“J Street is gravely concerned by the apparent failure of the latest round of Jordanian-sponsored talks between Israel and the PLO.

While no one had high expectations for these talks, no one should take satisfaction in seeing predicted failure come to pass. The interests at stake – for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, the US and the Quartet—are too serious and the consequences of failure too dire.

The status quo between Israel and the Palestinians is unsustainable, with the lack of a two-state solution leaving only one state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. While the failure of talks may satisfy extremists on both sides, the security of Israel, as well as its Jewish and democratic character, hang in the balance and should be of great concern to all who care about Israel’s future.

There is more than enough regret to go around in light of this latest failure. We regret that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appears ready to end these talks without showing flexibility regarding the deadline for Israeli proposals. We regret that the Government of Israel has not provided the substantive proposal on borders and security requested by the Quartet. Above all, we regret that the Quartet and the US did not exert more forceful leadership in laying out a clear timeline for the process and in holding the parties accountable for meeting their obligations.

We urge the parties to work with relevant international mediators, including European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, to salvage these talks. “

UPDATE, January 27, 2012: Following the release of this statement yesterday, news broke that the Israelis had “verbally outlined their positions” on borders in a meeting on and Wednesday.

We reiterate our call for the United States and the Quartet to provide the strong leadership necessary to achieve a diplomatic two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including setting clear expectations for both parties and holding both parties accountable for meeting them.

J Street is today releasing a video featuring the views of former Mossad Directors Ephraim Halevy and Meier Dagan, former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Middle East advisor to six U.S. Secretaries of State Aaron David Miller, among others, who have sought to challenge the facile assumptions and rhetoric of those arguing for war. It is required viewing for those who truly want to understand what is at stake for the United States and Israel in deciding how to prevent the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran.

J Street believes that Iran obtaining nuclear weapons would pose a very serious threat to American and Israeli interests and to peace and stability in the Middle East and around the world.

The United States has a fundamental interest, along with Israel and the international community, in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, and J Street supports concrete American actions to address this threat. We support a comprehensive and multilateral approach, including sanctions and active diplomacy.

“We are appalled by Palestinian Sheikh Muhammad Hussein’s incendiary invocation at a political event held by the Fatah party, in which he recited Muslim hadith inciting Muslims to kill Jews as a requisite for religious resurrection. The Mufti of Jerusalem’s use of such language should be roundly condemned by all who support a political, non-violent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We are also deeply concerned that such incitement was given a platform by the Fatah party and that it was later broadcast on Palestinian Authority television.

Attempts by Palestinian Authority officials to explain Sheikh Hussein’s inflammatory remarks as a matter of religious dictum, not policy, and pertaining only to the future, not the present, are not only woefully inadequate but stoke the flames of distrust between the parties.

Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will require that moderate voices on both sides, who recognize that peace and security depend on achieving a two-state solution, defeat voices of extremism that preach hatred and violence.

We urge the leadership of the Palestinian Authority to condemn such incitement and to ensure that it has no place in the PA’s official media or programs.”

“J Street condemns in the strongest possible terms the editorial in the Atlanta Jewish Times, written by the paper’s own publisher, that included a call for Israel to consider the assassination of President Obama. Andrew Adler’s remarks are un-American and decidedly not pro-Israel. An apology is insufficient and we welcome news that the US Secret Service is taking the ‘appropriate investigative steps.’

Words can’t express the repugnance that all Americans – Jewish and other – must feel toward someone who could use language like this. It is out of keeping with American and Jewish values.

This incident should serve, however, as more than an opportunity to join in condemning a lone extremist. It should be a wake-up call for the Jewish community that the discourse around the President and Israel, generally, has gotten far out of control.

One problem is that we have allowed the portion of American Jewry who disagrees with President Obama’s policies to too freely call him ‘anti-Israel’ without adequate pushback from the leaders of our largest communal institutions, who know that charge to be untrue.

Further, the extremism evinced by the Atlanta Jewish Times’ editor is enabled by a broader communal atmosphere in which critics of Israeli governmental policy are regularly called anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic.

While we welcome the outrage that is being focused around this latest incident, we hope that the American Jewish community will take this opportunity to consider the state of discourse over Israel more broadly.

We need to temper the rhetoric and recognize that disagreements over policy do not justify the vilification and smears that they too often bring.

We urge the community’s leadership to address this broader phenomenon directly and in a coordinated and meaningful manner.”

I agree that the use of the term “Israel Firster” is a bad choice of words. The conspiracy theory that American Jews have dual loyalty is just that, a conspiracy theory and must be refuted in the strongest possible way.

However, this incident is a perfect example of a more pressing problem with the way the debate plays out over Israel in the American Jewish community and in American politics. Rather than engage directly over whether or not American and/or Israeli policies are actually advancing American and Israeli interests, an ill-chosen word or phrase is used to delegitimize a critic or in this case an entire institution.
The real question we should be debating is not the use of the term “Israel Firster” but the underlying questions being raised by CAP and others over the direction of American foreign policy – how best to achieve a two-state solution and how to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon without going to war.

Disagreements over substantive issues should be engaged with substantive arguments and shouldn’t be sidestepped with debates over word choice.

One final and important point: American Jews and communal leaders should not overreach with charges of anti-Semitism in incidents like this. When real anti-Semitism actually rears its ugly head, people will be far less likely to listen.