House, made the case for killing an American citizen without due process in a court of law." That requires that we see the whole, unredacted memos. A bit of artful redaction reveals that our Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no Law" and that the bible requires that "thou shalt commit adultery".
There can be no innocent redaction here. Professor Barron must not be confirmed until we've seen the whole memos. Nothing less can satisfy.
The Senate is unnecessarily rushing to vote on President Obama’s nomination of David Barron for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, even though the public has yet to see documents written by Mr. Barron that have raised legitimate concernamong civil liberties advocates on both the left and the right.
Mr. Barron, a Harvard law professor, was a top official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel when he wrote two classified memos justifying the drone strike in Yemen in 2011 that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen accused of being a terrorist.
Following lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last month ordered the government to release one of those memos to the public, and, on Tuesday, the White House relented, agreeing to release a redacted version at some point. Earlier this month it shared the memo with senators behind closed doors.
This was not enough for Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, who filibustered Mr. Barron’s nomination on Wednesday because, as he said, “there is no legal precedent for killing American citizens not directly involved in combat,” and “any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court.”
The Senate rightly voted 52 to 43 to end the filibuster and advance the nomination to the floor. Every judicial nominee should receive an up-or-down vote. But the decision by Senate Democrats to charge ahead to a vote on Mr. Barron’s nomination, scheduled for Thursday, would shut the public out of the debate because it has not had a chance to consider the memo.
Much of Mr. Paul’s speech was an impassioned and articulate defense of the centrality of due process even for the most reviled. “This isn’t a debate about transparency,” he said. “This is a debate about whether or not American citizens not involved in combat are guaranteed due process.”
This debate should be about both of these things. The substance of the memos is a necessary part of any consideration of Mr. Barron’s nomination, and only their public release (assuming the government doesn’t black out all the important parts) will allow the nation to consider and weigh such critical moral and legal issues. The public has the right to know precisely how Mr. Barron, and the White House, made the case for killing an American citizen without due process in a court of law.
In other respects, Mr. Barron appears clearly qualified for the job. Some senators will vote for him in spite of (or because of) what is in the memos; some, like Mr. Paul, will vote against him. But what’s the rush in pushing through this vote? A federal judgeship is a lifetime appointment. The American people should be able to decide for themselves whether their elected representatives are making the right decision.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:21 PM Subject: re: U.S. Cites End to C.I.A. Ruses Using Vaccines To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
" 'I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood' said Faramir". Thus did JRR
Tolkien summarize a civilized man's disdain for perfidy. The Geneva
Conventions cast this as law (for the 147 nations who ratified it, if
not for the U.S.):
"1.
It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to
perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to
believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection
under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with
intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy."
Now that the Obama administration has foresworn
the particular instance of perfidy involving bogus vaccination
campaigns, one might wonder why we still won't ratify the Geneva
Conventions, even 37 years behind the rest of the world. And we're
still not party to the International Criminal Court. In ways large and
small, the U.S. government seems to prefer to operate by guidelines
promulgated in secret inside the Executive Branch, rather than by laws
duly enacted in the Legislative. The prohibition against perfidious vaccinators is one example. The Durham investigation--that cleared CIA agents, officer and contractors of violating DoJ guidelines without ever asking if they had broken the law--is another.
To ratify the Geneva Conventions lies with Congress; it would be unfair
to blame president Obama for their failing. And the Durham
investigation is in the past; no one can fix that. But president Obama
is still Chief Executive, and the DoJ still reports to him.
If we are to have a nation of law, and not of men, as our Founding
Fathers aspired, it is for president Obama to not just promulgate secret
guidelines, but to faithfully execute the law. Prosecuting torture and
perfidy is still the right place to start.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Sat, May 17, 2014 at 7:34 AM Subject: re: The Slippery Slope of Secrecy To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
What our Intelligence Community needs is not another rule that it will
break. It needs a culture of respect for the laws. That change begins
with firing and prosecuting James Clapper for lying to Congress.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, May 16, 2014 at 8:25 AM Subject: re: Force-Feedings at Guantánamo To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
In his Second Treatise on Government, John Locke asserts a basic right to die. Since our Founding Fathers based the structure of the U.S. government on Locke's writings, we need to take his argument seriously. Locke finds that a prison system is legitimate because the State has the legitimate power to execute a criminal. It follows that--since that prisoner can end his term by dying, that imprisonment is a lesser punishment than death. Where the State has the greater power (of execution), it must have the lesser power (of imprisonment).
Forced feedings in Guantanamo, as elsewhere violate prisoners' right to die. Without that, their very imprisonment is on shaky ground.
