Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research & Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement:
The Zionist Organization of America and its president, Morton Abraham Klein, are taking a painful, but necessary step to strongly criticize leftwing former Jewish leaders for joining the extremist, radical anti-Israel, Soros-supported group J Street’s Advisory Council. By joining J Street, these leftist leaders are now disgracefully and dangerously giving support to J Street’s radical, dangerous positions of stopping critical, life-saving U.S. arms to Israel during an existential war; stopping U.S. aid to Israel; stopping Jews from building in Jerusalem; boycotting parts of Israel; condemning the important IHRA definition of antisemitism and many more hostile-to-Israel positions.
Throughout extreme J Street’s 18-year existence, J Street has been wrongly and falsely condemning the Jewish state; lobbying for pro-Iran deals and positions; lobbying against sanctions on Iran; opposing Israeli defensive campaigns against Hamas; promoting a Palestinian terror state – including during Hamas-Fatah unity deals that assured the state would be a Hamas terror state; distorting Jewish teachings; lobbying for anti-Israel UN resolutions; demanding total Jewish construction freezes in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria; boycotting parts of Israel; promoting libelous anti-Israel reports; attacking pro-Israel Christian and Jewish leaders and groups; fundraising and working to defeat pro-Israel political candidates and to elect hostile-to-Israel political candidates; attacking the widely-accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism; distorting history; aiding Israel’s enemies by portraying Israel as fundamentally immoral; attacking AEPi – the major Jewish fraternity on college campuses; and more horrific actions.
J Street also prominently condemned ZOA’s Mort Klein and Christian Zionist leaders in J Street’s launch video, and J Street’s leader Jeremy Ben Ami later publicly condemned ZOA’s Mort Klein as “vilifying” J Street’s leader at the end of their debate, moderated by Rabbi David Wolpe, at LA’s Sinai Temple.
ZOA’s 2018 special report, “J Street Sides With Israel’s Enemies & Works to Destroy Support for Israel,” details J Street’s multiple insidious methods of assaulting Israel and Israel’s friends. Since October 7, radical J Street’s attacks on Israel’s security have been more dangerous than ever. Anti-Israel J Street has been lobbying to eliminate all U.S. aid to Israel (including Iron Dome and other ballistic defense aid); lobbying to condition and block arms sales to Israel while Israel has been faced with an existential 8-front war; opposing Israel’s efforts to eliminate the Iranian nuclear and missile threat (despite the fact that all Israelis – left and right – support Israel’s actions); supporting the ICC’s egregious, unjustified arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders; and falsely intimating that Israel is committing war crimes.
J Street often tries to obtain credence for its extreme, hostile-to-Israel positions and activities by falsely claiming that its dangerous attacks on Israel and aid to Israel’s enemies are “mainstream” positions. For instance, J Street conducts and touts deceptive polls to falsely claim that Americans and Jewish Americans support J Street’s views.
J Street’s latest tack to try to obtain credibility is touting that former leaders of well-known Jewish groups joined the anti-Israel, anti-peace, pro-radical-Arab/Muslim J Street. However, many of these former leaders were already largely far-leftwing and/or previously collaborated with J Street, and cannot “kosherize” J Street’s dangerous, harmful, Israel-hating activities. Specifically:
John Ruskay was a founding member of the radical, pro-terrorist, anti-Israel “peace” activist groups CONAME and Breira [“Alternative”- in existence from 1973-1977]. Eminent journalist Caroline Glick explained: “Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed U.S. military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for U.S. recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma’alot in 1974.” In 2008, Ruskay abused his position at UJA to block Sarah Palin from speaking at a large anti-Iranian nuclear regime rally outside the United Nations. J Street supported Ruskay’s shameful action. Ruskay already serves on the radical New York Jewish Agenda network with six J Street leaders.
Alan Solow was a featured panelist at J Street’s 2017 national conference. Solow is also on the Board of the far-leftwing Israel Policy Forum (“IPF,” which defends J Street). Solow is also Board Chair of the “Nexus Project” – an NIF-funded group that works to undermine and severely limit the IHRA definition of antisemitism. According to the weak, alternate “Nexus” definition that Solow’s Nexus Project promotes, antisemitic actions and statements related to Israel are not deemed to be antisemitic. Even opposing the Jewish State of Israel’s very existence is not considered antisemitic by Nexus!
Bob Goodkind is also on the board of the far-leftwing Israel Policy Forum.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie was a featured speaker at J Street’s first (2009) conference – where he was loudly booed for criticizing the anti-Israel Goldstone report disseminated by J Street, and for criticizing J Street’s failure to support Israel’s Cast Lead campaign against Hamas in Gaza to try to stop Hamas’ persistent rocket attacks on Israel. On the other hand, J Street praised Yoffie for supporting J Street’s other leftwing positions. Given his reception by J Street’s anti-Israel members, Yoffie should know better than to join J Street’s advisory council. Maybe Yoffie naively hopes to change J Street. We saw how poorly that worked out last time.
