A New Israel Lobby

A NEW ISRAEL LOBBY….A new pro-Israel lobby, JStreet, has been started up as a moderate counterweight to the increasingly hawkish AIPAC. Laura Rozen reports:

“What has happened in the political world is that the people both elected [to Congress] and candidates and the folks around them have come to believe that the only way to speak to the Jewish community is to take the most right-wing position,’ [Jeremy] Ben Ami said. “There is no political benefit to be at the center.”

….For now, Ben Ami tells me he is working out of his basement, the organization has no headquarters and doesn’t plan for one, and plans to operate heavily in the online world. “We’re following the MoveOn model, of being virtual, and heavily online,” Ben Ami says. “Part of our goal and plan in the coming year is to develop an online presence in the way that Obama and Dean and MoveOn have done … and to tap into that and have a large base of small donors.”

Well, the journey of a thousand miles etc. etc. Good luck to ’em. God knows AIPAC could use the competition.