Since its founding in 2008, the advocacy group J Street has had a consistent motto: “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy.” In practice, this has meant resolute backing for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine and consistent criticism of the extremist policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Along the way, J Street has remained closely allied with the Democratic Party, raising almost $15 million for Democratic candidates during the last election cycle and taking credit as the “largest Jewish organizational fundraiser for Kamala Harris.”

But J Street’s importance goes far beyond the group’s fundraising prowess. Its status as an unabashedly liberal Zionist group—in contrast with the ever-more-hawkish AIPAC—has allowed it to play a unique political role on Capitol Hill. Whether accused of being insufficiently or excessively loyal to Israel, Democratic lawmakers can use their alignment with J Street as a handy shield. Notably, during President Obama’s second term, J Street helped push the Iran nuclear deal through Congress despite intense opposition from AIPAC and other hawks. The White House official in charge of gaining approval for the agreement, Ben Rhodes, later recalled that “J Street was one of the most effective organizations that supported the Iran deal because they had a large grassroots network and growing clout on the Hill.”

But, as with liberal Zionism itself, the flaws in J Street’s approach have become more and more apparent over the years. The group rarely used its aforementioned clout to raise critical questions about recurring Israeli assaults on Gaza. And the relentless brutality of the Israeli assault on Gaza that began in response to the October 7 Hamas attack left J Street floundering for a coherent message.

Routinely, while calling for the release of the Israeli hostages, the organization also expressed concern about the deaths and suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But none of J Street’s 132 news releases between October 7 and the start of the ceasefire in late January 2025 called for an end to shipments of the US bombs and weapons that were killing those civilians while enforcing Israel’s policy of using starvation as a weapon of war—a glaring omission for a group that declares itself to be “pro-peace.” It was as if J Street thought that vague humanistic pleas could paper over these gaping cracks in its stance.

However, J Street felt comfortable taking a firm line on the question of whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Here, it aligned itself completely with the position of the US and Israeli governments. In mid-January 2024, when oral arguments ended at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa that charged the Israeli government with violating the Genocide Convention in Gaza, a news release declared that “J Street rejects the allegation of genocide against the State of Israel.” Four months later, on May 24, J Street responded quickly when the ICJ ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in Rafah. “J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,” a news release said.

That statement from J Street came 10 days after the publication of an article by Aryeh Neier, a founder of Human Rights Watch, who wrote: “I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” Many other experts, including Omer Bartov, the Israeli-American professor seen as the world’s leading scholar of genocide, agreed. But this was a bridge too far for J Street.

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In a statement last December, J Street’s founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami harked back to what he described as Israel’s “promise as a proud, just, peaceful democratic homeland not just for the Jewish people, but for all who live there.” He called for following “the path that allows Israel to remain true to its founding values of pluralism, equality, freedom and justice, and a commitment to liberal democracy.” Such messages are not only conveniently unmoored from history (Palestinians would, to say the least, likely take issue with the idea that Israel was ever conceived as a homeland for them). They are also, crucially, in sync with denial about the present-day realities of Israel, a state that grows more committed to apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing with each passing year.

J Street is not alone in clinging to the fantasy that Israel can both privilege Jews and maintain universal democratic values. It has come to embody the basic contradictions of liberal American Zionism. The Gaza genocide exposed the limits of this worldview like never before, including for J Street. From the outset, the group fell in line with the Biden administration’s approach of publicly urging Israel to use its weapons within the confines of US and international law—while reliably enabling Israel to do the opposite. As the carnage escalated, the enabling was crystal clear. “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,” retired Israeli Gen. Yitzhak Brick said seven weeks into the war. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

As General Brick spoke, available polling showed that two-thirds of the US public supported a ceasefire. But J Street did not support a ceasefire. Instead, the organization’s leader Jeremy Ben-Ami called the fateful juncture “a moment when Israel needs as broad as possible a base of support.” At the time, the director-general of the World Health Organization reported that Israel was killing children in Gaza at an average rate of once every 10 minutes.

Five weeks into the Israeli onslaught, the Gaza Health Ministry said that upwards of 11,100 Palestinian people had been killed. The number reached 20,000 in late December. By then, J Street’s messaging template was well established. A typical statement insisted that “long-term Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution demands removal of Hamas from operational control of Gaza,” and went on to declare: “While our belief in the legitimacy of a military operation remains unchanged, our support for the way in which that operation is conducted is not without limits. As we have supported Israel’s military operation, we have repeatedly said that Israeli forces must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties, maximize humanitarian aid and clamp down on both settler and military violence against civilians on the West Bank.”

