Does J Street Exist?
“Was born in America but my taxes go to killin’ Arab kids / Who look just like me, you tell me who’s the terrorist?”
–A.Rob “Freedom Ain’t Free” (2025)
When I worked in Washington, I had the vague impression that J Street was on the side of the good guys. Yes, they worked on behalf of the US alliance with Israel at a time when I was starting to hear murmurs about an apartheid regime on the ground, but they weren’t like AIPAC; they were all Democrats!
Of course, that was a time when there was no “left” to speak of; when Beltway awareness of apartheid against Palestinians was quite low; and when the price of existing in the Washington foreign policy scene was an unflinching fidelity to American exceptionalism and US global primacy.
I bring this up because I’ve never clashed directly with—and never even had much of an opinion about—J Street, which Wikipedia describes as a “liberal Zionist advocacy and lobbying group.” But I’ve noticed that it’s had a tough time doing its job since October 8, 2023. Popular opinion is generally against genocidaires, and it didn’t take long for Israeli bloodletting to turn the world against itself. The latest numbers, in fact, signal just how much the world has changed:
This context of a dramatic sea change in US politics is important for situating the sturm und drang that erupted when J Street announced last week that it supported longstanding popular demands to end US financial support for Israel’s military. The timing of the announcement came only weeks after AOC had stated publicly that she opposed funding for the Israeli military, including for Iron Dome. Democrats have similarly begun recalibrating their stance on Israel. Even the Dems’ leading hawk, Elissa Slotkin, now opposes certain forms of arms transfers to Israel, though she still supports “defensive” weapons sales and subsidies.
But all is not as it seems.
Policy wonks and activists alike need to understand how the terrain has and has not shifted. Nobody in the Zionist camp has called for an end to the Pentagon policy of QME (qualitative military edge) through which the US commits to ensuring Israeli military primacy in the Middle East even as the US also sells advanced weapons to Israel’s Gulf neighbors.1
Whether we can take J Street’s shift as a win for Progress is not especially important. What is important is that Netanyahu himself has publicly stated the need for Israel to ween itself off of Uncle Sugar’s free money, which it does not need. And this is the problem: As long as QME remains in place, shifts in US security policy toward Israel represent changes in how the US supports Israel’s militarism and expansionism, but not the fact of supporting it. What J Street advocates ending—along with centrist Dems—is what’s called “Foreign Military Financing,” but that’s only one of several vehicles for furnishing arms.
It gets worse. The J Street shift comes a year after Israel itself began proposing to US legislators a move away from FMF toward the co-production of weapons—a change in the mode of weapons acquisitions, not a curbing of Israeli armament. The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project has the receipts:
Likud MK Amit Halevi has been spearheading an effort to transform the US-Israel military relationship to one of “joint projects and investments” rather than FMF–a plan which Israel pitched extensively to the Trump administration and Capitol Hill last year.
…Last March, Heritage published a policy paper entitled “U.S.–Israel Strategy: From Special Relationship to Strategic Partnership, 2029–2047”. Heritage argues for a gradual phasing out of FMF while increasing appropriations for the co-development and co-production of weapons, and Israel’s commitment to purchase increasing amounts of US weapons from its own funds through Foreign Military Sales (FMS). Under Heritage’s model, in total, the annual flow of US weapons to Israel would increase from $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion annually despite FMF appropriations being phased out.
And last December, Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, published a similar policy paper entitled “Beyond the U.S.-Israel MOU: The Case for a Strategic Partnership Agreement”. Bowman argues that a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) between the US and Israel should replace the previous MOU model. However, unlike Heritage’s proposal, FDD does not advocate ending FMF appropriations to Israel; instead these would be subsumed in a broader $5 billion annual Partnership Investment Incentive (PII), which, in addition to FMF appropriations would also include–like the Heritage proposal–increased levels of funding for the co-development and co-production of weapons and Israeli purchases of US weapons, presumably through FMS.
While differing over the question of whether to continue FMF appropriations for Israel…both aim to enhance, rather than diminish US-Israeli military coordination and cooperation, and to increase, rather than decrease, weapons flows from the US to Israel.
Since 10/7, I’ve been pretty conflicted over how to think about liberal Zionism, of which J Street is probably the foremost institutional expression. What I can say confidently is this: Any organization or ideology that supports perpetuating a regional power’s military primacy—especially when that power is liable for crimes against humanity—is on the wrong side and needs to get right. A section of US and Israeli elites have a very millenarian death drive; there’s no reason why US taxpayer money should be aiding and abetting it.
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As I wrote in Grand Strategies of the Left, ending QME is a consensus demand among advocates for a progressive foreign policy; low-hanging political fruit.
