I came. I saw. I spoke. Whether I “conquered”  is to be determined.

But I had my five minutes of fame. Or infamy. The line is thin and easy to cross.

A  smorgasbord of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis was gathered on Reform temple neutral ground to hear my explanation of the now infamous email — a simple pro-Israel meeting  invitation that birthed a few impolite declinations then went viral and became a launching pad for vitriolic accusations and protestations that infected a not insignificant number of community leaders. Their temperatures were raised close to the boiling point.

Could today’s explanation somehow serve as an indirect antidote?

Perhaps. My message was slated to be delivered to rabbinical leaders who represented a cross section of normative Jewish beliefs. Normative is good. My last few weeks had been anything but. Of course, what’s normative is clearly in the eye of the believer: Your believer may be my heretic.

This day I was both, depending on which side of the room you were on.

Literally.

Let’s call it Jewish feng shui: Rabbis primarily allied with the Reform side of Judaism sat to my left.  Conservative rabbis were properly centered and the Orthodox mostly leaned right — and one played with his iPhone as I spoke, but that probably had more to do with disinterest than location.

Our city’s moral cabinet joyfully kibitzed and then proceeded to enter the world of a pre-explanation kosher boxed lunch.  No amount of Jewish feng shui, even if mixed with copious amounts of pepper, salt and a power outage, could have helped  rescue this meal. However, when Jews walked  in the desert for 40 years we proved that adventure and suffering are essential parts of our experience, so this little mysterious gustatory journey was really a piece of cake — or something that vaguely resembled a piece of cake.

But that wasn’t the point. Unlike most Jewish gatherings, food wasn’t the main focus — after all, I was there. While no one expected me to turn water into wine, many of the rabbis were familiar with my family’s ability to take five minutes and turn them into fifty. The Reform side appeared to be betting against a familial miracle.

If so, they lost.

At the four minute mark, a rabbi on my left repeatedly tapped his watch. I just assumed he was trying to tell me that he purchased his ten dollar Rolex from the same street vendor on Canal Street that I did. But when a rabbi directly in front of me slowly rose, thanked me for my update and began talking to the rabbi on my right about his iPhone, I figured  it was time to conclude.

Nevertheless, as with my newly discovered brevity, this day was truly different from all other days. While there was no matzo — although that would have added one identifiable item to the lunch —  there were some bitter herbs to discuss.

Why work with two other community leaders to set up a meeting that only seemed destined to generate rancor?  Weren’t there just too many disagreements about pro-Israel tactics for Jews allied with groups as diverse as J Street and AIPAC  to ever work together to support Israel?

My simple answer was to point to this very group before me.

No  Jewish Pastor Richard Ellis’s attended these monthly rabbi meetings. (Ellis is the Dallas pastor who proclaimed his support for Rick Santorum’s views by declaring: “I am a Christian first, I’m an American second.”)  These rabbis, despite their different Jewish affiliations, are Americans, Jews and supporters of Israel. There is no ‘who do you love more?’ prioritization. There is no conflict. Nor should there ever have to be.

These rabbis regularly work together and are able to conflate seemingly opposing views while  sharing a common goal of supporting America, Judaism and Israel. If they can do it, why can’t their congregants?

Ellis  may have a strange and divisive view of loyalty and nationality. His Catholic Church may have singular views on many moral issues that  can create conflict when over 95% of its parishioners ignore some of those positions. Yet there is, thankfully, no one Jewish Temple that dictates to all of Judaism.

So differences on supporting Israel, the role of women, intermarriage, gay rights, abortion,  premarital sex, capital punishment, even the length of holidays, belief in God and defining who is a Jew, don’t prevent our group from eating bad boxed lunches and staring down recalcitrant speakers who insouciantly drift beyond their allotted time.

