So too you can be critical of Israel and still be a faithful Jew. But various converse statements of the question are true as well: You can be uncritical in support of Israel and still be an anti-Semite. And you can even be supportive of Israel and betray the beliefs of Judaism. I think Israelis have less trouble understanding this than Americans do.

The analogy works so well because both American and Israeli societies are democracies. We have all known from eighth-grade civics classes that democracy demands the free exchange of ideas because, as citizens, democracy requires our open investigation of any issues which are relevant to our choices. These principles allow us to distinguish between democracy and elections.

Many countries in the Middle East now hold elections but Israel is still the only democracy. It may not be a perfect democracy, but neither are we. It is an imperfect democracy partly because it is in the midst of a war that has continued since its inception. Peace would make a huge difference in what it could do democratically. But in the parlance of today’s post-colonial theory, it is also a good candidate for a mildly successful post-colonial state. And that is a rare breed in our current world.

Israel is currently the only place in the Middle East where discussion about itself and its policies can be held in an open atmosphere.

Although Al-Jazeera has presented the Arab world with a non-government forum for information, it has hardly yet become a disinterested voice. In many ways, discussion of Israel in the United States is less free and open than it is in Israel.

In the United States, support for Israel has gotten entangled in the failed policies of the current administration. In the United States, there are certainly the strong opinions of the American Jewish community to discuss.

Sometimes American Jews seem like super-patriots in the spectrum of Israeli politics. The same is true of Palestinian Americans and supporters who are likewise super-patriots and whose likewise exaggerated opinions are influential in universities. Then, there is the Israel mythology of the Christian right.

All extremes seem to me to be ill-informed about the issues, especially the day-to-day pressures of life in the Middle East; all the extremes seem given to enormous exaggeration and name-calling rather than rational discourse.

Anyone who has ever listened to discussions in the Israeli Knesset or read Israeli newspapers or opinion journals knows that the issues are discussed and argued far more deeply and forcefully than anything one hears in the USA.

Members of Parliament in Israel -- Arab, Christian and Jew -- normally say things on the floor of the Knesset that would result in immediate ejection from the American Congress. Neither we nor they are perfect democracies but we should fight to raise the level of discussion.

In the end, we will have to regain the United States’ historical role as a peace-maker to resolve the issues.