This week, one of the lawsuits by a Guantánamo detainee produced news that the military has apparently beenvideotapingits force-feedings of prisoners who have been attempting a hunger strike to protest their confinement and treatment. Pentagon officials admitted last year that the cause of the hunger strike was prisoners’ despairing that they would ever be released.Nothing comes to light easily at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba where 154 detainees are held on suspicion of terrorist activities. Some have been incarcerated for more than a decade, in a legal limbo that remains a grave embarrassment to American justice.
The disclosure is important because a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia decided in February that while it would not initially block the force-feedings (in which prisoners are restrained and fed by a tube through the nose), it would retain jurisdiction and hear prisoners’ complaints of inhumane treatment as part of a habeas corpus lawsuit. This could prove to be one of the more promising avenues in the struggle to expose the woeful situation at Guantánamo to greater public attention.
Detainees’ lawyers have asked the court to issue an emergency order to prevent the government from destroying any existing video recordings of the force-feedings, after learning of their existence on May 13. Seven years ago at the height of the controversy over waterboarding, the Central Intelligence Agency was found to have destroyed videotapes of interrogation sessions using that torture technique.
President Obama has sought to shut down Guantánamo, but Congress has barred the transfer of detainees to mainland prisons. Administration lawyers insisted this week that there would be “robust protection” of national security if the detainees were transferred, but Congress remains adamant in refusing to close the facility.
The court should order the military to preserve the tapes and to hand them over to the prisoners’ lawyers. The hunger strike and force-feedings are a sorry chapter in the long-running travesty of justice that festers in Guantánamo.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, May 12, 2014 at 9:54 AM Subject: re: Show Us the Drone Memos To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
That the nominee's understandings of due process of law and of the Executive power over life and death are germane to his nomination to the U.S. Court of appeals seems self-evident. What remains obscure--perhaps deliberately obscured--is the reason that we are so far denied a look at David J. Barron's legal opinions. Nothing in all his other writings can be as pertinent to his potential appointment to the court.
Is professor Barron--or president Obama--invoking attorney/client privilege? Now that the killings are known and acknowledged, what is being protected? And if the president of the United States can kill one citizen for engaging in noxious political speech--and another just for being the son of the first--can any of us feel safe?
Surely there are legitimate questions that need answers before anyone is elevated to the court of appeals for life.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Sun, May 11, 2014 at 9:49 AM Subject: re: The Rise of Antibiotic Resistance To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
In 1773, John Harrison received £8,750 from parliament (albeit not the full "Longitude Prize" of £20,000 [about $4.25million today] that had been offered in 1714) for the chronometer he delivered. Until the advent of GPS in the 1970s, it was descendants of his timepieces that permitted navigators for 200 years to know where they were in the world.
The U.S. embraced a different model, preferring to let the market drive innovation, rather than waiting for our Legislature to post a prize for solving a problem that it deems worthy. For 200yrs, this patent system of granting a period of market exclusivity in exchange for educating your competitors in your innovation has driven a lot of medicine.
But the emergence of antibiotic resistance has revealed the limits of market-driven drug discovery. Twenty years of market exclusivity is a weak incentive to spend the time and money to research and develop a drug that our FDA will reserve for only the direst cases. The drug company will never recuperate its costs that way unless each dose were astronomically expensive. And so we return to the age of government prizes driving innovation at best--or, if our government doesn't act--to a world in which we all risk death from a trivial injury or infection.
The growth of antibiotic-resistant pathogens means that in ever more cases, standard treatments no longer work, infections are harder or impossible to control, the risk of spreading infections to others is increased, and illnesses and hospital stays are prolonged.The World Health Organization has surveyed the growth of antibiotic-resistant germs around the world — the first such survey it has ever conducted — and come up with disturbing findings. In a report issued late last month, the organization found that antimicrobial resistance in bacteria (the main focus of the report), fungi, viruses and parasites is an increasingly serious threat in every part of the world. “A problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine,” the organization said. “A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century.”
All of these drive up the costs of illnesses and the risk of death. The survey sought to determine the scope of the problem by asking countries to submit their most recent surveillance data (114 did so). Unfortunately, the data was glaringly incomplete because few countries track and monitor antibiotic resistance comprehensively, and there is no standard methodology for doing so.
Still, it is clear that major resistance problems have already developed, both for antibiotics that are used routinely and for those deemed “last resort” treatments to cure people when all else has failed.
Carbapenem antibiotics, a class of drugs used as a last resort to treat life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacterium, have failed to work in more than half the people treated in some countries. The bacterium is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and infections in newborns and intensive-care patients. Similarly, the failure of a last-resort treatment for gonorrhea has been confirmed in 10 countries, including many with advanced health care systems, such as Australia, Canada, France, Sweden and Britain. And resistance to a class of antibiotics that is routinely used to treat urinary tract infections caused by E. coli is widespread; in some countries the drugs are now ineffective in more than half of the patients treated. This sobering report is intended to kick-start a global campaign to develop tools and standards to track drug resistance, measure its health and economic impact, and design solutions.
