[11] According to its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street is neither pro- nor anti- any individual organization or other pro-Israel umbrella groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

[4][16][19] Explaining the need for a new advocacy and lobbying group, Ben-Ami stated: "J Street has been started, however, because there has not been sufficient vocal and political advocacy on behalf of the view that Israel's interests will be best served when the United States makes it a major foreign policy priority to help Israel achieve a real and lasting peace not only with the Palestinians but with all its neighbors.

"[20] Alan Solomont, one of the founders of J Street and a former national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and currently a Democratic Party fundraiser, described the need for J Street in the following way: "We have heard the voices of neocons, and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard.

... That Iran has completed these steps—and granted international inspectors the unprecedented access necessary to verify and continuously monitor compliance on an ongoing basis—in an unexpectedly short period of time is further proof of the power of tough, effective diplomacy in addressing some of our most serious security concerns.

[4] Ben-Ami's grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv, his parents were Israelis, his family suffered in the Holocaust, and he has lived in Israel, where he was almost killed in a Jerusalem terror attack.

[16][27] J Street's advisory council consists of former public officials, policy experts, community leaders and academics, including Daniel Levy, a former high-ranking Israeli official who was the lead drafter of the groundbreaking Geneva Initiative, Franklin Fisher and Debra DeLee of Americans for Peace Now, Marcia Freedman of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, Democratic Middle East foreign policy expert Robert Malley, former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Samuel W. Lewis, former Rhode Island governor and Republican U.S. senator Lincoln Chafee.

[29] The J Street PAC acts as a traditional political action committee raising funds to support a limited number of candidates for Senate and Congressional races.

[32] Critics have pointed out that according to Federal Election Commission filings in 2009, dozens of Arab and Muslim Americans and Iranian advocacy organizations donated tens of thousands of dollars to J Street, representing "a small fraction" of the group's fund-raising.

[27] This is a modest figure for a PAC, though Gary Kamiya writes that J Street hopes to raise significant money online, following the blueprint of MoveOn and the Barack Obama presidential campaign.

It criticizes the Emergency Committee for Israel, a right-wing advocacy group that William Kristol and Gary Bauer, inspired by J Street, created.

[40] President Jeremy Ben-Ami released a statement saying: The principle at stake ... goes to the heart of American democracy, and the value we place on freedom of religion.

[51] Addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon said "The thing that troubles me is that they don't present themselves as to what they really are.

"[52] In Haaretz, columnist Bradley Burston wrote that the Foreign Ministry's refusal to meet with the U.S. congressmembers was "a gratuitous move breathtaking in its haughtiness, its ignorance of and disrespect for the United States and the American Jewish community".

"If American legislators with pro-Israel records say J Street is kosher", Gur wrote, "that creates a new political reality with which the Israeli Right must contend.

Liberal Knesset Member Stav Shaffir encouraged J Street to hone the message of the pro-peace camp in Israel as well as the U.S., and she "brought the crowd to its feet repeatedly as she described the battle ahead for a two-state solution".

[59] In February 2017, The New York Times reported that David Friedman, U.S. president Donald Trump's pick to be Ambassador to Israel, would formally apologize for previously labeling supporters of J Street as "worse than kapos" during his conformation hearing.

The approximately $750,000 from Soros and his family, together with donations from Hong Kong-based businesswoman Ms. Consolacion Esdicul, amounted to about 15% of J Street's funding in its early years.

[63] In previous statements and on its web site J Street had seemed to deny receiving support from foreign interests and from Soros, a bête noire to conservatives.

Since its inception in 2008 as a lobby, political action committee, educational group and student movement, the organization has disrupted the debate about what it means to be pro-Israel.

"[69] NPR's Mara Liasson reported from the J Street conference that took place shortly after Israel's March 17, 2015 elections, in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised voters there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.

[71] Noah Pollak at Commentary predicted that the effort would fall flat and show there are no "great battalions of American Jewish doves languishing in voicelessness".

[76] Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, called J Street's reaction[81] to the Israeli invasion of Gaza "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve".

[82] J Street responded stating, "It is hard for us to understand how the leading reform rabbi in North America could call our effort to articulate a nuanced view on these difficult issues 'morally deficient'.

[90] Chuck Freilich, former deputy national security adviser in Israel, writing in The Jerusalem Post in February 2013, said, "J Street leads only to a dead end", since "only Israelis bear the responsibility for determining their future.

"But the existence of a mainstream Jewish group that criticizes Israeli policy has made it easier to dissent without being painted as an enemy of Israel or even anti-Semitic.

[95] On December 30, 2010, The Washington Times reported that J Street "paid tens of thousands of dollars to a consulting firm co-owned by its founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami".

They included Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, whom the newspaper described as an "adamant proponent" of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel; Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, described as a BDS advocate who took part in the Free Gaza Flotilla; and Michael Sfard, an attorney who, according to the newspaper, "advocates international 'lawfare' against Israel".

"I have my own criticism of the current government, but there have to be limits, and this organization is doing tremendous damage to Israel," said Kadima MK Ze'ev Bielski, a former Jewish Agency chairman.

Representatives and Tea Party activists who opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, Joe Walsh (R-IL) and Allen West (R-FL).

[111] J Street has come under regular scrutiny by anti-Zionist organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Democratic Socialists of America.