Gidi Grinstein, founder of the Reut Institute, followed Erdan to the podium last week and stressed the importance of meeting with J Street, reportedly saying: “Anyone who can’t meet with J Street can’t be helpful in fighting anti-Israel delegitimization.”
“Only a credible, liberal outlook can really engage with these progressive people, and therefore we argue that in the campaign against delegitimization and the BDS movement it is crucially important to have a broad tent of groups because it is the liberal groups that can effectively engage the liberal groups that are against Israel,”
“Since January we have had more than 120 meetings, interviews and conversations with a full range of players — government officials, leaders of the Jewish community, pro-Israel advocates, critics of Israel and conversations with people who define themselves as members of the BDS movement,” he said.
Grinstein added that the Reut Institute is working with the Anti-Defamation League to update its 2010 report. He expects the project to be completed by the end of the summer.
Three Reut staff members met in the city with two representatives of J Street in March. One of them was Rachel Lerner, J Street’s senior vice president for community relations.
“We spoke a lot about campuses and how BDS was playing out for the more progressive spectrum,” she recalled, adding that J Street has periodically worked with Reut over the years.
“They were very interested in how we combat BDS in the various places we work and what has been effective for us,” Lerner said. “It felt like we had credibility with the progressive crowd — which is where BDS seems to be taking off.” She said they also talked about “how the Jewish community has engaged around this and which things worked and [which] did not work well.
Clareta Treger, Analyst
The Reut Institute
Office: +972-(0)3-6950090
Cell: +972-(0)58-7198344
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sens" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sense+un...@reut-institute.org.
To post to this group, send email to se...@reut-institute.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/reut-institute.org/d/msgid/sense/CAL6SGPfXsMyt5C37RNwWHQKMMeaEpevnSRzwQY%2B%3DNnHzA2f50Q%40mail.gmail.com.