Have you got a blue light sabre or a red one?

The creation and increasing political weight of J Street, the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” US lobby group continues to upset some Israel apologists. An attack from Alan Dershowitz in the Huffington Post describes J Street as having “gone over to the dark side.” (No really, it does. Those quotation marks are there for accuracy, not to indicate any sense of irony. They’re his opening words. It’s a kind of word play on J/Jew/Jedi).

J Street’s executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami has responded robustly, acknowledging that Dershowitz makes “shrewd tactical choices in approaching the court of public opinion” but that those choices involve distorting views, telling lies and ignoring what J Street actually says. (As the first commenter to Ben-Ami’s article points out “The one thing … all [the critiques of J Street ] have in common is that they NEVER criticize the actual policies of J-Street.”) M. J. Rosenberg – a former editor of AIPAC’s weekly newsletter and director of the doveish Israel Policy Forum until last year also accuses Dershowitz of telling lies and questions in very strong terms Senator Chuck Schumer’s Koch inspired attack on Obama.