I just got off a journalists’ conference call with the proprietors of the new “J Street” project, which fancies itself an enlightened answer to AIPAC. J Street’s website advertises the organization as “a new pro-peace, pro-Israel political voice” that will stand against the prevailing U.S.-Israeli mindset of “advocating military responses to political problems.”

So what does J Street want? A “comprehensive negotiated peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbors.” Well, what if some of those neighbors — Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas — don’t want the same thing? This is a forbidden thought. A similar litany of foggy platitudes surrounds other issues: “You make peace with your enemies, not your friends” (i.e., Israel should negotiate with Hamas.) The list goes on; to save time, imagine roughly the editorial positions of The Nation magazine in the mouths of lobbyists.

J Street places near the top of its list of supporters someone named Avram Burg, who may not ring a bell to many Americans, but who is notorious in Israel. Burg advocates, among other things, the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state; recommends that Israeli parents secure foreign passports for their children; and compares Israel today to late 1930’s Germany. When asked during the call why someone like Burg is affiliated with J Street, the group’s proprietors downplayed and misrepresented the man’s radicalism. It is difficult to imagine how the J Streeters believe their organization will be taken seriously as a pro-Israel lobby at the same time they advertise the endorsement of a figure like Avram Burg.

One of the more interesting aspects of the J Street phenomenon is the belief that there are great battalions of American Jewish doves languishing in voicelessness, awaiting mobilization by leaders whose answer to Islamist terrorism is interminable dialogue. One of the salutary benefits of J Street might be a demonstration that the absence of a peace lobby is not the reason why diplomatic fetishism retains little currency among policymakers.