More in ‘AIPAC’

• Israel’s interior minister says he is “very sorry for the embarrassment” resulting from his government’s approval yesterday of 1,600 new E. J’lem homes as Joe Biden arrived in the country to support peace talks—but the approval is still in effect. Biden’s now trying to reassure the P.A. that all is not lost. [AP]
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• The five U.S. congressmen in J Street’s Mideast delegation were “puzzled” by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s refusal to meet with them, and his labeling J Street as not “pro-Israeli”. (But why would they expect a diplomat to have good people skills?) [Haaretz]
• The Israeli government launched a new P.R. campaign designed to empower ...

Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Senate passed a bill—similar to one the House of Representatives has already okayed—that would impose significant additional sanctions on the Iranian elite as well as energy companies that do business with the Islamic Republic (the bill was passed by voice vote, so the yeas and nays are not reported). This came ...

• In a formal complaint to the United Nations, Jordan accused Israel of illegally seizing the Dead Sea Scrolls during the Six Day War, and demanded that they be returned. [JPost]
• Columnist Yossi Melman suspects that the Iranian physicist killed in Tehran yesterday was likely done in by some entity that wanted to slow the ...

• Israeli Ambassador (and prominent journalist) Michael Oren takes to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to defend Prime Minister Netanyahu’s temporary construction freeze and call on the Palestinians to reciprocate. [WSJ]
• Edward Sanders, a one-time American Israel Public Affairs Committee head and adviser to President Carter who rose to prominence during the 1973 oil ...

In only a couple years, J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” political organization, has made waves—and a few enemies, particularly among conservatives—by challenging the assumption that American Jews’ views on Israel are best represented by center-right AIPAC. We knew them to be strong-willed, even brazen. But we didn’t know they could be funny, too! One Tablet ...

• Visting Morocco, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clarified her praise for what she’d called Israel’s “unprecedented” concessions in the settlements: after Arab leaders expressed dismay that she seemed to be cutting Israel a break, Clinton reiterated that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” [NYT]
• The arrest of a ...

There’s something wrong with J Street’s branding—or there will be in a week, after the left-leaning Zionist lobby’s first national conference raises its profile in Washington, Bernard Avishai, a liberal commentator on Israeli affairs, argues on Talking Points Memo. Right now, the group’s motto, and apparent underlying ideology, is “pro-Israel, pro-peace.” There’s an implied “therefore” ...

The current issue of Mother Jones, which hit stands a few weeks ago, has a story asking whether AIPAC is heading for a showdown with the Obama administration over Israel policy. The piece, by Robert Dreyfuss, makes a nice bookend to James Traub’s story in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about J Street, the ...

J Street, the year-old progressive “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobbying group, has its official coming-out party in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Writer James Traub paints a sharp contrast between J Street ‘s upstart team of “netroots”-savvy whiz kids, led by Jeremy Ben-Ami, and the staid leadership of the old-guard Jewish organizations—the Conference of Presidents, the ...