JCall
| Founded | 3 May 2010 |
|---|---|
| Focus |
Arab–Israeli conflict Israeli–Palestinian conflict |
| Location |
|
|
Area served
|
 Israel /  EU
|
| Method | Lobbying |
|
Key people
|
David Chemla (Head) Patrick Krugman (Spokesman) Bernard-Henri Lévy Alain Finkielkraut Daniel Cohn-Bendit |
JCall is a nonprofit advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East and Israel in particular. They say they are based along the lines of the America group J Street, founded in 2007. They say they are "committed to the state of Israel and critical of the current choices of its government." The group is considered to be leftist.
The initiative to form JCall came amidst increasing criticism of Israeli policies from Jewish groups in Israel, the US and Europe. Along these lines, JCall has said their founding ideas are similar to J Street, a group of left-of-centre American Jews. Many members are from France, where, just weeks before the founding, a street was named after Israel's first premier, David Ben-Gurion, which had also met with such criticism as unfurling a Palestinian flag on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
The founding of JCall was also read as a movement to urge the European Union to pressure Israel to "end the occupation in Judea and Samaria and sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians in line with the two-state doctrine."
The founding leader of the group, David Chemla was born in Tunisia and raised in France. He was a former IDF officer who served in the Yom Kippur War in the Paratroopers Brigade. He left for France in 1977 after 10 years in Israel. He is chairman of Peace Now in France. He said the group seeks to support Israel's long-term future because "as friends, as Jews, we want to tell you that you are going down a wrong path. I think our initiative is actually helping Israel's image in Europe. It is a pretty low image over here these days, because of what happened in Gaza, mainly, and it is commonly believed in Europe that Israel is the provocative, negative side of the conflict—the one that is blocking the peace process." He claimed that "We’re not saying that only Israel is responsible for the problem. As Jews tied to Israel, we speak to the Israelis. So this is a call to the Israelis, but of course [the Palestinians] have a lot of the responsibility for the continuation of the conflict." He affirmed, on behalf of the membership that "our connection to the state of Israel is part of our identity," but in Europe "Israel is seen as responsible for all the problems [in the region]." Chemla added that the group's was not a movement as such after the first petition but hoped to become one.
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