Documentation: J Street's new director in Jerusalem supports Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement

Jikileaks

Drew Cohen was just named the Director of JStreet U's Jerusalem Office. He wrote in his announcement:

"JStreetU, the university branch of JStreet, has recently hired Kelly [Koby] and I [sic] to put together educational programs reflective of JStreetU's mission for students studying abroad in Israel, both on the undergraduate and graduate level - including Rabbinic programs, education programs, or the myriad other Israel experiences (and especially Pardes)." J Street claims that it opposes the BDS movement's efforts on campus. But Cohen is a vocal opponent of Israeli legislative efforts to outlaw the anti-Israel BDS movement. Here is Cohen's blog on the topic:

Drew Cohen - Google Reader - Public -
Dont’ [sic] Buy Golan Wines…and Sue Me - The Magnes Zionist
American Jewry is only beginning to wake up to the idea that Israel has marched much farther to the right than it ever imagined possible. Peter Beinart noted it, but Abe Foxman didn't get the message,...

It's par for the course at J Street. Now they claim that they support sanctions against Iran, but two years ago the anti-Israel blogger Mondoweiss wrote:

I just learned that the new Israel lobby, J Street, played a key role in dealing that astonishing defeat to AIPAC in Congress last week–in which a coalition of peace groups and religious groups spearheaded by the National Iranian American Council lobbied effectively against a belligerent resolution, House 362, that had been expected to pass overwhelmingly and that would have urged Bush to impose a kind of embargo on Iranian exports.

More on Drew Cohen here. J Street’s Israel Campus Organizer Drew Cohen – Israel Is “Unjust And Even Criminal,” He’s Uncomfortable With “People Who Espouse Zionism”

Cohen describes in idealistic terms his devotion to the J Street cause:

Over the last three years I have come to feel a commitment to and responsibility for this place I could not have imagined. While that commitment has grown as a result of various factors, among them is the relationships I have built with Israelis and Palestinians working to create a more democratic future for their respective peoples, a future where a Jewish, democratic Israel can exist in peace and security, and where both Jews and Palestinians can determine their own destiny. I now work with J Street U to engage American students studying in Israel with the diversity and vitality of the community of activists, politicians, jurists and journalists that I have come to find so inspiring.

Poster on Cohen's
J Street site
The J Street cause means Cohen devotes his time and resources to leading demonstrations against Jews living in homes in Jerusalem from where Jews were ethnically cleansed in the 1920s. This is most definitely not a democractic effort taking its case to Israeli voters; it's often a violent protest run by imported anarchists and vervent Palestinian nationalists. Ask Emily Henochowicz, an American student who hooked up with the Palestiniain-led, anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement and lost an eye when she was hit by a tear gas grenade ricochet during an illegal demonstration.