The most urgent need is to minimize the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture, which accelerates the development of resistant strains. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has issued voluntary guidelines calling on drug companies, animal producers and veterinarians to stop indiscriminately using antibiotics that are important for treating humans on livestock; the drug companies have said they will comply. But the agency, shortsightedly, has appealed a court order requiring it to ban the use of penicillin and two forms of tetracycline by animal producers to promote growth unless they provide proof that it will not promote drug-resistant microbes.
The pharmaceutical industry needs to be encouraged to develop new antibiotics to supplement those that are losing their effectiveness. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which represents pharmacists in Britain,called this month for stronger financial incentives. It said that no new class of antibiotics has been discovered since 1987, largely because the financial returns for finding new classes of antibiotics are too low. Unlike lucrative drugs to treat chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular ailments, antibiotics are typically taken for a short period of time, and any new drug is apt to be used sparingly and held in reserve to treat patients resistant to existing drugs.
Antibiotics have transformed medicine and saved countless lives over the past seven decades. Now, rampant overuse and the lack of new drugs in the pipeline threatens to undermine their effectiveness.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, May 9, 2014 at 9:56 AM Subject: re: The Real Africa To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
In trying to speak about Africa as if it were one polity, David Brooks manages to say almost nothing about the 47 countries and billion people who comprise the continent. Once we set the predations of Boko Haram in the context of Nigeria and not of Africa, they are very important indeed.
Each of us must choose either to defend our safety, our property and our loved ones ourselves, or to delegate that function to a larger organization. The first is the Hobbesian state of nature, in which life is famously "nasty, brutish and short". The second is the prerequisite to civilization.
For 169 million Nigerians--and indeed for the world--the terror of slipping into anarchy can't be masked by feel-good stories from across the border.
“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title,” Wainaina advised. “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.”In 2005, Binyavanga Wainaina published a brilliantly sarcastic essay in Granta called “How to Write About Africa,” advising people on how to sound spiritual and compassionate while writing a book about the continent.
Wainaina had other tips: The people in said book should be depicted as hungry, suffering, simple or dead. The children should have distended bellies and flies on their faces. The animals, on the other hand, should be depicted as wise and filled with family values. Elephants are caring and good feminists. So are gorillas. Be sure to show how profoundly you are moved by the continent and its woes, and how much it has penetrated your soul. End with a quote from Nelson Mandela involving rainbows. Because you care.
There’s been something similarly distorted to some of the social media reactions to the Boko Haram atrocities over the past week. It’s great that the kidnappings and the massacres are finally arousing the world’s indignation. But sometimes the implication of the conversation has been this: Africa is this dark and lawless place where monstrous things are bound to happen. Those poor people need our help.
But this is more or less the opposite of the truth. Boko Haram is not the main story in Africa or even in Nigeria. It is a small rear-guard reaction to the main story. The main story in Africa is an impressive surge of growth, urbanization and modernization, which has sparked panic in a few people who don’t like these things.
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are growing at a phenomenal clip. Nigeria’s economy grew by 6.7 percent in 2012. Mozambique’s grew by 7.4 percent, Ghana’s by 7.9 percent. Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is predicted to reach 5.2 percent this year. Investment funds are starting up by the dozen, finding local entrepreneurs.
In 2011, roughly 60 million African households earned at least $3,000 a year. By next year, more than 100 million households will make that much. Trade between Africa and the rest of the world has increased by 200 percent since 2000. Since 1996, the poverty rate has fallen by 1 percent per year. Life expectancies are shooting up.
Only about a third of this new wealth is because of commodities. Nations like Ethiopia and Rwanda, which have no oil wealth, are growing phenomenally. The bulk is because of economic reforms, increased productivity, increased urbanization and the fact that in many countries political systems are becoming marginally less dysfunctional.
Africa should not be seen as merely the basket case continent where students, mission trips and celebrities can go to do good work. It has become the test case of 21st-century modernity. It is the place where the pace of modernization is fast, and where the forces that resist modernization are mounting a daring reaction.
The third is the clash over governance. Roughly 80 percent of Africa’s workers labor in the informal sector. That’s because the formal governmental and regulatory structures are biased toward the connected and the rich, not based on impersonal rule of law. Many Africans are trying to replace old practices with competent governance. They are creating new ways to navigate between the formal and informal sectors.