The BIG message the rabbis heard — signified by “all caps” and italics in case you needed more focus — is that “pro-Israel” is now a homophone. (By the way, a homophone, at least in its unabbreviated form, is not yet opposed by any branch of Judaism). Different pro-Israel meanings are not just specific to older and younger generations or to any particular branch of Judaism, although, as a broad generalization, the older and more religiously conservative you are, the more likely you are to define pro-Israel in Outside/Inside terms, and the younger and more religiously liberal you are, the more likely you are to define pro-Israel in Inside/Outside terms.

My concentrated study of the many thoughtful emails I received provided me with keen insight into the proper definitions of these terms, as well as some alternate definitions of “thoughtful.” While none of  the pro-Israel terms appear (yet) in any dictionary,  it is only a matter of time until I crack the Wikipedia editing lock and insert them myself.

Here is what I almost had enough time to tell the rabbis they would soon find:

People using the Outside/Inside definition believe in defending Israel  by primarily focusing on the different countries, groups and individuals that  potentially may, alone or in combination, present threats to Israel’s survival. Some of those threats may be perceived as ranging from countries, especially those that could develop, distribute  or use nuclear weapons, to terrorist groups, especially ones that launch  missiles and rockets  into Israel. Threats also include delegitimization campaigns and economic boycotts, Jewish organizations that seem to place a disproportionate of blame on Israel while ignoring  its enemies, and public anti-Israel speakers who use lies and distorted “facts” to demonize Israel before uninformed audiences.

People using this definition frequently acknowledge that Israel has internal problems to deal with, but they tend to stress that these problems are no more or less than any other country, and certainly less than Israel’s often violent, anti-Semitic, misogynistic neighbors and adversaries. Public disagreement with Israeli policies or actions is generally discouraged —  it is viewed as divisive and ultimately beneficial to Israel’s enemies.

People using the Inside/Outside definition recognize Israel’s external threats and they support providing Israel with a qualitative military advantage to deal with those threats, but they also place a much stronger emphasis on defending Israel by focusing on actions Israel can take to affect the behavior of its enemies and minimize the external threats. This includes a focus on Israel’s settlement policy, the overall treatment of its Arab citizens and Palestinians, the absence of leadership focus on the importance of  a near term two state agreement, and issues such as the negative influence of the ultra-Orthodox on economic, social and religious policies.

Those using this definition place more emphasis on the potential for these internal factors to weaken America’s and the Jewish Diaspora’s support for Israel, which they believe threatens Israel’s  survival as a Jewish and democratic country.  How Israel’s neighbors and adversaries operate their own countries is seen as  irrelevant to how Israel should act in preserving its own democratic and Jewish character. Public disagreement with Israeli policies or actions is not generally discouraged  — it is viewed as potentially helpful in moving Israel to take actions that strengthen Israel’s support from America and its Jewish base.

Getting those that firmly remain in one pro-Israel definition camp to extend their definition into the other pro-Israel camp won’t be easy. It’s also not necessary. One can be only Outside/Inside or Inside/Outside and still see the value and wisdom in finding enough common ground to work together on projects that can both strengthen Israel outside/in and inside/out.

If these rabbis, some with widely different views on Judaism and Israel, can meet monthly, share the aggravation of a bad meal and a speaker that can’t tell time, and also undertake projects for the benefit of their community and Israel, then certainly their congregants can follow their lead.

And that’s the message I would have gotten to in my sixth minute — too late for this particular meeting, but not to late for today’s column or for the upcoming  meeting of supporters of J Street, AIPAC, AJC, ADL and all points in between. I’ll keep you posted as we merge the Outsides and Insides and hopefully create a third pro-Israel definition for our new group to get into Wikipedia.

Last week, I wrote about my attempt to bridge the growing Jewish community divide over Israel. I thought (in my naivete) that I could bring supporters of seemingly disparate pro-Israel factions together. Those with tactical disagreements over how to best strengthen Jewish support for Israel would surely beat their verbal swords into plowshares and till the verdant Israel discussion soil. We might not agree on every policy, but we could certainly unite behind a shared pro-Israel goal.

Or not.

