What it means to be pro-Israel

It is a striking image. Three cords of barbed wire cut violently across the top of a heavy concrete wall. Behind it is a Star of David, drawn to look simultaneously menacing and menaced. The text is urgent. "Why Israel Can't Win," it says.

This is not a normal cover for Time magazine, the august periodical that weekly defines America's consensus. But these are not normal times. Writing on The New York Times op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof condemned the murderous provocations of Hamas, but concluded, "Israel's right to do something doesn't mean it has the right to do anything." The very next day, Kristof's colleague Roger Cohen gave voice to his private horror. "I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions," he wrote. These are not writers who tend to criticize Israel. For the American media, this is not normal.

But it is not the criticism that should concern Israelis so much as the response to that criticism, which has exposed a dangerous and counterproductive defensiveness on the part of those who would protect the Jewish state. The resulting fight has manifested itself as a struggle to define what it means to be pro-Israel, and has spawned two distinct camps.

Traditionally, Israel's American advocates have prized a dogmatic species of support, best encapsulated in the "Israel, right-or-wrong" approach favored by groups like AIPAC. There is little room for discussion in this vision, and even less for dissent. Debate on a specific action is recast as a referendum on Israel itself.

The upside of this strategy is that it silences disagreement. While many question the strategic wisdom and proportionality of Operation Cast Lead, fewer are against Israel. This approach subsumes doubts about the former within the fierce commitment to the latter. The downside is that this makes for a brittle form of support. It cannot bend. It can only break. To judge the State of Israel wrong is a much graver judgment than to see its Gaza operation as misguided.

In recent years, a challenge has arisen to this perspective. In part out of virtue and in part out of necessity, new groups like J Street have argued that Israel is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. This approach has more space for criticism, which also means it has more space for support. It can bend without breaking.

This has terrified the "right-or-wrong" crowd. Their counter-assault spilled out onto the pages of Haaretz last week, when James Kirchick penned a telling column meant to discredit J Street before a progressive Israeli audience. "How can J Street claim to be 'pro-Israel,'" he asked, "when its capitulating stance on the first major Israeli military offensive since the Second Lebanon War is contradicted by over 80 percent of Israelis?" ("The Surrender Lobby," January 9) This echoed statements of his fellow Commentary magazine writer Noah Pollak. "It is time that thinking people started calling J Street what it actually is - an anti-Israel group," wrote Pollak.

At issue here is J Street's contention that Operation Cast Lead was an understandable response to Hamas, but will ultimately prove counterproductive, and that a cease-fire should be pursued immediately. It is a contention shared by, among others, the editorial board of Haaretz, which wrote that Hamas' villainy "cannot serve as a pretext for a cruel, all-out war against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians." Are they, too, anti-Israel? Moreover, it is a contention shared by many American Jews, and many Americans in general. Initial polls showed a close split among the U.S. public, with 44 percent voicing support for Israel's actions and 41 percent voicing skepticism. A majority wants to see Israel agree to a truce. Only a quarter disagree. This conflicted support and hope for swift cessation almost precisely echoes J Street's position.

But at issue here is not whether these poll respondents are right or wrong. It is whether they are anti-Israel or not. Kirchick offered a surprising test: To be "pro-Israel," he argued, an American group's positions must mirror those of the Israeli public. But, unsurprisingly, J Street's positions more closely echo those of the American center. Is the American center thus not "pro-Israel," because it questions the wisdom of Operation Cast Lead?

Elsewhere, he changes the metric slightly, arguing that J Street's claim to be pro-Israel is "dubious" because it supports direct negotiations with Hamas, which the Israeli government does not. (J Street, incidentally, says it supports mediated negotiations, along the lines of those that led to the June cease-fire.) Here it is official government policy, rather than public opinion surveys, that serves as the loyalty test. The Israeli government does negotiate with Hamas, as the now-shattered cease-fire showed, and Haaretz polling from the spring of 2008 showed more than 60 percent of Israelis supported negotiations. That majority has flipped in recent months. Does being pro-Israel require tracking changes in Israeli opinion? How often do you have to be certified as "pro-Israel" to make sure your opinions are current?

The absurdity of such loyalty tests is self-evident. But their existence gets to the heart of the problem. The American center, thankfully, considers itself resolutely pro-Israel. But it does not agree with Israel's every action. It wants an immediate cease-fire and is only tepidly supportive of Operation Cast Lead. In this, it is well-represented by groups like J Street, which provides a home for those who support the state without justifying its every twitch and gesture. And in this, Israel is well-served by J Street, and by other attempts to broaden its base of supporters rather than narrow the definition of support. It would be deeply unwise to write that perspective, and those supporters, out of the community that can consider itself "pro-Israel." A country that cannot brook criticism cannot have friends. And when Operation Cast Lead ends, Israel will still need friends. Indeed, it may need them more than ever.

Ezra Klein is an associate editor at The American Prospect.