Some people have wondered over the past three days where progressive Jewry is at. And they're right to. To dive into an uncomfortable conversation that Jane admirably waded into yesterday, when a debate gets demagogued by a self-appointed ethnic mafia, it's up to progressive voices who share that ethnicity to stand up to the, say, Shtetl Police. A lot of people-- ok, fuck it, enough generalities. A lot of progressive Jews don't want to do this. And I totally understand and relate. You don't want to reduce yourself to the mere fact of your heritage and become a self-parody. You have other stuff to write about and pay attention to. You don't want to hurt your mother's feelings.  But this is how the Shtetl Police win, and when the Shtetl Police win, Israel does stupid and self-destructive things and children die in the streets of Gaza and Sderot. Sometimes Israel does stupid and self-destructive things even if they don't win, but it's not worth chancing it.

So I wrote this piece for the Washington Independent about what the progressive Jewish infrastructure -- led and symbolized, in important ways, by J Street -- is doing about Gaza. This is a test for them -- for us.

“Absolutely,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, a new liberal Jewish lobby group. “This is a real testing moment for those of us who honestly believe you can be supportive of Israel but questioning of steps its government takes.”

M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum, another progressive Jewish organization, was similarly blunt. “It’s put-up-or-shut-up time,” he said. “For a two-state solution, for the U.S. to be an honest broker — if all of us just sit back and say, ‘Israel had no choice [to bomb Gaza], then we’re just a bunch of phonies. But I don’t see that happening.”

I don't know how we'll do. We might have no effect. We're only four days into this disgusting bombardment. But if progressive Jewry comes up short this time, we'll get stronger for the next time.