I might get better odds on the Republicans and  Democrats working together on contraceptive health care benefits. Or passing “super” political action committee legislation to quash the ability of billionaires to fund millionaires’ political campaigns.

But was my attempt to set up a meeting of supporters of Israel, who are also supporters of AIPAC, J Street, AJC, the ADL and all points in between, really, as one person put it, a massive failure?

The few people who either declined the opportunity outright, or accepted the opportunity and then had a change of heart, certainly thought so. After all, they weren’t coming.

The reasons varied:

“You have to understand. People have a lot of pressure not to come.” (Fair enough. Dependent thought is too little valued.)

“People have enough to do. They don’t need to take their valuable time to meet with people on the other side.”  (Translation? My pro-Israel isn’t your pro-Israel.  Because we don’t agree on how to best support Israel, and you refuse to engage in my diurnal cycle of practiced talking points, you’ve moved over my ”pro-Israel” border.)

Two comments reflected the need for more accurate opposition research:

“You included B.D.S. supporters, so we won’t come.”

“You didn’t include B.D.S. supporters, so why should we come?”

Three other comments reflected the need for better polling data and keener insight:

“No one believes this kind of meeting will be good for Israel.” (In this case, “no one” means this person and possibly a few other serial objectors to anything outside their favorite pro-Israel organization’s purview. It certainly didn’t include the 23 Democratic and Republican Jewish leaders, rabbis, and major community leaders — many with widely different views — who said “yes.”)

“I’ve seen what you write, so I know the meeting will be slanted. You’ll just force the discussion in the direction you want.  (In the Jewish community world I live in,  if a meeting of more than two Jews ever seemed to move linearly, then it could only mean we misunderstood each other or we were very late in the meeting and the cookies, brownies and fruit were summoning our attention. But while the “starve them to steer them” strategy is an interesting idea, it’s not one on the meeting agenda.)

“The Jewish community isn’t divided. You either support Israel or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re not pro-Israel.” (In other words, we need to stop making things so complex. If we’re for something, then we can’t be against it. If we’re against something, then we can’t be for it. So if we’re for Israel, then the Jewish community can’t be divided, Jewish support for Israel has to be increasing, and this meeting invitation never happened.)

But the invitation did happen and the efforts to set up the meeting didn’t fail.  A few “yes’s” did become converts to “no,” but a few “no’s”  became “reverse-converts.”  Our group is now not only larger than expected, but just as diverse.

So where do we go from here? That would be a slight detour to a pizza joint to do some pre-meeting game planning with a smaller, equally diverse group.

I’m recommending the thin crust — with extra thick skins.

(I’ll occasionally update the pro-Israel meeting progress as this process continues. If you’d like to read the other three pro-Israel articles in this series, please click here, here, or here.)

Harmless? Not to those who saw the meeting as an effort to support the rough equivalent of Friedman’s Americans Elect — in this case, a pro-Israel independent party movement that would possibly weaken Israel’s support within the Jewish community. Not to those who saw the meeting as a joyless gathering of retrograde militaristic bomb throwers whose solutions have not worked for seven decades. And definitely not harmless if you thought the organizers — ah, that would include me — had hidden motives.

A simple “yes” or “no”  response request became a series of repetitive email points and counterpoints, free from the annoying fact-checking glare of Snopes, with a few personal email battles thrown in.  One person declined because he said he loved Israel and didn’t want to do anything that could harm her. Another person declined because she said she loved Israel and didn’t want to consort with people who viewed the meeting as an attempt to harm Israel. One person even accepted because she wanted to meet people that  still thought like the two people described.  Then two people suggested having a meeting to set up a discussion about having the meeting. (Which struck me as more reasonable than the request to identify what food would be provided before a commitment could be made.)

Yet, we did have over 50% of a very diverse group say “yes,” so we seem to be off to a better organizing start than Americans Elect — at least until Friedman curses our group with an enthusiastic endorsement.

