J Street head says he’s convinced Gaza war is a genocide

The president of dovish Mideast lobby J Street says he can no longer argue against those characterizing Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide.

“Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide,” Jeremy Ben Ami writes in a post on Substack published yesterday. “I have, however, been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”

J Street, which characterizes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace and lobbies lawmakers in Washington to adopt policies that advance a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, appears to become one of the most prominent Jewish American groups to legitimize the use of the term.

“The personal pain of my own family from a crime that I believe has no parallel – and my association of the word genocide exclusively with that event — means I am unlikely to use the term myself,” Ben Ami writes. “But I cannot and will not argue any more against those using the term. I simply won’t defend the indefensible.”