When criticism becomes collapse: J Street’s genocide reckoning

Once “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” its president now says the Jewish state may be committing genocide, raising urgent questions about where dissent ends and damage begins.

In the wake of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 massacre and the war that followed, most of the American Jewish community stood where they always have—on the side of Israel’s right to self-defense. But a vocal minority chose another path: undermining Israel at one of its darkest hours.

 

Kibbutz Be'eri in southern Israel, Dec. 19, 2023.
Photo by Moshe Shai/Flash90.

Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and increasingly, even J Street, have not merely criticized Israeli policy. They’ve crossed a moral line—providing rhetorical ammunition to Israel’s enemies, weakening U.S. support and sowing confusion in the American Jewish community.

 Their rhetoric may be cloaked in humanitarian language, but their actions—and now their slander—raise an urgent question: Have these groups done harm to Israel during wartime?

 Start with JVP. This group responded to Hamas’s atrocities not with condemnation but with justification. Within days, JVP blamed Israeli “apartheid” and “occupation” for the slaughter of 1,200 men, women and children in southern Israeli communities. They demanded an end to U.S. military aid, accused Israel of war crimes and staged disruptive protests in congressional offices and on major highways.

 This is not moral clarity—it’s moral inversion.

 IfNotNow, a group that claims to represent young progressive Jews, joined the ceasefire chorus almost immediately, even before Israel had buried its dead or begun rescuing the 251 people taken hostage and dragged into Gaza. In August 2025, its activists led protests outside Trump Hotel and Columbus Circle in Manhattan, demanding that Washington halt arms shipments to Israel.

 One wonders if they would have protested U.S. arms to Britain in 1941.

 But perhaps the most troubling shift has come from J Street, long the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby. Until recently, many in the Jewish community believed that while J Street could be sharply critical of Israeli policy, it still operated from a place of concern for Israel’s survival. That illusion collapsed this week.

 In a shocking turn, J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami announced that he now believes Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza. In a Tisha B’Av newsletter, he wrote:

 “I have … been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”

 He went further: “Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide. … I simply won’t defend the indefensible.”

 And as if anticipating the backlash, he added: “How can it be that Israel—the state founded by a people who experienced genocide—could itself be committing this most heinous of crimes?”

 Ben-Ami’s words are not merely irresponsible. They are inflammatory. Genocide is the most serious accusation one can level against a nation. It is not a policy critique; it is an allegation of premeditated, systematic mass murder. And to make that claim while Israel fights an enemy that openly calls for its annihilation is a betrayal of both truth and decency.

 This is not a fringe activist speaking. This is the head of a Washington lobby with access to lawmakers and influence in the halls of power. When Jeremy Ben-Ami accuses Israel of genocide, it sends a signal to the media, to Congress and to Israel’s enemies: The Jewish consensus is cracking.

 These groups insist that they are acting in defense of Jewish values. But their words and actions have made Israel’s job harder, not easier. They have given cover to anti-Israel resolutions, weakened bipartisan support and contributed to a global narrative that blames Israel for a war it did not start and never wanted.

 When Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran see Jewish groups denouncing Israel in terms indistinguishable from their own propaganda, they see weakness—and opportunity. These terror regimes aren’t interested in nuance. They are interested in victory. And when J Street speaks of genocide, they hear: “Keep going. The Jews are turning on each other.”

 Let’s be clear: Israel does not demand silence. Israelis themselves debate every aspect of this war. But there is a line between loyal criticism and disloyal defamation. These groups—and now, J Street, most shamefully—have crossed it.

 They do not represent most American Jews. Polling shows that a clear majority support Israel’s war against Hamas and understand that Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization, not a national liberation movement. Most American Jews understand that this is not a war of choice. It is a war of survival.

 We can debate strategy. We can question policy. But accusing Israel of genocide—while under rocket fire, while grieving its dead, while rescuing hostages—is not righteous. It’s reckless. And it’s very, very wrong.

 At moments like this, solidarity matters. So does truth. And the truth is this: When Jewish leaders like Jeremy Ben-Ami repeat the slanders of Israel’s enemies, they don’t defend peace. They damage the one Jewish state we have.

 That’s not dissent. That’s betrayal.

Stephen M. Flatow

This column originally appeared on JNS.ORG.  You can read it and others by me here.

 

 

American Jews, this is your war, too

Hamas doesn’t care whether you support Netanyahu or not. When Jews are murdered for being Jews, unity must come before politics.

