In a May 22 email to the many thousands on J Street’s virtual rolodex, the organization that calls itself “pro-Israel, pro-peace” revealed its true nature: it is focused solely and exclusively on the creation of a Palestinian State, and peace be damned.

It did this by exhorting its American followers to demand that the democratically elected Israeli leadership say out loud what J Street wants it to say.

J Street cued up from U.S. secretary of state John Kerry’s efforts to launch yet another initiative aimed at achieving peace between Israel and its Arab Palestinian neighbors.

But it then takes what it wants to be true, asserts it as if there is no other truth, and demands that Americans get aggressive with the Israeli government to make a public commitment to J Street’s view of reality, rather than what the Israeli government knows is reality.

Here’s the sleight of hand in J Street’s email:

The basis of any such effort, of course, has to be a two-state solution — an independent Palestine existing in peace and security alongside Israel. But is this the policy of the government of Israel?

Some members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s governing coalition are openly stating not only that they do not personally believe in a two-state solution but that the two-state solution is not official government policy. They wrangled about it publicly in a parliamentary committee meeting this week.

Member of Knesset and former Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) noted “substantial divides inside the government” on the question.

And MK Orit Struck (Jewish Home) came right out and said “two states for two peoples is not the government’s official position … it is perhaps Netanyahu’s position… but has not been accepted as the government’s position.”

J Street subtly takes what it says is a basis for a solution and converts it into the solution. In contrast, Israeli leadership is committed to having the goal of the peace process be peace. Such a position is apparently an affront to J Street’s worldview.

It is especially chutzpadik to demand that the Israeli government bend its knee to J Street and declare its support for the creation of a Palestinian state at this time of profound unrest in the Middle East.

This is a singularly dangerous time in Middle East history.  The terrorist-driven Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda and its affiliates are on the ascent.  The closest thing to a moderate Arab Palestinian leader is Mahmoud Abbas whose term as president expired almost 5 years ago.  Abbas routinely and publicly lionizes current and ancient terrorists and frequently admits, although mostly in Arabic,  that he is not committed to peace with Israel.

And Mahmoud Abbas is on record that not one Jew will be allowed to live and breathe in any Palestinian State.  So what exactly is it that J Street is demanding?

J Street’s letter imperiously casts anyone who disagrees with its vision of a perfect Middle East – one with a Palestinian State (whether or not there is peace) – as a roadblock to peace.  The hubris is dazzling.

For there to be any hope of progress, the Israeli government must state unequivocally that support for a two-state solution is a core principle of its foreign policy – as it has been under every Prime Minister since Yitzhak Rabin.

A simple declarative statement by Netanyahu or by Israel’s US ambassador Michael Oren would dispel these doubts immediately. They need to speak out now.

Adding still more urgency to its demand, J Street includes a quote from MK Ronen Hoffman, “how is it possible to expect the Palestinians to enter negotiations when part of our government opposes a Palestinian state?”

And yet, no demand is made of any Arab Palestinian leader to commit to peace with Israel.

Why isn’t J Street’s question turned around? Shouldn’t supporters of Israel logically ask this question, instead: “How is it possible to expect the Israeli government to enter negotiations with Arab Palestinian leaders when there is overwhelming evidence that few if any of the leadership supports peace with the Jewish State of Israel?”

J Street ends its May 22 email pooh-poohing the idea that mere talks between the parties is useful. Again it asserts its own position as if it were ultimate truth: “But what’s needed isn’t talk, it’s a resolution of this conflict and that will only happen if both sides are clearly committed to reaching the same goal: a two-state solution.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is flying again to Jerusalem and Ramallah this week against headwinds he has created with non-stop talk that has heated up the atmosphere in a region where high pressure already is a way of life.

His latest goof was to usurp communication channels between envoys and to personally protest to Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, over the government’s recent move to legalize three Jewish communities in  Samaria.

Kerry has done a lot in the three months since he took over from State Hillary Clinton. He has logged tens of thousands of miles, including three trips to Israel. He has talked and talked days and night to foreign ministers from around the world.

