J Street is having an identity crisis right in front of the cameras. For a year and a half it's been trumpeting that it's both "pro-Israel" and "pro-peace." Actually, that's how I would characterize myself. I am for a two-state solution and always have been. I was for a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state" ever since I was a kid. That's ultimately what nearly every Israeli prime minister has been for, too. And that's what Israel has been trying in different ways and in different circumstances to negotiate. Like me, Golda Meir had very serious doubts about the viability of the Palestinians as a people. But she also did not want to govern them. Who, for that matter, would? Not even the Palestinians themselves. Which is why Yasir Arafat, having a Palestinian state handed to him on a plate by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, broke it in front of them and embarked on his disastrous "second intifada," now recalled as the heroic period of resistance. Some heroism, the terror they unleashed.
Anyway, since J Street was putting out its banners on the Jewish street, it defined itself as it had to: yes, "pro-Israel, pro-peace." But in a very palpable sense it was not pro-Israel in that it favored every cockamamie strategy and tactic, personality and group (and grouplet), slogan and world-view that put the Jewish homeland in peril. In the end, almost everyone came to realize that J Street would not and maybe could not be supportive of a Jewish homeland until every last Palestinian was satisfied.