Let’s be honest: Benjamin Netanyahu is not everyone’s favorite politician. That’s fair. Debate over policy, leadership and politics is healthy in any democracy, including Israel’s. But there comes a point in times of war when internal disagreements must be set aside.

Because this war is not about Bibi. It is about Israel’s survival. And the Jewish people, especially American Jews, must not let personality distract from principle.

Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has faced a military, moral and psychological assault of unprecedented complexity. Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 250, including children, the elderly and entire families, was not just a “battle.” It was a pogrom, fueled by genocidal ideology and celebrated openly by its perpetrators. Yet today, Israel is the one on trial in the court of public opinion, not the murderers who triggered the war.

Hamas doesn’t care whether you support Netanyahu or not. When Jews are murdered for being Jews, unity must come before politics.

 

What Israel faces in Gaza is not a conventional war or even a typical counterterrorism campaign. It is asymmetric warfare against a terrorist organization that intentionally uses its own civilians as tools of war. Hamas stores weapons in schools, digs tunnels under hospitals and launches rockets from densely populated neighborhoods. It steals food aid from the population. This is not incidental; it is strategy.

 

Hamas leaders have made this explicit. In 2008, Fathi Hammad, then Hamas’s interior minister, declared:  “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry. … This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen.”

 

What sane person would say that?

 

That’s not rhetoric; it’s policy. Hamas relies on images of dead civilians, especially children, to inflame world opinion and pressure Israel into submission. Tragically, too many in the West, including some Jewish voices, fall for this manipulative theater. They call for ceasefires, condemn Israeli “disproportionality” and wring their hands at the humanitarian crisis, while ignoring how Hamas engineers that crisis.

 

But put this in perspective. During the U.S.-led assault on ISIS in Mosul from 2016 to 2017, between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were estimated to have died, according to The New York Times. That battle, fought by Western militaries with advanced precision weaponry, still resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. No one accused the United States of genocide. No one proposed sanctions.

 

Yet Israel, which goes to unprecedented lengths to warn civilians, including dropping leaflets, making phone calls and pausing operations to allow evacuations, is treated like a rogue state.

 

The moral asymmetry here is staggering. Hamas celebrates death. Israel mourns it, even when forced to cause it to protect its own people.

 

And yet, Western diplomats—many from countries that have never faced a single rocket attack—dare to lecture Israel on restraint. The European Union, Canada and even the United States have called for a “ceasefire,” as if peace can be restored by papering over mass murder.

 

Some American Jews have joined that chorus, distancing themselves from Israel out of discomfort with its current government. That’s not just misguided. It’s dangerous.

 

Hamas doesn’t hate Israel because of the policies of Netanyahu and his government. It hates Israel because it exists. Article 13 of the Hamas Charter states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”

 

Diplomacy, negotiation, peace-building? “All are a waste of time,” the document says.

 

This is the enemy Israel is fighting. An enemy backed by Iran and Qatar, supplied by global jihad networks and committed—openly, unapologetically—to the eradication of the Jewish state.

 

To our fellow Jews in the Diaspora, especially in America: This war is about you, too. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran don’t care whether you vote Likud or Labor, whether you’re Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or unsure. On Oct. 7, Hamas murdered Thai farm workers and Israeli Bedouin alongside Jews. Their hatred is not nuanced. It is total.

 

And as antisemitism, let’s call it what it is—Jew-hatred—surges on campuses, in public squares, and online, it’s clear that Hamas’s war against Israel is fueling a broader war against Jews everywhere. This is not just a political crisis but a civilizational one.

 

So, what is the role of American Jews?

 

It is to stand with Israel—not conditionally, not reluctantly and not just when it’s easy. It is to reject the moral fog that equates a democratic state defending its citizens with a terrorist group that hides behind children. It is to recognize that you can critique Israeli policy at another time, but right now, we must remain united.

 

To those who are hesitant, ask yourself this: Would you demand moral perfection from any other country under siege? Would you have told Britain in 1940 to cease fire until Winston Churchill stepped down?

 

Israel’s democracy will sort out its leadership in due time. However, today, it needs our solidarity. Our advocacy. Our unapologetic defense in the face of global slander.

 

As the Psalmist wrote: “He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” But Israel still needs us to stay awake—and to stand up.

Stephen M. Flatow

This column originally appeared on JNS.ORG.  You can read it and others by me here.