I wish more American Jews would be Jewish Americans rather than Americans who happen to be Jewish.

Well the reasons for this Jewish anomaly are The Jewish Establishment groups – The AJ Committee, the Congress, the B’nai Brith, the federations, ALL the spokesmen for the American Jewish community – the ruling clique, uniformly marched down the American road with a melting pot under their arms, beating it over and over again and shouting forth the Eleventh Commandment to the American Jew: Thou shalt melt!

Thou shalt melt, thou shalt integrate, thou shalt amalgamate, thou shalt be an American as all others. They beat the drums for interfaith, exchanging pulpits with ministers enthusiastically, in a frantic effort to prove to Christian and Jew alike that there is essentially no difference between them. They were partially successful – the Christians were not convinced but the Jews were.

Thou shalt melt, thou shalt integrate, thou shalt Americanize thyself! So the Jews did.

Good news! Israeli airstrike kills Hamas commander http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2010/07/31/Israel-airstrike-kills-Hamas-commander/UPI-96571280594094/

Please, sir. May Shebrew have more?

First of all J-Street is indeed bipartisan. Lincoln Chaffee is on their advisory board, so they do have Republican representation.

More substantively though, Harris is correct about Amb. Oren. Still I wouldn’t read too much into it. It’s the ambassador’s job to promote the idea that support for Israel is bipartisan and to avoid any further points of contention with the administration. What makes NJDC’s job harder is that support for Israel is much stronger among Republicans than among Democrats. NJDC makes matters worse by refusing to acknowledge this. So they take the approach of blasting Republicans for promoting their pro-Israel bonafides at the expense of Democrats but spend no time trying to convince more Democrats (especially Jewish Democrats) to be more pro-Israel. If being pro-Israel were really important to NJDC, they’d be trying to narrow the partisan gap rather than bemoaning it. I know that Ira Forman (as part of the Solomon Project) brought a number of leftwing bloggers to Israel a few years ago; I have no idea if any of them are more pro-Israel now than they were then. Still there is no sustained effort on the part of the NJDC to evangelize (bad word for this context, I know) on behalf of Israel.

When the President invited pro-Israel groups to the White House and included J-Street but excluded ZOA, it would have been a perfect time for NJDC to say something. And time after time when the administration has singled out Israel the NJDC has been silent or been trying desperately to find the silver linings. Really the NJDC may not be anti-Israel like J-Street, but I’d hardly consider it to be pro-Israel in any real way.

(To illustrate their pro-Israel consensus meme, the NJDC shows a picture of Carter and Begin and Clinton and Netanyahu. To me the ad is stupid. Neither President was known for being particularly fond of the Likud Prime Ministers they served opposite. These are hardly illustration of bipartisan support of Israel. Carter’s Jewish problem, of course, runs much deeper than his relationship with Begin.)