The revelations by the Washington Times that J Street took money from George Soros – and lied about having done so – continue to reverberate.

Eli Lake reports today that The White House may now be “distancing” itself from the group (although Ami Eden thinks that is over-reading a non-statement).

But the self-styled “pro-Israel/pro-peace” group’s troubles can be measured as increasing when they seem to have lost The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg – not (only) on the grounds of their misleading statements about Soros, but on the grounds that they have “lost the game they set out to play…” that of the need to pressure Israel one-sidedly.

Lost in the noise over the Soros revelations was how J Street’s bias in this regard was very prominently on display last week – in the form of full page advertisements in the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere.

The ad states that for “success [of the peace talks] will require leadership, hard decisions and sacrifice – from all the parties.” Yet, their ad text goes on to mention only one specific in that regard: “Freeze settlement growth.”

A reader might have been a bit confused as to why after saying all sides need to make the effort to support the peace talks, the fine folks at J Street could not list a single step the Palestinians or other Arab nations ought to undertake.

President Obama did just that in his address to the United Nations last week.

(“I know many in this hall count themselves as friends of the Palestinians. But these pledges of friendship must now be supported by deeds. Those who have signed on to the Arab Peace Initiative should seize this opportunity to make it real by taking tangible steps towards the normalization that it promises Israel.“)

Now the reader’s confusion is clarified – if George Soros (described by Jeffrey Goldberg as one who holds “hostility to Zionism”) is your funder…

Posted by Nathan Diament