Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter on Monday branded J Street a “cancer within the Jewish community,” taking issue with the dovish Mideast lobby’s calls for restricting US aid to Israel over the latter’s treatment of the Palestinians.

“The worst thing about J Street is its duplicitousness,” Leiter said in remarks to a gathering of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism at Washington’s Museum of the Bible.

“How can you be pro-Israel and advocate for an arms embargo on a state that’s fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies?” Leiter said, referring to J Street billing itself as the “political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans.”

“If they said that they were pro-Palestinian, I wouldn’t have a problem meeting with them. I meet with pro-Palestinian groups,” Leiter claimed, in remarks first reported by the JNS news site.

“But when you come and say in such a two-faced manner, ‘We’re pro-Israel, we’re pro democracy’ — there’s a democratically elected government in Israel. You don’t like Netanyahu, make Aliyah, vote in the next election and express yourself. Don’t say you’re ‘pro-democracy’ and decry and defy the position of the democratic government of Israel,” he added.

J Street says it brands itself as pro-democracy to emphasize its commitment to protecting democratic........

© The Times of Israel