There was a lot for non-Jews to cheer about when J Street started taking heat from the big guns of what some American miscreants dare call "the Israel Lobby".

It means that non-existent lobby is taking the upstart opposition group seriously.

This week, the 18-month-old organization wound up its first conference, notable more for the no-shows redacting its attendance rosters than the national media coverage it relentlessly failed to attract (given the timid nature of our media, no surprise at all). As The Politico reports, way too cheerily, adding John Kerry to the flake list:

So far, about a dozen of the original 160 hosts have rescinded their names from J Street's list, including: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR), Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA), Rep. John Salazar (D-CO), and Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY)... Jane Harman (D-Calif.) isn't attending, but still backs the group. 

Sin of sins, J Street is attempting to unite progressive and, yes, younger Jews in an alternative to the traditional lobby, which, if it existed - and we're not saying it does, mind you - would be made up of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Christians United for Israel, and a whole host of other groups, fellowships, think tanks and chummy clubs hellbent on making sure American policies in the Mideast at large and toward Israel in particular virtually mirror and rubber-stamp those of the Likud Party, no matter how brutal its initiatives. Also, and this is most important, they work real, real hard to assure American largesse to Israel hits its annual nut - more than a third of the entire U.S. foreign aid budget. Any American politician making a peep about that flowing spigot faces de-election... if, of course, such a lobby should, theoretically, exist.

You could read about all the players and their Capitol Hill methods in The Israel Lobby, an hysterically controversial essay and book by American academics Stephen Walt and John Meirsheimer. But doing so could put you on the fightin' side of J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami:

However, when the analysis of that lobby veers over a line and essentially says that all of American foreign policy is controlled by this one lobby and this one interest group, to me, personally, this does smack of the kind of conspiracy theories contained in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This notion that somehow Jews control this country, they control our foreign policy, that there is some diabolical conspiracy behind the scenes, this is when you cross that line.  I believe that the analysis in the Walt and Mearsheimer book and article crossed that line, but this doesn't take away from my view that this is an incredibly effective lobby.

That's from a remarkably hostile, baiting interview in the Atlantic Ben-Ami granted to neocon stalwart Jeffrey Goldberg on the eve of the J Street conference. While at times Goldberg's questioning technique seems to come from an old Cheka interrogation manual, and Ben-Ami proves remarkably level-headed and measured in his responses, the J Street chief seems to disavow the obvious a lot - and ignoring this Levantine elephant in the room has for decades been a bane to American foreign policy, and toxic to our relations with the Muslim world.

Another stunning development is Ben-Ami's refusal to accept the United Nation's Goldstone report, which certified what was already known by a world availed of unedited coverage of the Gaza insursion earlier this year: Israel committed war crimes against defenseless Palestinians in a military foray which had all the sophistication of a gangland, revenge-killing "policy whack".

In a column today at Antiwar.com, former CIA case officer Philip Giraldi comments:

On many of the specific issues, J Street is AIPAC lite.  It accepts an Israeli state based on religion, not on equal rights for all citizens, specifically supporting the apartheid-like right of any Jew to "return" without affording similar rights to Christians or Muslims who resided in Palestine before 1948. Its Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami calls a one-state solution to Israel/Palestine with all citizens having the same rights a "nightmare."

For myself, the jury is still out. Certainly, it's laudable to launch an organization intended to counter the all-too-real Israel Lobby, which is enormously powerful and directly connected to a foreign country; on that we all agree. But now isn't the time to start denying the obvious. And the era for "sensitivity" is over. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Frankly, I can't see how, when the rest of the world as multicultural mixing bowl is inevitable, a geographical homeland based on any particulars, any grounds of uniqueness, can survive without constant combat. And, so, I can't see how a "one-state" solution would be that nightmare to which Ben-Ami refers.

Israel and its supporters have pled its victimhood so long they believe their own, obsolete propaganda. This bizarre proposition that past suffering absolves an individual or group from present responsibility, or that it conveys some otherworldly dominion over moral issues, has distorted our judgment and recent history to absurdity. Enough. Come down here to terra firma with the rest of us, and talking eye-to-eye, maybe we can come up with some answers, relieve some critical stresses, before we combust ourselves to ash.

Here's the key topic and crucial question: Why can't peace for Israel and its neighbors be secured here and now?