NOVANEWS
Le Monde: A European J Street?
Cross-posted from JNews.
The Jewish peace camp’s attempt at rebirth in Europe
Gilles Paris, Le Monde, April 23 2010 [translated by Idit Arad; French original here]
The name J Street is already taken, so this is called J Call. On 3rd May, in Brussels, a new European Jewish movement for peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be launched.
The similarities between the organisation and the American J Street, a pro-Israeli and pro-peace organisation created in April 2008, are not coincidental: in common with J Street, the founders of J Call are alarmed at the complete deadlock in discussions between Israelis and Palestinians, and support international intervention to try and salvage the wreck that the political peace process has become.
“Israel faces existential threats,” they write in their “Call for Reason,” launched in the hope of assembling and uniting the European survivors of the ‘peace camp’ once identified with the Israeli left, which has progressively crumbled since the second Palestinian intifada. In Israel’s last election in 2009, combined support for the Zionist parties thought of as ‘the left’ (Labour and Meretz) collapsed to an all-time low of 16 seats (out of 120).
‘Far from underestimating the threats from its external enemies, we know that the danger also lies in the occupation and the continuing pursuit of settlements in the West Bank and in the Arab districts of East Jerusalem. These policies are morally and politically wrong and feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad.’
