Tuesday, May 15, 2012

New Video Of J Street Leader Carinne Luck On J Street Strategy

Yesterday, I blogged about a short video from a J Street training session where J Street leader Carinne Luck discussed dealing with the issue of  J Street's large non-Jewish membership.

J Street had YouTube take down the video, claiming copyright infringement.

Here now is a video of the original segment, posted by Elder of Ziyon:



I did a transcript of the original video provided by Pro-Israel Media. That video indicated at minimum an admission that:
  • There is an uneasiness how J Street represents themselves without lying outright
  • A sizable percentage of J Street is not Jewish
  • The goal of J Street is advocacy to the Jewish community--not representation of it.
Here is the transcript:
Man: We have some support and interest in the Jewish community. We get much more support outside the traditional Jewish community [his emphasis]. We know that for political reasons we have to be sensitive to the composition of the leadership. Can you address this very uncomfortable question?

Carinne Luck: Is this Jewish/non-Jewish? Is that the question you were going to ask?

Man: Yes.

Carinne Luck: We've been told as what people in the administration, what they are looking to from us. It is very specific. They want us to see us primarily moving Jews. American Jews. And so that is where the bulk of our resources go...

I think for us building power is "how do we build power in our own community?"

But that is why for our leadership, you know we want our leadership to be comfortable going in and meeting with someone saying "as an American Jew I do this" and if that's inauthentic, you know, I mean look I would never tell someone to lie. If they choose to that's their business.

And I do know there is this feeling like "but there's all these people that are supportive". Certainly there is nothing wrong with telling them they are part of our numbers. Like we do not say we are an exclusively Jewish organization and if they want to sign up to our list, that's great.
Is it any wonder J Street wanted this video removed from YouTube?

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