Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, in Washington, on Thursday, May 21, 2009. (AP)

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For years, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, has been the big player in Israel lobbying in Washington. Still is, dwarfing all others in its field.

But there’s a new player in town. It’s called J Street. It’s much smaller. More liberal. And it’s trying to open up the American debate on the Middle East and represent, it says, more American Jews’ actual views. To be “pro-Israel,” it says, and “pro-peace.”

Small as J Street is, it may matter right now. This hour, On Point: The new Israel lobby. A conversation with J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Seattle is Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director of J Street, a year-old, Washington-based lobbying organization that describes itself as “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” He served as President Bill Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser and as policy director on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

From New York, we’re joined by Marty Peretz, editor in chief of The New Republic. His blog at TNR.com is The Spine.

More links:

James Traub, in a piece titled “The New Israel Lobby,” wrote about Jeremy Ben-Ami and J Street in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

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Middle East politics is stone-cold serious. Israel’s soldiers and spies and Palestinian militants compete so ruthlessly, it’s more than a little incongruous that Mideast history took a hairpin turn in 1997 with a crazy tale of Israeli assassins saving the life of the man they tried to kill.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Fast forward about a decade, and the intended victim is a savvy Hamas mastermind, and the same Israeli prime minister who tried to take him out is back in power.

This hour On Point: The story of the mission to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mishal.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guest:

Paul McGeough joins us from Sydney, Australia.  Chief foreign correspondent and former executive editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he has twice been named Australian Journalist of the Year and in 2002 was awarded the SAIS-Novartis Prize for excellence in international journalism by Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His new book is “Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a media conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on April 22, 2009. (AP)

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The first foreign leader Barack Obama called after assuming the presidency was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Tomorrow, Abbas and Obama meet at the White House. Their agenda: difficult, and almost too well known. A two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis; a stop to Israeli settlement in the West Bank; what to do about the Palestinians’ own split, with Hamas.

Ten days ago, it was Obama and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. Now, the other side.

This hour, On Point: Mideast watchers Juan Cole and Rashid Khalidi on Obama and Abbas.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Gerald Seib, executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the Capital Journal column. He’s co-author with John Harwood of “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

Juan Cole joins us from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is professor of Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and author of “Engaging the Muslim World” (2009), “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East” (2007) and “Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shiite Islam” (2002). He blogs about the Middle East, history, and religion at Informed Comment.

Rashid Khalidi joins us from New York. He is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East” (2009) and “The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood” (2006).

President Barack Obama speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, May 18, 2009. (AP)

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Nobody expected a shouting match in the Oval Office. But there is wide speculation that the agendas of Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu may ultimately put the U.S. and Israel on a path to tough tensions.

Tensions over Iran, and whether to talk or attack. Tensions over a “two-state solution,” and whether to push forward.

Observers joke, grimly, of a “yes, we can” Obama versus a “no, we won’t” Netanyahu — and don’t joke at all about a potentially very real U.S.-Israeli test of wills.

This hour, On Point: Obama, Netanyahu, and the way forward in the Middle East.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington are:

Gerald Seib, executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the Capital Journal column. He’s co-author with John Harwood of “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

Aaron David Miller, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 1978 to 2003 he advised six U.S. secretaries of state on Mideast policy and Arab-Israeli negotiations. His latest book is “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His most recent book is “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands.”

Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish rests his head on his son Abdullah, 6, in a car near his house in Jebaliya, in the northern Gaza strip, Jan. 21, 2009. Three of his daughters and a niece were killed by an Israeli shell which struck his house, and he returned to Gaza to collect his remaining children. (AP)

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Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish was, and is, that remarkable Palestinian welcome on both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

A resident of Gaza, fluent in Hebrew, deeply devoted to peace. An obstetrician who treated both Palestinians and Israelis — who was welcomed by Israeli medical colleagues, one of whom called him a “magical, secret bridge between Israelis and Palestinians.”

On January 16, in the Israeli invasion of Gaza, an Israeli tank shell hit his home — and killed three of his daughters. Three. And still he calls for peace.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish.

You can join the conversation. Do you remember the news report back then? Of Dr. Abul Aish and his family’s tragedy? Could you keep reaching out for peace?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish joins us in our studio.  He is a Palestinian physician, an obstetrician, living in Gaza and has worked closely with Israeli doctors for years treating patients and doing research at Soroka University Hospital in Beersheba in southern Israel. He lost three daughters and a niece when his home was shelled during the Gaza conflict in January.

Joining us from Tel Aviv is Gadi Taub, a writer, essayist and historian. He writes a regular op-ed column for Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s largest daily, and teaches at the Department of Communications and the School for Public Policy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is author of “Allenby,” “A Dispirited Rebellion: Essays on Contemporary Israeli Culture” and the forthcoming “The Settlers & the Struggle for the Meaning of Zionism.”

Dr. Abuelaish’s reaction to his daughter’s deaths was heard on Israeli TV:

Egyptian activists are confronted by police during a protest in Cairo against the Israeli attacks in Gaza, on Dec. 31, 2008. (AP)

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Israel announced today it will pause its attack on Gaza three hours a day for humanitarian relief. The other 21 hours a day, the Israeli action goes on. The pounding. From the air. On the ground.

The whole world is watching — the Arab world, closest of all. Arab television is wall-to-wall images of Gaza death and destruction: women, children, hospitals, morgues soaked in blood, Hamas counterattacks framed as defiance, the United States and Israel linked as one. Arab leaders portrayed as ineffectual.

Where does this go? This hour, On Point: Israel’s neighborhood, the Arab world, watching Gaza.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Roula Khalaf, Middle East editor of The Financial Times.

Labib Kamhawi, Jordanian political analyst.

Tamara Wittes, director of the Middle East Democracy and Development Project at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.

Smoke rises following an Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 30, 2008. (AP)

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Nightmare scenes in Gaza, where for five days F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships have rained fire on one of the poorest, most crowded enclaves on Earth.

And nightmares across southern Israel, where rockets out of Gaza have now reached as far as an empty kindergarten classroom in Beersheba. Four Israelis dead since Israel’s assault on Gaza began. Nearly four hundred Palestinians dead. Many more injured.

After grinding seasons of embargo and tunneling and Hamas defiance, Israel’s defense minister now speaks of “war to the bitter end.”

This hour, On Point: Bloody showdown over Gaza.

You can join the conversation. Did Hamas make this inevitable, with its rocket fire and its fury? Did Israel make this inevitable, with its chokehold and its demands? Will this turn Palestinians away from Hamas, or more deeply against Israel? What should the U.S. have done? What should it be doing now? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Margaret Coker, Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Aaron David Miller, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He advised six U.S. secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, from 1978 to 2003, and is the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

Shai Feldman, chair of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and professor of politics at Brandeis University.

Issam Nassar, professor of history at Illinois State University.