Month after month, J Street news releases echoed pronouncements coming from the White House and State Department, becoming grim parodies of wishful thinking and empty warnings. The headlines of J Street releases were largely contoured around hollow claims from the Biden administration that it was diligently striving to end the death and agony in Gaza:

• “Moment of Truth for Israel’s Government: Either Heed Biden Administration Limits or Lose US Support for Military Operation” (December 7, 2023)
• “J Street Welcomes New Oversight and Transparency Measures for Military Aid” (February 13, 2024)
• “President Biden Must Forcefully Oppose Netanyahu’s Rafah Escalation Plans, Stress Unavoidable Consequences” (February 15, 2024)
• “J Street Welcomes Israeli Aid Announcements Following Biden Phone Call, Urges Sustained Pressure” (April 5, 2024)
• “J Street Commends President Biden, Welcomes Israeli Ceasefire Framework, and Urges Immense Pressure on Hamas to Accept the Deal” (May 31, 2024)
• “J Street to President Biden: It’s Time for Maximum Pressure on Netanyahu and Hamas to Seal the Deal Now” (September 4, 2024)
• “J Street Welcomes Biden Administration Letter on Gaza Humanitarian Crisis” (October 15, 2024)

At the same time, J Street kept telling Congress to approve multibillion-dollar arms shipments to Israel. With the war in its fifth month, the group issued a statement that “J Street welcomes the Senate’s passage” of a measure to send $14 billion in further military aid to Israel and “urges swift passage in the House.” When the House followed suit in April, J Street welcomed the move with a news release that ended with an emblematic feel-good sentence: “J Street will work closely with Congress in the weeks ahead to ensure that every dollar of US security assistance is being used in compliance with our law, our values and our interests.” After six months of stepped-up US aid to the Israeli military, such pledges were literally incredible.

In early May, a news release showcased J Street’s eagerness to have it both ways—calling for massive amounts of weapons and bombs to Israel while declaring that “any further military assistance to Israel must be provided in full accordance with US and international law.” At the same time, J Street pointedly described itself as “a pro-Israel organization that has supported every single appropriation of security aid to Israel.” It was a political dance in step with many members of the president’s party in Congress. A headline over the news release trumpeted that “J Street joins half of congressional Democrats in urging strict enforcement by the Biden administration of arms transfer rules as Rafah invasion looms.” Like before and after, such calls for “strict enforcement” were (perhaps meant to be) ignored.

Even when J Street chided the Biden foreign-policy team for not putting enough pressure on Netanyahu, the understanding was that J Street would remain a reliable supporter of Israel no matter what its forces did in Gaza. As 2024 went on, the mild criticisms of Biden that J Street began to voice were roughly equivalent to the feeble criticisms that Biden occasionally voiced of Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the weaponry kept flowing.

Even as Israel triggered starvation, bombed hospitals and schools, cut off aid supplies, and sent the death toll in Gaza higher and higher, J Street refused to change its approach. The group marked the October 7 anniversary by saying, “We continue to believe that stronger US leadership is needed to find diplomatic offramps, pull the region back from the brink and stop a terrible situation from becoming even worse.” Yet the organization’s make-believe mode persisted, as though Biden’s team were fully committed to restraining Israel. “In the coming days and weeks,” J Street said on October 24, “it is of the utmost urgency that the Biden administration continue to work with US allies in the region to pull every lever within reach to rein in Netanyahu—and all parties to the conflict—and pull the whole region back from the brink.”

Only after 13 months of backing Biden’s pivotal support for the Israeli siege did J Street express even mild discontent with his policies enabling the nonstop horrors to continue in Gaza. In mid-November, with Biden on his way out of office, the group urged senators to vote for “at least one resolution of disapproval of proposed arms sales to Israel.” While noting that the vote on the Senate floor “will not lead to the suspension of offensive arms transfers to Israel as the procedural deadline for the votes to block the arms sales has expired,” J Street claimed that senators voting for one of the resolutions “will make clear to the Netanyahu government that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza…is unacceptable.”

At the time the organization said that it was “deeply frustrated” and “deeply disappointed in the Biden administration’s abdication of its responsibility to uphold and enforce US law by making a clear, accurate determination on Israel’s failure to comply with international legal requirements related to humanitarian aid and benchmarks set by the administration itself.” Yet for more than a year—without serious objection from J Street while the US-enabled slaughter continued—the administration had been blatantly abdicating its responsibility.

Among the laws most flagrantly violated is the Leahy law, which the State Department describes as prohibiting the US government from “using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” As early as January 2024, the namesake of the law, former senator Patrick Leahy, said it was being violated by US military aid to Israel.

When both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch put out reports in December 2024 concluding that Israel was engaged in genocide, J Street made no response. It remains on the record proclaiming that “J Street rejects the allegation of genocide against the State of Israel.”

The genocide charge is one of the organization’s most uncrossable red lines. In late January 2024, J Street President Ben-Ami issued a somewhat cryptic statement that accompanied the group’s withdrawal of its endorsement of New York Representative Jamaal Bowman, who ended up losing his reelection bid after AIPAC spent nearly $15 million against him. Ben-Ami referred to “significant differences between us in framing and approach.” A major factor was Bowman’s expressed belief that Israeli forces were committing genocide in Gaza. (A dozen years earlier, J Street rescinded its “On the Street” seal of approval for my own campaign for a House seat after learning that I had written a 2006 column denouncing Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon.)

When this year began, the home page of J Street’s website featured six big colorful rectangles. One of the featured rectangles, headlined “TAKE ACTION,” said, “Tell Congress: Bring the Hostages Home.” None of the six mentioned Palestinians, Gaza, humanitarian aid, or the US pipeline of weapons to Israel.

During several weeks this winter, in more than half a dozen e-mails, voicemail messages, and texts, I asked Ben-Ami: “Do you believe it is fair to say that the Israeli government has engaged in genocide?”

He declined to answer.