Too many of our images of Africa are derived from nature documentaries, fund-raising appeals and mission trips. In reality, Africa faces in acute forms the same problems that afflict pretty much every region these days. Most important: Individual and social creativity is zooming ahead. Governing institutions are failing to perform the basic, elementary tasks.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Wed, May 7, 2014 at 8:41 AM Subject: re: Go Big, Get Crazy To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Thomas L. Friedman has been embracing the Keystone Pipeline--even while protesting that he hates it in his heart--for over a year now. (http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2013/03/thomas-friedman-embraces-keystone-extortion/). Last year it was coupled to a carbon tax. Today he wants it as a lever against Putin. Tomorrow he'll want it as a weapon against marauding Martians.
The U.S. desperately needs a rational energy policy, quite independent of Putin's war-mongering. And no rational energy policy involves importing dirty tar-sand bitumen through a Keystone Pipeline.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Thu, May 1, 2014 at 9:34 AM Subject: re: Jewish Coalition Rejects Lobbying Group’s Bid to Join To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
Our First Amendment guarantees that a boys club can call itself almost anything it wants. But if it rejects J-Street for having a PAC while AIPAC sits at the table, the "conference of presidents of major American Jewish organizations" is just a good old boys club with a cynically misleading name.
Jeremy Ben-Ami’s J Street tried to join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.CreditGabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
American Jewish leaders on Wednesday voted to deny membership in an influential national coalition to a lobbying group that has at times criticized the Israeli government.
The decision by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to reject the dovish lobbying group, J Street, was closely watched because it comes as many Jewish institutions face controversies over how much debate over Israel they are willing to tolerate within their ranks. Supporters of J Street argued that the group’s occasional differences with Israeli policy, over Gaza, Iran and other matters, were well within the mainstream of American Jewish thought and common in Israel itself.
The vote took place after a brief and collegial debate — lasting less than an hour — during which speakers were each allowed 90 seconds to make an argument. The ballots were secret, but several of those present said that it appeared, based onpublic statements made before Wednesdayas well as comments made during the debate, that the voting broke down in large part along ideological and religious lines, with Orthodox and multiple affiliated organizations opposing J Street, and the non-Orthodox members supporting the group’s application.The vote was held at the Conference’s Manhattan offices, and it was not open to the public. But participants said that 42 of the conference’s 50 voting members were represented at the meeting, and that 17 voted in favor of J Street, while 22 voted against and three abstained. To become a member of the Conference, J Street would have needed support from two-thirds of the conference, or 34 votes.
J Street, based in Washington, was formed six years ago as a counterpoint to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the longstanding lobbying organization advocating American support of Israel.
J Street has differentiated itself, and attracted both support and criticism, by adopting a less hawkish tone toward Middle East policy, and by steadfastly supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The president of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said in an interview after the vote that he was “deeply disappointed,” and added, “We would have liked to be a part of this communal tent.”
A poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Center found that a plurality of American Jews did not believe the Israeli government was making a sincere effort to reach a peace settlement. Mr. Ben-Ami said the vote sent a “terrible message” to those who have concerns about aspects of Israeli policy.
“This is what has been wrong with the conversation in the Jewish community,” he said.
“People whose views don’t fit with those running longtime organizations are not welcome, and this is sad proof of that,” he added. “It sends the worst possible signal to young Jews who want to be connected to the Jewish community, but also want to have freedom of thought and expression.”
The Conference, which already includes groups with a broad range of ideological and religious viewpoints, is an influential organization, in part because its longtime leader, Malcolm I. Hoenlein, is frequently consulted by political leaders as a representative of the American Jewish community.
Critics of J Street approved of the Conference’s decision to exclude a group whose views on Israel they viewed as problematic.
J Street’s bid for membership was supported by major liberal and centrist Jewish groups, including the Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform movements, as well as the Anti-Defamation League.“We’re very pleased and relieved, because J Street’s positions were not within the mainstream of the Jewish community,” said Farley I. Weiss, the president of the National Council of Young Israel, which is an association of Orthodox synagogues. “On virtually every single issue, their position is contrary to that of anything that would be considered pro-Israel, and they don’t represent the rank and file of the Jewish community in America.”
The leaders of many of those groups have had disagreements with J Street, but argued that it represented the views of a significant number of American Jews and deserved to be part of the discussion that takes place among major Jewish institutions.
“A mistake was made today,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents Conservative rabbis. “It is of crucial importance to the future of the Jewish community that a full range of views is represented, and that we be part of a robust dialogue to achieve what we are all committed to, which is a safe, secure and thriving Israel.”
Rabbi Schonfeld said the vote would undoubtedly prompt an examination of the conference’s membership rules and voting procedures, noting that “one of the anomalies of diaspora leadership is we are not elected by the Jewish community, but we earn the right to be leaders, and it’s moments like this that call upon us to think creatively and openly and earn that leadership.”
