Life

Ben-Ami Takes to the Airwaves

By Nathan Guttman November 23, 2009

J-Street, the Jewish communities’ lightening rod, is now taking its debate with other Jewish organizations to the airwaves. It is not every day that Jewish leaders air their communal dirty laundry out in the open, but that is exactly what happened over the weekend when Jeremy Ben-Ami, leader of the dovish lobby, met with David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, at Christian Amanpour’s CNN studio.

Here is the debate in full. It starts off rather mellow but heats up toward the end.

According to Amanpour, AIPAC representatives turned down an invitation to debate Ben-Ami.

Hours after the show aired on CNN, Ben-Ami held a live discussion at the New York 92nd street Y with Alan Dershowitz. There too it was hard to find many points of agreement.

And in between Ben-Ami took some time to exchange punches with the ADL’s Abe Foxman over the timeless Jewish question: Can one attack Sarah Palin’s views on settlements and still call himself pro-Israel?

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.