LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
Jeremy Ben-Ami is the founder and president of J Street, which describes itself as “the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans.” At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Ben-Ami will deliver a lecture about the future he said J Street anticipates, envisions and
advocates for.
“J Street has established itself as a proud and loud voice on behalf of people who have empathy for both Palestinians and Israelis, want to see freedom and security for both peoples and are more interested in finding a way to a solution to the conflict than in trying to push for a way to win it,” Ben-Ami said.
He said a significant part of J Street’s work is “helping to redefine for a lot of people what it means to support Israel.”
Ben-Ami said his lecture will be especially timely, with “active war and confrontation on numerous fronts” in the Middle East.
“This is a moment of tremendous upheaval when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said, adding that “a lot is up in the air.”
During his lecture, he said he wants “to lay out a vision of how United States policy toward Israel and toward the Middle East actually may be seeing one of the greater moments of opportunity that we’ve had in a couple of generations.”
He said his lecture’s main points will relate to his perspectives about the trajectory of Israel’s 2026 election, groups aligned with Israel in different capacities and an alternative path forward he calls “a 23-state solution.”
Ben-Ami said that he is deeply connected to Israel. He said, “My family is Israeli, and I lived there, and my grandparents were founders of Tel Aviv. My father fought in the ’48 war.”
He said he has encountered assumptions that calling for a Palestinian state equates to apathy toward or detachment from Israel.
“I’m not coming at this as somebody who doesn’t care about Israel,” he said.
Ben-Ami said he sees people hold perceptions of Israel rooted in history, but regarding shifts in its power, he said “the construct that people who were born in the 50s and 60s were raised with” is inaccurate to apply to contemporary times. “These are massive shifts and very hard sometimes for people to actually see, because they’re so used to the construct that they have known for their entire lives,” he said.
Ben-Ami, using the biblical story of David and Goliath to explain this changed dynamic, said Israel is now the Goliath.
“It is the regional superpower,” he said. “And it is not facing elimination by its Arab neighbors; It is facing an Arab neighborhood that wants to welcome it into the neighborhood.”
He expanded on the implications of Israel’s upcoming October elections, which he said will be his lecture’s first intended takeaway.
“Israel is about to undergo political change, and we’re reaching the end of the Netanyahu era,” he said.
Regarding his second takeaway, he said, “In the United States, the stranglehold that AIPAC and other pro-Israel, Israel-right-or-wrong lobbies have had on American foreign policy is breaking.”
He said the equation of one being “pro-Israel” with supporting Israel’s government, which he sees both in Democratic and Republican spheres, is a perception that impedes the work of J Street. According to Ben-Ami, “That era is over.”
Because of these shifts, he said, “there’s a real opportunity for the U.S. to start to set policy not based on fear of political consequence, but actually to advance American interests.”
Third, he said he will explain what he calls “a 23-state solution,” which he said requires an expanded frame of view to “think about things not just simply as an Israeli-Palestinian bilateral conflict,” but rather “think about a new regional and comprehensive architecture that includes Israel and the Arab League and the state of Palestine.”
He said he sees this as providing “a win-win-win approach to a conflict that’s been viewed in very win-lose terms over the course of the last few decades.”
Ben-Ami said he thinks the biggest misconception that impacts J Street is the false assumption that antisemitism is a motive for criticizing the violence.
People that hold this misconception think “the critics and opponents of what’s going on over there are doing this out of an animosity toward the Jewish people or an animosity toward Israel, rather than simply because they think what’s happening over there is wrong,” Ben-Ami said.
Regarding the Interfaith Lecture within Week Seven’s theme “Religion, Power and the Moral Stakes of a Changing Global Order,” Ben-Ami said his stances have a deep moral basis, which is “at the heart of the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
“If there’s one thing that should give the Jewish people and the state of the Jewish people their identity, it’s how they treat other people, and that’s the basis of our moral and ethic and religious code,” Ben-Ami said.
In U.S. history, he said Jewish people have been at the forefront of advocating for civil rights, protections of the First Amendment and equal application of the law. He said applying those values to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of J Street’s founding principles.
Ben-Ami explained his approach to J Street’s work also comes from his “political point of view,” and it isn’t something he views strictly as a “policy matter.”
Ben-Ami has formerly held roles at the White House, contributing to seven different presidential campaigns and running political campaigns.
“The real obstacle to creating better policy for the United States on these issues has been the politics of this issue,” he said.
In the 18 years since he founded J Street, Ben-Ami said the organization continues to grow.
“Our influence in Washington is growing, the number of people aligned with us is growing,” he said. “It’s very satisfying that one can actually try to build a movement on a polarized issue that is trying to build some bridges and trying to find a positive way forward.”
Ben-Ami said he has seen progress in J Street’s goal to establish a space for conversation amid polarization.
He said, “We have planted a flag in the center of the debate that says, … ‘We support the state and the people of Israel and — and the ‘and’ is a very important word — we support the same rights for the Palestinian people.’”
He said these rights include a state of their own, as well as freedom, self-determination and dignity.
“And that’s a pro-Israel point of view,” Ben-Ami said.
Ben-Ami will also be available to engage with Chautauquans in a meet-and-greet discussion at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at Everett Jewish Life Center. He said this program will offer a slightly different take from today’s lecture and gear toward “the lessons [he’s] hoping to impart to Jewish communal leaders about how they engage in all of this.”