Nancy Kaufman is a Board member of the radical New York Jewish Agenda, a close J Street ally. In addition, Kaufman was a breakout speaker at J Street’s 2026 convention.
During her former position as CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), Kaufman collaborated with Jew-hater Linda Sarsour and other Israel-haters for the Women’s March. In addition, Kaufman/NCJW, J Street, NIF, HIAS, IfNotNow and other radical groups co-signed a letter in May 2017 defending Sarsour (“We will not stand by as Sarsour is falsely maligned, harassed and smeared. . . .”) and pledging: “We unequivocally . . . publicly state our commitment to working alongside her [Sarsour] for a more just and equal society.”
Sarsour is infamous for tweeting that pro-Israel Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “vagina should be taken away” and that she does not “deserve” to be a woman; for calling Arabs throwing rocks at Israelis “the definition of courage”; for supporting Intifada pogroms; for calling a Jewish councilmember a “Zionist troll”; for saying “nothing is creepier than Zionism”; and for opposing Israel’s right to exist. After ZOA criticized the NCJW/Kaufman/J Street letter defending and pledging to work with Sarsour, Kaufman brought an internal case against ZOA at the Conference of Presidents for daring to speak up about this. NCJW/Kaufman was among the losing minority that voted to admit J Street to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in 2014.
Seymour Reich is a former president of the far-left Israel Policy Forum. In 2015, Reich called on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to “bite the bullet” and postpone Netanyahu’s important speech to Congress regarding Iran. In 2018, Reich revealed that he is suffering from a delusion that J Street can stem radical Muslim Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred: Reich claimed that “we have to embrace” J Street and similar groups, because they can “reach out” to Jew-haters Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, because “they speak the same language.” Of course, J Street isn’t moderating Omar, AOC and Tlaib. Instead, J Street is supporting many of Omar’s, AOC’s and Tlaib’s positions and providing grist for their anti-Israel hatred.
Charles Ratner wrote a blog post for the Times of Israel back in January 2025 supporting J Street; condemning Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister and Israel’s “character”; condemning Israel as “not living up to the promise of its founding”; (ironically) condemning Israel’s duly elected government as “attack[ing] the foundations of Israel’s democracy”; and falsely calling Jews living in the historic lawful Jewish lands of Judea-Samaria an “occupation.” In addition, Ratner called for surging aid to Gaza and “a strong international commitment to the rebuilding of Gaza” – without saying anything about requiring Hamas to disarm or deradicalize. In other words, Ratner’s blog was in the J Street mold of condemning and undermining Israel while requiring nothing from Israel’s enemies.
Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, like J Street, twisted Judaism to condemn Israel for defending herself in a multi-front war of survival. In a 2025 podcast with Israel-hater Peter Beinart, who opposes Israel’s existence, Schorsch called “what Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza” a “Hillul Hashem” (a desecration of G-d’s name), “a violation of the covenant between Israel and G-d”; a “catastrophe,” a “Messianic debacle,” and said it would “make it very difficult to embrace Judaism.” Schorsch also spoke about Judaism being a “hypocritical religion” now, and bemoaned “how are we going to live with ourselves”? In addition, Schorsch outrageously analogized standing up to Israel’s actions to standing up to the Nazis’ actions.
Other former Jewish leaders who joined the extremist J Street’s advisory council include: Rabbi David Saperstein; former Rep. Howard Berman; Allan Finkelstein; Rabbi Steve Gutow; Peter Joseph; Jennifer Brodkey Kaufman; Rabbi Irwin Kula; Mel Levine; Rabbi Brian Lurie; Lynn Lyss; Hannah Rosenthal; Rabbi Deborah Waxman; and Larry Zicklin.
Why have these former Jewish leaders lent their names to J Street, which has such odious, even antisemitic, policies? They have all now tainted their names and reputations by aligning themselves with J Street and its policies of ending U.S. arms and aid to Israel, opposing Jews building in large parts of Jerusalem and opposing the important, widely accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism and many more dangerous anti-Israel policies.
It seems like these former Jewish leaders have learned nothing from the horrors and atrocities that 7,000 Muslim Arabs, including 3,800 Hamas Nukhba forces, Abbas’ Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Palestinian Authority terrorists), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and thousands of gleeful “ordinary” Gazan “civilians” perpetrated against innocent Jews on October 7th when they murdered, raped, and tortured 1,200 innocent Jews and kidnapped 251 Jews.
We strongly urge these former Jewish leaders to reconsider joining J Street’s council and to retract their names.
In any event, these former leaders’ official, public alliance with J Street does not mainstream or kosherize J Street’s hateful attacks against the Jewish state that endanger innocent Jewish women, children and men and the Jewish State itself.