Kerry also has tripped over himself by repeating the Obama administration’s tactic of premising the Arabs everything and delivering nothing.

His phone call to Oren last week takes the cake, whatever is left of it. Haaretz reported on Monday that Kerry told Oren that the government’s change of heart to recognize the Jewish communities instead of demolishing them undermines his efforts to resume direct talked between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

The newspaper pointed out that Kerry’s choice to not to deliver the message thorough lower-level officials indicates his anger at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, particularly after Kerry asked Jerusalem and Ramallah to refrain from upsetting the apple cart.

However, the cart never really moved because Kerry has put it in front the horse.

His “hit the ground running” approach in the Middle East is exactly the same mistake President Barack Obama made when he first took office. His “reaching out to Muslims” speech in Cairo created Great Expectations that turned into greater disappointment in the Arab world.

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, who reported on the details of Kerry’s phone call to Oren, wrote two weeks ago, “Kerry so far looks like a naive and ham-handed diplomat who has been acting like a bull in the china shop.”

Kerry likes talking on the phone. After PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced last month he was resigning, the Secretary of State called him and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to prevent the resignation, which, according to Ravid, “did more harm than good.”

Abbas’ Fatah party leaders were against him from the beginning, if for no other reason than because he was hand-picked by the United States to be prime minister. Kerry’s personal intervention only reinforced the fact.

Kerry also has held endless conversations with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but the more Kerry talks, the less anyone in the Middle East listens.

After 15 years of constant American deadlines for a peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Kerry added another one. He told Congress that the “window of opportunity” will be shut in less than two years. That might be true if he is looking through he window of his plane, from where he can see daylight forever – until he lands.

Another deadline he set a few weeks was the resumption of direct talked between the Palestinian Authority and Israel within two months.

He stipulated that neither side would take any unilateral moves or set pre-conditions.

Reflecting the unspoken view of both the Netanyahu and Abbas administrations that Kerry is a fish out of water in  the Middle East, the Palestinian Authority promptly stated that he would be happy to talk with Bibi, so long as it is understood that Israel will accept in advance everything he wants.

Abbas is only requesting that Israel simply return to the 1949 Temporary Armistice Lines that existed until 1967. And if that is the case, obviously Israel must again announce it will stop building in those areas.

And since no Jews will be living there, Abbas reasons that Israel has no reason not to release Palestinian Authority terrorists from jail.

In the Middle East, no one lets the other side think he can play solitaire, so it is no wonder that the government decided to legalize the Jewish communities.

As Kerry gets closer to boarding the plane for Israel, Palestinian Authority and Israel negotiators are giving him all the rope he needs to hang himself.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s unofficial Minister for the Peace Process, told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday, “We want the Palestinian Authority to know that peace talks are the only game in town.”

Yair Lapid, Israel’s Finance Minister and head of Israel’s second largest political party, has unraveled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to reincarnate the “peace process” before Kerry even packed his bags for another trip to Israel at the end of the week.

He told the Yediot Acharonot newspaper Sunday what everyone except Kerry and the European Union’s Catherine Ashton know – it is unrealistic even to think about a final stage peace agreement for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as an independent country.

It is questionable if even Kerry’s boss, President Barack Obama, actually thinks an agreement is in the cards.

Maybe, just maybe, Obama has learned what Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush never seemed to grasp – the Palestinian Authority will make peace with Israel only when it is sure that the Jewish state’s future is doomed.

That is why PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas refuses to budge on the Arab world’s dream to import several million Arabs to Israel, based on their claim that Israel is their home because their parents, grandparents, great-great parents and their dogs lived here.

The Oslo Accords, Clinton’s time bomb that fulfilled his promise to create a new Middle East, although not exactly the way he envisioned, provided for interim borders for a Palestinian Authority state, with final borders to be negotiated.

Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in one of her many less enlightened moments, agreed that maybe it was best to simply skip over that little clause and go for broke.

And the “peace process’ since then indeed went broke.

Correctly perceiving that there was no need to concede anything except uncertainty, Abbas re-defined the word “negotiations” to mean “you give and I take,” with the only undecided issue being the date that Israel will supposedly sign its own death certificate.

