J Street regional director shares views in Portland

By JEWISH REVIEW

article created on: 2010-08-15T00:00:00

The regional director of J Street was in Portland Aug. 2 and 3 to promote the message of the group that calls itself “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.”

Gordon Gladstone is J Street’s director for Northern California and the U.S. Northwest. He works out of the Bay Area. Previously, he was the director of Hillel at the University of California at Berkeley.

Gladstone appeared the evening of Aug. 2 at Havurah Shalom where a crowd of 35-40 persons had gathered to meet him.

His appearance here came on the heels of the J Street launch in July of its “Community of Yes” campaign designed to build a groundswell of public support for a strong U.S. leadership role in achieving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.

“We are very focused on working to help this administration to exert the leadership that will help to bring the parties together,” Gladstone told the Jewish Review the day after his appearance at Havurah.

“Part of that means creating space in the American Jewish community to have an open conversation. That space is constrained. We are working to expand that room,” he added.

J Street leadership consistently argues their belief that public debate of the Israeli-Palestinian issue in America has deliberately been limited in a way that alienates what they describe as the largely liberal Jewish community—including, they say, a large part of the young Jewish community. This, they add, denies that liberal sector of the community an effective role in helping to shape national policy.

“The Community of Yes is a campaign we have launched with a number of organizations in an effort to demonstrate the depth of consensus of whether the United States should be providing leadership” to help achieve a two-state solution.

Gladstone said that J Street’s position is that “direct negotiations should resume” between Israelis and Palestinians and that “American leadership can bring them back to the table.”

However, for America’s leadership to do that the environment for dialogue needs to change.

“Our goal is to create political space for the president to exert his leadership. The Yes campaign shows a growing segment of the population in support (of this goal).”

Sandy Polishuk co-chairs J Street Portland with Joel Glick. She said the new group already has more than a thousand individuals on its mailing list and that their events usually attract 40-50 people.

Gladstone said that J Street has more than 150,000 supporters nationwide. The group has formed a political action committee called JStreet PAC. It has endorsed 60 candidates and maintains a lobbying team in Washington.