http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124271.html#at

If this new lobby wants to become a serious player in Mideast politics, it will have to work much harder.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” J Street organization will wrap up its first national conference here with a political extravaganza on Capitol Hill. Three days in, there have been some successes and some awkward moments.

The conference has brought together some 1,500 participants for discussions on politics, media, faith and culture; they have praised and criticized Barack Obama, applauded a lot (such as for Congressman Charles Boustany for being the only Republican who dared to attend one of the panels) and also booed a little (Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, for castigating Richard Goldstone).

Too many times panelists have sounded too apologetic for the movement that claims to represent “the majority of the U.S. Jews.” The applause for Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), when she said that she never considered dropping out despite some good souls’ warnings, was too enthusiastic. On the whole, for a major conference aimed at tackling important issues, too much time is being spent on trying to establish the organization’s legitimacy.

The conference may have gained some publicity over Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s refusal to attend, but the open letter it sent in response was unnecessary. In the future, the lobby will have to deal with Israeli officials, not only former and opposition lawmakers.

The event has not so far made for many headlines, but Obama’s National Security Adviser, General James Jones, gave J Street a lot of credit in his keynote speech on Tuesday by saying that he was proud to be there, that he was representing the Obama administration, and that the administration would be represented at future J Street conferences. If the J Street PAC which fundraises for Congressmen is successful, then there is a good chance that Oren will not be able to ignore the next conference.

The letter to Oren was a poor start to the relationship. Behind the scenes, Israeli diplomats bitterly expressed the opinion that J Street used Oren to score free publicity. Despite the obvious gap between the position of the U.S. administration and that of the Israeli Government, there is still an open phone line between the Israeli embassy in Washington and Obama’s people. Furthermore, press releases and open letters often complicate real diplomacy.

There is a good chance that J Street will persist in trying to boost its standing and influence, in part because of the Obama administration’s somewhat hesitant pace of progress on a range of intricate issues.

The tensions between AIPAC, the older and stronger pro-Israel lobby, and J Street are likely to continue. Although no one can be certain what truly is good for Israel in the long run, it is safe to say that the bitter under-the-table rivalry between the two lobby groups will harm the state.

We are unlikely to see any camaraderie between the two lobbies, but a more civilized rivalry may yet be established. The current situation, in which both groups officially ignore each other while privately denigrating one another, is untenable. There is no reason for the peace camp to demonize AIPAC, and little too can be gained from dismissing J Street as amateurs that are will soon disappear.

Capitol Hill is too small and the problems too pressing for such petty mind games; besides, the recent electoral smear campaign was troubling enough for many.

But inclusiveness has its own limitations. There is an obvious problem at the J Street conference over establishing a clear vision and agenda considering the plurality of voices represented and the clear generation gap. The attempts to define important parts of the agenda as alternatives to AIPAC won’t take J Street too far beyond heated discussions in nice hotel rooms.

Over the past 18 months, J Street has made its name recognizable, and controversial. This week alone, I received many letters from angry readers who wrote, among other things, that “J Street is 10 percent Arab money, and George Soros is out to weaken AIPAC and get Israel to go back to the 1967 borders; J Street is not pro-Israel. They are pro-Obama.”

Over the next few months, if this new lobby wants to remove the second label and become a serious player, it will have to work much harder. Now that controversy has been exhausted, it is time for the real test. The people of the Middle East are happy to sustain numerous organizations with endless conflict, but they would be even happier if one of those organizations would help solve it.

At any rate, J Street has already succeeded in one aspect where AIPAC has failed. This week, the Arab American Institute tabbed its Fall Arab Leadership Summit as “historic” because of meetings “with J Street and other pro-peace American Jewish leaders to support what so many believed could never be achieved – a collaboration between organizations representing Arab Americans and Jewish Americans, a collaboration dedicated to peace, justice, and prosperity in the autonomous states of Israel and Palestine.”