The new anti-establishment, establishment.

National Conference on Jewish Affairs

Contact: Dr. Herbert I. London herb@hudson.org
Lori Lowenthal Marcus (610) 664-1184 lorilowenthalmarcus@gmail.com
Beth Gilinsky (212) 726-1124 bgilinsky@gmail.com

New York, September 18, 2011 – In response to the silence, once again, of the major Jewish organizations in the face of increasingly outrageous and dangerous attacks against Israel and the Jewish community, Jewish leaders and organizations from across America have united to create a new umbrella leadership organization.


The National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA) is addressing significant issues of concern to the Jewish community in stark contrast to the failure to lead and lethargy of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and most establishment Jewish officials. In addition to taking the actions and making the statements that are necessary, the NCJA will also expose and confront Jewish organizations and leaders who are enabling and supporting those undermining the security of Israel, America and the Jewish People.

In a week of extraordinary challenges to the Jewish community, NCJA
constituent groups and leaders are organizing, participating or supporting many of those events where Jewish establishment groups are nowhere to be found.

Dr. Herbert I. London, a member of the NCJA’s Policy Committee, stated: “The establishment Jewish organizations have been deficient in standing with Israel and the Jewish People at crucial times. This week is yet another of those times where they are absent. We need the leadership of the National Conference on Jewish Affairs to address with strength the most pressing issues of our time.”

Another NCJA Policy Committee member, Z Street President Lori Lowenthal Marcus, stated: “Leadership requires independence: the ability to sometimes stand alone, outside of the comfort zone of popularity, and it also requires independent thought, an assessment of what is truly best, not what is most likely to be comfortable or acceptable to the broadest audience or the largest donors.”

Rabbi Aryeh Spero, a member of the NCJA’s Honorary Advisory Committee, adds:

    “The Jewish community has been looking for strong and vigorous statements or public demonstrations by the major Jewish organizations in support of Israel’s position regarding Jerusalem, UDI, and other questions. Where have the major organizations been throughout the last three years of the current Administration’s derisive and hostile actions against Israel? How come they have not come to the defense of young Jewish students on college campuses physically and vocally harassed by Muslims and leftwing professors? It has become evident to the grassroots Jewish community that the Jewish establishment organizations and their staffs live in a world separate from real Jewish concerns.”

Adds Richard Allen, Founder of JCC Watch and a member of NCJA’s Policy
Committee, “The failure of establishment Jewish leadership is so pronounced, and we see that breakdown again in the stark environment of this current week with the U.N., that a fresh, new voice is needed to represent the Jewish People.”

Political strategist Beth Gilinsky added: “Our community is repeatedly silenced and demoralized at crucial times by statements from the establishment Jewish groups, asserting that they are ‘working behind the scenes’ or ‘meeting with leaders’ or ‘dialoguing’. But real leaders are those who have enough conviction that they boldly, without being begged, defend their People when unjustly assailed. The establishment organizations have failed the Jewish community, endangered us, and destroyed our confidence as a People.

“The NCJA will now restore that confidence.”

NCJA invites Jews and non-Jewish friends of Israel to join this dynamic initiative by contacting natlconference@gmail.com or (212) 726-1124.

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—
Lori Lowenthal Marcus
president, Z STREET
WWW.ZSTREET.ORG
P.O. Box 182
Merion Station, PA 19072
phone: 610.664.1184
fax: 610.664.1186
on twitter: LoriLMarcus
RETHINKING THE END GAME: Improving Lives
in the Middle East

September 22, 2011 | 2 Comments »

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  2. Lance Silver writes

    Count me in.

    My mantra is, and has been for years, that “systemic Islamic dogma and doctrine”, as in the Qur’an, aHadith, Sira-Sunna and Shari’ah Law, compels Muslims to intimidation, Taqiyya, mayhem and murder against all non Muslim cultures and against some of their own; this has been a behavioral fact for close to 1,400 years. It’s simply da’wa.

    I’d be delighted to participate in any programs large and small to place this existential message in front of our Jewish brethren to understand and digest. I’m not a practitioner of being politically correct because it’s suicidal. The reason we have no peace, Judeo-Christian definition, is because Islam is commanded not to permit it by Allah in the text, unless it’s a just peace under Shari’ah.

    Want peace remove article 10 from the Hamas Charter and have all of institutional pan-Islam accept Israel with its Christian and Jewish citizenry as equals. Good luck.

    Our Rabbis, religious schools, reform Jews, conservative Jews must be taught the facts and must have the courage as Jews and Americans to state what is right and wrong and good or evil without being politically correct and without practicing a form of delusional tikkun olam.

    Jews must understand this simple message, that Islam started a religious war 1,400 years ago; that Islam and Judeo-Christianity, (all non Islamic cultures), are locked in an existential and perpetual “Clash of Civilizations”, (thanks Samuel P. Huntingdon), unless we become Dhimwits; those of us that survive.

    I totally agree.