J Street (Hebrew: ג'יי סטריט) is a nonprofit liberal[4][5][6] Zionist[7][8][9][10] advocacy and lobby group based in the United States whose aims include strengthening Jewish democracy in Israel,[11][12][13][14] promoting a diplomatic end to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict with a two-state solution,[15][16] and opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

[4][36][37] Explaining the need for a new lobbying group, Ben-Ami stated: "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...."[38] Alan Solomont, one of the founders of J Street and a former national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), 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.

[4] J Street's advisory council consists of former public officials, policy experts, community leaders and academics, including Daniel Levy, a former Israeli advisor who drafted the 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.

[48] 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.

[46] 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.

[50] 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.

[55] 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.

"[58] In September 2010, J Street started a project "They Don't Speak For Us", which criticizes the Emergency Committee for Israel, a right-wing advocacy group created by William Kristol and Gary Bauer.

[62] During the 2023-2025 Gaza war, J Street U led efforts against both right-wing Zionism and left-wing anti-Zionism on college campuses, including by rejecting the platforming of officials affiliated with the Netanyahu administration as well as calls for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against Israel.

J Street U has eschewed calls for an Israeli, Palestinian, or binational one-state solution, while defending the civil rights of student protestors, such as those involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment movement.

[67] After leaving his role as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and campaigning for an MK position in the Knesset, Oren described his view as follows: "We have to show greater flexibility on the peace issue.

[69][70] 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".

[72][73] Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic described Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated refusal to meet with representatives of J Street as a "farce".

"[82] Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, called J Street's reaction[83] to the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve".

[84] 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'.

[86] 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.

"[87] In 2017, Peter Beinart warned that J Street's limited discussion of Israeli offensives and its opposition to BDS puts it at a disadvantage compared to IfNotNow.

[30] At J Street's inception in 2008, Noah Pollak at Commentary predicted that its efforts would fall flat and show there are no "great battalions of American Jewish doves languishing in voicelessness".

[32][33] Civil rights activist and influential New Left figure Tom Hayden wrote in The Nation that "J Street's decision means there is virtually no dissent in the mainstream American Jewish community from the intransigent positions of AIPAC and the right-wing Netanyahu government.

[14][91] In 2021, members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) critiqued US Representative Jamaal Bowman's participation in a J Street delegation to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and the Knesset, noting continued apartheid, occupation, and state violence against Palestinians exacerbated by the current Israeli government.

[95] In February 2024, Mari Cohen of Jewish Currents critiqued J Street's lack of support for a ceasefire during the Gaza war, and unendorsement of pro-Palestine congresspeople.

"[28] In May 2024, Mondoweiss critiqued J Street for their support for Israeli military aid, Palestinian demilitarization, and rejection of right of return, characterizing its conception of a two-state solution as resembling a reservation system.