A lament for America’s Jews.docVIP

A lament for America’s Jews 美国犹太人的悲哀 ELECTIONS are to special-interest groups what spinach is to Popeye. So it was no surprise that the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the beginning of this month produced the usual pandering. Barack Obama, Arab-Israeli peacemaking on hold, said that when the chips were down “I have Israel’s back”. When Mitt Romney’s video address began, one wicked tweet wondered whether the Republican candidate would promise to make his inauguration speech from Jerusalem. In the event, he promised only to make Jerusalem his first port of call as president. In recent years, however, mighty AIPAC has had to cope with an irritant: a small but dogged competitor. On March 24th a different group of American Jews will meet in downtown Washington at the conference of the organization known as J Street. J Street is growing, though still a tiddler by AIPAC standards. It now has 50-odd staffers, and has lined up Ehud Olmert, Israel’s former prime minister, as next week’s keynote speaker. The J Streeters are peaceniks, always banging on about the two-state solution. AIPAC says it is neutral in Israeli politics, but is closer to Israel’s Likud. J Streeters fret about the stateless Palestinians and the damage Israel’s occupation of the West Bank does to its soul. The question at AIPAC is when Mr Obama will send his bombers to squish Iran’s nuclear ambitions. At first glance, this looks like a quarrel about foreign policy. But what if something else is at stake: the future of American Jewry itself? Enter Peter Beinart, a political scientist and former editor of the liberal (and pro-Israel) weekly, the New Republic. At J Street next week he will launch a book, “The Crisis of Zionism” (Times Books), which has already sent plenty of people into a spin. That is because, though a passionate Zionist, Mr Beinart wants Israel to save its democracy by leaving the West Bank. He therefore calls in the book—and, provocativel