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Retired Maj.-Gen. Scott Gration has had a rocky few months as U.S. envoy to Sudan.

In June, we reported that Gration had announced that there was no longer a genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan, where there continues to be a government-sponsored genocide of the Darfuri rebels by Janjaweed militias.

The administration walked back his comments. And last month, to great fanfare, Gration announced the new policy on Darfur with this neat summary: "We've got to think about giving out cookies," Gration said to bemused stares of disbelief. He clarified: "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. That now seems to have been too harsh; we hadn't yet tried cookies.

The administration's new policy toward Sudan was received with frustration, confusion, and outright mockery by all interested parties -- except for one intrepid sector of Darfur activists: the Jewish groups.

"It's a great first step forward," said Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the most recognizable advocate in the Jewish community for an end to the genocide in Darfur.

Rabbi David Saperstein, of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, was thrilled. It's "exactly the right approach," he told JTA.

But John Prendergast, co-founder of Enough, the leading organization dedicated to activism and awareness on behalf of those suffering from the genocide in Darfur, was unimpressed.

"Some of the Obama administration's recent lowlights have included public and private rhetoric favoring incentives over pressure, talk of lifting longstanding sanctions without demanding anything in return, and a disconcerting lack of emphasis on the need to hold this heinous regime accountable for what this and the previous U.S. administration have declared genocide," Prendergast wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

With all due respect to Messinger, who I've met and personally interviewed on this issue in the past, Prendergast is probably the most authoritative voice in the American activist community with regard to Darfur. And he is correct.

He's not the only one that expressed concern over our Sudan policy -- not by a long shot. So what makes the Jewish community so willing to accept whatever policy is tossed at our feet on issues we claim to care about?

I think the Forward may give us an answer. The newspaper published a story Oct. 7 called "Pushing for Better Wages, Not Necessarily Giving Them". It was about the Conservative movement's Hekhsher Tzedek program, designed to improve the wages and rights of workers at Jewish food establishments, which was followed by a demand that such improvements be made everywhere.

Except in their own synagogues. "As the founding co-chair of the Hekhsher Tzedek program, [Rabbi Michael] Siegel was behind the release last month of detailed standards on how kosher companies should properly compensate their employees," the Forward reported. "Soon after the release of those standards, though, Siegel took a look at the wages and benefits of the janitors at his Chicago synagogue. He was abashed to find that Congregation Anshe Emet would not currently be in full compliance with the standards he had just released."

He was shocked -- shocked! -- to find out he wasn't living up to his own standards. It turned out most Conservative shuls did the same.

To add to the nauseating hypocrisy, some rabbis blamed everyone but themselves.

"Rabbis may be a moral beacon in terms of discussion, but decisions are made by boards, and they are looking at their bottom line," Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, of Temple Beth Shalom in Long Beach, Calif., said.

Got that? Rabbis like Gartenberg are "moral beacons" for telling everyone else to do what they themselves either refuse to or know isn't possible. And by "everyone else," I mean the Orthodox, because -- as the Forward article explicitly states -- the kosher establishments they are targeting are almost all Orthodox owned and run.

In any case, the Hekhsher Tzedek debacle provides a clue into the Darfur issue. Real change isn't the goal of these Jewish social action heroes -- making public displays of pretentious piety is.

The New York Times Magazine recently did a feature on the fringe, disingenuous anti-AIPAC group J Street. They claim to care about Israel's long-term security, but here is how its director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, described the group's mission: "Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president's blocking back."

Not, mind you, to advocate for a safe and secure Israel. Its self-described mission is to support whatever the president says and attack his critics. Israel can wait; there are elections to win.

So when the president advocates a policy, Messinger's AJWS and Ben-Ami's J Street offer encomiastic songs of praise, even while the rest of the community cringes in horror.

How can we get these Jewish groups to be loyal to those they claim to represent? I suppose if this column doesn't do the trick, we can always try cookies and gold stars.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.