The name J Street is already taken, so this is called J Call. On 3rd May, in Brussels, a new European Jewish movement for peace between Israelis and Palestinians will be launched.

The similarities between the organisation and the American J Street, a pro-Israeli and pro-peace organisation created in April 2008, are not coincidental: in common with J Street, the founders of J Call are alarmed at the complete deadlock in discussions between Israelis and Palestinians, and support international intervention to try and salvage the wreck that the political peace process has become.

“Israel faces existential threats,” they write in their “Call for Reason,” launched in the hope of assembling and uniting the European survivors of the ‘peace camp’ once identified with the Israeli left, which has progressively crumbled since the second Palestinian intifada. In Israel’s last election in 2009, combined support for the Zionist parties thought of as ‘the left’ (Labour and Meretz) collapsed to an all-time low of 16 seats (out of 120):

‘Far from underestimating the threats from its external enemies, we know that the danger also lies in the occupation and the continuing pursuit of settlements in the West Bank and in the Arab districts of East Jerusalem. These policies are morally and politically wrong and feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad.’

This opposition to settlements, especially in Jerusalem, runs counter to the political stance taken by Benyamin Netanyahu’s government, and stands out when compared with the political line normally taken by mainstream European Jewish organisations. For example, the CRIF (the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France) has defended the Israeli rejection of an eventual division of Jerusalem.

“The systematic alignment (of all) with the politics of the current Israeli government is dangerous since it goes against the very interests of the Jewish state,’ say the founders of J Call, who think that “the survival of the state of Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state depends on the creation of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state.” They call upon “the European Union, along with the United States”, to “put pressure on both parties”.

If it follows the precedent of J Street, the existence of J Call should feed the debate that is at the heart of European Jewish institutions today.

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