Jeremy Ben-Ami

Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jeremy Ben-Ami, 2016
Occupation	Social activism
Known for	Serving as executive director of J Street
Spouse(s)	Alisa Biran

Jeremy Ben-Ami (born 1962) is the President of J Street, a liberal advocacy organization in the United States dedicated to promoting American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. He is also the executive director of JStreetPAC, which endorses and raises money for federal candidates.

Ben-Ami grew up in New York City. He is the son of Eve Ben-Ami and the late Yitshaq Ben-Ami. His father was born in what was then Palestine, but moved to the United States. Ben-Ami grew up in a Zionist home and became Bar Mitzvah at Temple Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan.

He graduated from Princeton University and received a law degree from New York University.

Ben-Ami was President Bill Clinton's Deputy Domestic Policy Adviser, and later Policy Director on Howard Dean's presidential campaign. He was most recently Senior Vice President at Fenton Communications. Earlier he was the Communications Director for the New Israel Fund and started the Israeli firm Ben-Or Communications while living in Israel in the late 1990s. Ben-Ami has worked with Jewish peace groups, including the Center for Middle East Peace and the Geneva Initiative-North America.

In March 2011, Ben-Ami commented,

"We are witnessing a troubling trend across the board — with Israelis narrowing the boundaries of what's acceptable on a number of fronts.... There are efforts to narrow the definition of 'who is a Jew' that leaves many non-Orthodox Jews out of the tent, to narrow who can be a citizen by imposing loyalty oaths or other conditions, and now to narrow the definition of who's a friend to only those who agree politically... Israel's goal—as a small state in an unfriendly neighborhood—should be... to broaden not narrow its base of support, and each of these steps take it in the wrong direction."