The term “interim agreement” is no where in his lexicon. It is buried deep, deep under the “peace process,” and here comes Lapid, the last hope for the center-left to keep those pesky national religious Jews from getting too uppity, to the rescue of the right wing nationalists.

He also displayed remarkable honesty and lack of tact at the same by stating that Abbas “is still not psychologically ready for an agreement with Israel, either partial or full.”

That is the kind of statement that sounds like it is right out of the mouth of Avigdor Lieberman, who was foreign minister before he was indicted six months ago for breach of public trust.

It did not take long for Abbas, through an aide,  to react to Lapid’s statements, which reflect either amazing naïveté for a former journalist or just plain stupidity.

“We have heard this idea before and rejected it simply because we know the intention of Israel is to continue building on Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank,” stated Nimr Hamad, one of Abbas’ sages in Ramallah. Just in case Lapid does not understand, Hamad added that final borders are “the most important thing for us.”

With the United Nations General Assembly already having adopted a resolution recognizing the borders of a Palestinian Authority state exactly as Abbas wants them, talk of an interim agreement can only convince Abbas that Lapid is a nationalist is in disguise.

Lapid is part of an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews who are not willing to hand over such areas as the Old City on Jerusalem to Abbas.

Abbas could save himself from virtually isolation by the Obama administration if he accepts the idea of interim borders, but to do so would be political suicide, if not a sign of a real-life death wish.

He has dug himself into a hole by promising and promising and promising the PA “street” that he will get everything he wants, lock, stock and barrel.

The joker in the cards is Lapid’s statement Sunday that President Obama could set a three-year time limit for defining final borders while carrying out Bush’s written promise to Israel that such as areas as Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim would remain part of Israel.

He also wants to put aside the issues of Jerusalem and the Arab demand for importing millions of foreign Arabs into Israel. Abbas has rejected that idea time and time again.

Israelis by a 4-to-1 margin are more confident than Palestinians in how President Barack Obama a handles his foreign policy, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday.

The survey revealed that 61 percent of Israelis “express confidence in the American president to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” as opposed to 15 percent of Palestinian Authority Arabs.

Obama’s numbers among Israelis are a 12 point increase over when the same question was asked in 2011, reflecting the consensus after the president’s visit to Israel in March. His speeches were viewed in  Jerusalem and Ramallah won broad support from Israelis and anger from the Palestinian Authority.

The president’s emphasis on Israel’s security needs and the Jewish connection to the region stood in stark opposition to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ continued refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Asked to assess whether Obama should increase or decrease his role in peacemaking, or keep it at current levels, 49 percent of Israeli respondents wanted to see greater involvement, 29 percent the same level and 15 percent less involvement.

Among Palestinians, the numbers were 41 percent wanting greater involvement, 19 percent wanting the same and 26 percent wanting less.

The Israeli government has announced a new step in plans to build 300 new homes in Beit El, in  northern Samaria, just as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to convince Mahmoud Abbas to return to talks if Israel slaps a freeze on building for Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Reports from Israeli sources earlier this week stated that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has buckled under pressure from Kerry, and probably President Barack Obama, to freeze construction to bring Abbas back to the so-called negotiating table.

“Negotiations” in Arab Doublespeak means that Israel must accept Palestinian Authority territorial and political demands or they will be forced down its throat, either by the United Nations or by “resistance,” another Doublespeak word, which means terror.

No government  official has denied the reports of a “de facto” building freeze, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is conveniently in China.

Kerry hosted the government’s unofficial Minister for the Peace Process, Tzipi Livni, in Washington last week and continued discussions with her in Rome this week, where he said he will return to Israel in two weeks.

Journalists covering the State Department asked why he is returning after having been here last month, but the reports of the unofficial freeze provide the obvious answer.

But smack in the middle of Kerry’s Big Momentum – run as fast as you can with the ball so that everyone is too dazzled to see that the ball is a bomb – the government announced the next step for building 296 more homes in Beit El.

