When Hillel of Greater Philadelphia rented space to J Street for a national recruiting Webcast, it provoked a storm of criticism. Hillel leaders argued that J Street was entitled to rent space like any other group and was within the bounds of acceptable opinion.

While Hillel was approving the J Street program, J Street was signing on to a letter addressed to President Barack Obama calling on America to pressure Israel to ease the measures it has taken to prevent attacks from Gaza.

The letter labels these measures a blockade and urges Mr. Obama, “to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts.”

It was signed not just by 54 members of Congress and J Street, but also by The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) and The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), groups not similarly claiming to be “pro-Israel.”

The principle author was Congressman Keith Ellison, who was called “outrageous” in 2007 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for “comparing the rise of Nazism in the aftermath of the burning of the Reichstag to the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11.”

Established in April 2008, J Street has quickly managed to get a seat at the White House table. In July 2009, barely a year old, they were among just 14 Jewish organizations invited to attend a meeting with Mr. Obama to discuss the Middle East, while other longtime Zionist groups were excluded.

As it reads on the J Street Web site, “J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” There is no escaping their message. They are the self-proclaimed home for the “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” community.

Other groups might call themselves pro-Israel, but they are not pro-peace by J Street’s standards.

“Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” is a catchy sound bite that every Israel advocacy group could and should adopt. But, the debate J Street claims to want should not be over who owns the title of “peace seeker” for Israel. Rather, it is how best to get to a peace that comes along with the security that is also required. That Israel and its American supporters are “pro-peace” should be beyond dispute.

Israelis have been struggling for over 60 years to make peace with adversaries that still refuse to recognize their state as the historic – let alone current – homeland of the Jewish people. Nobody is more pro-peace than Israelis, who have sacrificed so much human treasure to build and defend their country. No Israeli government could survive if it turned down a serious offer from an adversary with the genuine will and means to deliver on their commitments.

One need look no further than the Sinai, returned to Egypt after Anwar Sadat’s stunning visit to Jerusalem and address to the Knesset. But no like-minded leader since has emerged from the Arab side, demonstrating the personal commitment and apparent means to ensure a genuine peace agreement. Sadat, of course, paid with his life for his peacemaking.

While J Street does not use the phrase “anti-peace” in describing those who disagree with them, the implication is plain. And by denigrating the broad swath of Israeli and American Jewish opinion as somehow opposing peaceful resolution of this conflict, they encourage Israel’s enemies and bring harm to the very cause they claim to so devoutly support. That is what too much of the world already says about the Jews and their state and the supposed justification for attempted boycotts, embargoes, U.N. resolutions and other pressure.

In The Jerusalem Post’s report on the Hillel event, Jeremy Ben-Ami excused without a touch of irony his failure to speak about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, a potential existential threat to Israel, with the comment, “There is no shortage of Jewish advocates working on the Iran issue.”

But, Iran’s nuclear program remains uninhibited suggesting that job is not done.

Unfortunately, as even Mr. Ben-Ami was forced to indirectly acknowledge when he referred to the Goldstone Report and the United Nations’ lopsided obsession with Israel, there is an overabundance – not a shortage – of critics of the Jewish state.

J Street needs to explain why Israel needs one more group that wants the U.S. to push Israel to make further concessions to their adversaries, regardless of the details of the response from the Arab side – and why a group claiming the mantle of mainstream, seeking to “broaden the debate on these issues nationally and in the Jewish community” can contend that among all the advocates for Israel it is, uniquely, “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.”

I thought we all were.

John R. Cohn is a Philadelphia physician who writes frequently about the Middle East. He can be reached at john.r.cohn@gmail.com.