The town is not just another community in Samaria. More than 6.000 national religious Jews live there. Beit El is a symbol of the national religious movement in Judea and Samaria. A yeshiva bearing the town’s Biblical name has wide influence across the country. It is home to two of the most prominent national religious rabbis in Israel, Rabbi Zalman Melamed, head of Yeshiva Beit El, and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who is widely respected and consulted by many Jews who are not part of the “club.”

After the announcement of the preliminary approval of the homes, the Palestinian Authority immediately said everyone can forget about trying to dig up the bones of the peace process.

As with almost every announcement of building new homes, the one in Beit El refers only to one of several bureaucratic steps before the bulldozers can start digging, not less than a year from now.

Israel has been through this time after time, the most famous incident being the announcement of another bureaucratic stage having been completed for building homes in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

The news broke just as Vice President Joe Biden was landing in Israel, causing high tension between Jerusalem and Washington for a long time.

Coincidental or not with Kerry’s dream for resumed direct talks between Netanyahu and Abbas, the Beit El housing project proves that Israel is trying to “sabotage” Kerry’s efforts, according to senior PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.

“We condemn this new decision which is proof that the Israeli government wants to sabotage and ruin the US administration’s efforts to revive the peace process,” he said. “This is a message to the American administration and a blow to the peace process. This aims to drag the region into violence instead of peace and stability.”

Violence.

Erekat did not even have the diplomacy to say “resistance.”

It is out-and-out violence, and obviously Kerry would blame Israel if the Arabs kill more Jews. Otherwise he would have to go back on his statement earlier this year that the proof that Abbas is such a great peace partner can be found in the fact that not even one Jew was murdered by Palestinian Authority terrorists in 2012.

What about 2011? Well, that is history. Let’s look at the present and not the past and talk peace.

And what about the present the year 2013? Uh, yeah, well, sure, a Palestinian Authority terrorist stabbed to death a father of five, but that was an isolated incident, and after all, the murderer was not a member of a known terrorist gang.

Kerry does not have to defend himself. He has Livni to do that for him. Both of them desperately need a peace agreement, Kerry because he wants to be president and Livni because she needs something to justify her being politically alive. The latest polls shows that her party would win zero seats in if elections were held today.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with visiting Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni this week and told reporters he will return to Israel in two weeks to push ahead for more “peace process” talks.

In a brief session with reporters,  Kerry did not refer to the de facto building freeze that Israel media reported on Tuesday and was allegedly promised to him by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during Kerry’s visit last month.

The Palestinian Authority has said it knows nothing about the “quiet freeze.” and the Office of the Prime Minister has not commented.

Livni’s visit and the fact that Kerry is returning so soon  indicate there is truth to the report.

Livni is Israel’s Justice Minister, but her primary interest is in pushing the American-backed “peace process” to create an independent Palestinian Authority within Israel’s borders.

Kerry reportedly pressured Netanyahu into agreeing with an undeclared building freeze on building for Jews in Judea and Samaria and areas in Jerusalem claimed by Abbas.

However, Netanyahu said he would remove the freeze in mid-June, according to the report of the freeze. That would give Kerry only one month to convince Abbas.

“We all believe that we are working with a short time span,” Kerry told reporters. “I will be travelling back to Israel to meet with both Prime Minister Netanyahu as well as President Abbas around the 21st or 22nd of this month.”. There is no expectation that Abbas and Netanyahu will meet with each other.

For months now, the Palestinian Authority has threatened to file for membership at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which would enable it to press war crimes charges against Israeli soldiers and senior officials. This was one of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ primary objectives when he submitted the PA’s candidacy at the U.N. for nonmember observer state status, because one year earlier, devoid of this status, the ICC denied the PA’s membership request.

Abbas uses this threat like the Sword of Damocles over Israel’s head. If the peace process fails to move forward, and if the Israeli government builds in E1 (the area connecting Jerusalem with its Ma’ale Adumim neighborhood), he will use this weapon.

The ICC is eager to pursue cases that don’t involve the slaughter and all-out warfare against tribes in Africa. The debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially when Israel is on the defendant’s stand, tops the wish list for the war crimes tribunal, which portends to be the ultimate authority on human rights. Out of the hundreds of claims submitted to the ICC, it will choose to tackle those it has desired the most: the prosecution of Israeli soldiers.

Such prosecutions could have fateful consequences. The ICC has the authority to issue arrest warrants against those it convicts, and it is the duty of member countries to make these arrests. IDF soldiers, therefore, will be prevented from setting foot in more than 100 member countries, including Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.

This would be a decisive blow not only to Israeli backpackers recently discharged from the army, but to all fighting units, which new recruits will seek to avoid due to the risk involved. What’s the point, they’ll say, in sacrificing not only three years to the IDF, but also the freedom to move around in the world afterward.

Of his two options – starting a third intifada or turning to the ICC – Abbas will choose the most preferable, the one that doesn’t come at the cost of blood, that grants him credit with European leaders for choosing the nonviolent path, and that affords him the greatest odds of winning. He’ll turn to The Hague.

The Hague’s authority, however is a two-way street. From the moment the PA becomes a member, it opens itself to similar war crimes claims. Its leaders are liable to find themselves responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Sending terrorists to commit suicide bombings; launching tens of thousands of missiles and rockets against civilian communities; inciting and directing its own population and security forces to kill innocent civilians, as these efforts have become increasingly systematic to the point of being a long-standing official policy against another civilian population – these are all crimes against humanity and genocide. There is already such a precedent, after a New York federal court in 2007 ruled that intifada-related crimes were crimes against humanity, and that Israeli victims of terror had the right to pursue legal action against those who aid and abet terrorism.

The only way to protect IDF soldiers from international prosecution is to deter the PA from turning to The Hague, and this is by threatening to submit thousands of counter-suits against it on behalf of terror victims.

Subsequently, the Israeli-based civil rights organization Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) has in recent days commenced with a pre-emptive attack. We are collecting testimonies from any Israeli who was a victim of terrorism and are asking that these testimonies be posted to our Facebook page as evidence that can be used in counter-suits against leaders of the Palestinian Authority for their roles in the perpetration of war crimes.

If Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh want to go to The Hague – we will be there to meet them.

The Fatah party, headed by Palestinian Authority PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, took no more than 12 hours before lauding the terrorist who stabbed to death 31-year-old Evyatar Borovsky, father of five children, Tuesday morning in northeastern Samaria.

The praise directly contradicts Obama administration claims that the Palestinian Authority no longer incites terror.

A picture of the  terrorist and of the victim, with tefillin, were posted on Fatah’s Facebook page, and the text, translated and published online by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), calls the murderer, “The hero, the released prisoner, Salam Al-Zaghal.”

Al-Zaghal was released from jail last year after serving time for hurling rocks at Jews. Out of jail, he abandoned rocks and firebombs on Tuesday for more serious weapons, like a deadly knife.

“The youth Salam Al-Zaghal who stabbed the settler at the Al-Za’atara military checkpoint comes from the village of Shweika located in the Tulkarm District. He is a released prisoner who sat in the occupation’s prisons for 4 years,” the Fatah page stated, according to PMW.

Under one picture, a caption states, “Salam Al-Zaghal who stabbed the settler at the Al-Za’atara checkpoint is a released prisoner who sat in the occupation’s prisons for 4 years.”

Another caption reads, “Peace upon you, on the day of your birth, on the day of your arrest, and on the day you will go free”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry bragged last month that proof of the Palestinian Authority’s presumed ability to promote peace and not terror is the fact that no one Jew was killed in 2012.

He did not talk about 2011, when a two-year-old boy and his American-Israeli father, Asher Palmer, were killed after a Palestinian Authority terrorist hurled a rock at their vehicle. The rock hit Palmer in the head, and he lost control of his car, which crashed off the highway’s shoulder, killing him and his son.

It remains to be seen if Kerry will talk about 2013, although he can claim that for four full months, minus one day, a Palestinian Authority terrorist did not kill any Jews.

That does not means they did not try, not once and not twice but hundreds of times.