Interim lessons learned?  ”Bcc” beats “cc” for discouraging and impeding pre-meeting campaigning. “Delete” and not “reply all” works best to prevent angry counterattacks. And that ringing device, that my daughters now only associate with texting, works supremely best for ending and resolving touchy issues.

Most important lessons learned?  Your “pro” may be my “anti”  and vice-versa, but America’s pro-Israel Jewish community has divergent thoughts and forms its own coalitions,  just as Israelis do. Yet we are ultimately all on the same team.

While there will always be points of difference that separate us, they do not have to divide us. We have a choice to make.  We can choose to focus on our points of agreement and make progress or we can engage in ad hominem attacks and scare tactics and get nowhere. That understanding, which I believe our attendees have, will help our group remaining focused on our shared goals.

Stay tuned. The first chapter of the real story has yet to be written. If this was easy, then the reward would not be as great. (But I am okay with easier…..)

Click below for the last two articles in this pro-Israel series:

http://bumpspot.com/prominent-american-jews-define-pro-israel/

http://bumpspot.com/what-pro-israel-means-or-should-mean/

Such a BIG TOPIC that pro-Israel is. Moment Magazine published a fascinating series of interviews in its January/February issue — so BIG no one issue could contain it! — asking prominent Jews to define “pro-Israel.”

Some people had nothing to say, but they said it anyway. Some people had a lot to say and you may wish they hadn’t.

Some even cast votes for who and what doesn’t belong on the pro-Israel island. Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post, and fan of pro- and anti-Israel absolutes and using lots of “neo-s,” is my choice.

Glick would consider herself to be quintessentially pro-Israel, because she recognizes severe internal and external threats that other, far less visionary people, choose to either ignore or tolerate. In  just one recent article, her identified threats to Israel ranged from Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to the Brookings Institute and non-governmental organizations like  B’Tselem and Peace Now, to “fanatical misogynists” — the Taliban not the ultra-Orthodox —  to “Israel’s radical left,” to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, and even to a White House and its officials who Glick says “exhibit classical anti-Semitic behavior.”

On  Glick Island, the calendar is permanently stuck on 1967. Well over half of the Jewish Diaspora and most Israeli politicians outside of the current coalition, would have a hard time passing her pro-Israel citizenship test. Yet Glick does have a base and as you read the interviews in Moment you’ll recognize some Glick Island citizens.

Rather than summarize all of the varying views — Glick’s are, thankfully, not representative of the more thoughtful responses — it’s best you read them yourselves, including Kadima party leader Tzipi Livni’s refreshing comments in a much longer interview in The Atlantic.

We’re still on the appetizer portion of the pro-Israel series, so go whet your appetites and return soon for the salad portion…..

Note: I welcome your thoughts. If you email your views on what it means to be pro-Israel, I will include them in upcoming articles (and keep them anonymous if you prefer). The first part of this series can be accessed by clicking here.

The next several articles will focus on what has become an increasingly important issue within the Jewish community: What does pro-Israel really mean?

For Atlanta Jewish Times publisher Andrew Adler, pro-Israel means calling for Israel’s Mossad to consider assassinating U.S. President Barack Obama. Thankfully, Adler’s addled response to Obama’s supposedly anti-Israel policies and actions was widely denounced within the Jewish community and resulted in a U.S. Secret Service investigation of Adler’s views. Hopefully that investigation will be more conclusive than the effort to define what it really means to be pro-Israel.

Is AIPAC’s pro-Israel definition different from ADL’s, AJC’s, J Street’s or Christians United For Israel’s? What about the Emergency Committee for Israel’s pro-Israel? Or Obama’s? Or Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson’s, Gingrich’s Israel puppet-master?

What about the Israeli government’s pro-Israel definitions? Which one gets chosen depends to a large extent on whether you are part of the ruling Likud party coalition or a member of the opposition, led by the Kadima party.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition leaves little room for nuance: Israelis know what’s best for Israelis and the free pass to rigorously disagree stops at the border. He won’t recognize or engage with pro-Israel groups if he feels they offer too much dissent from his government’s policies.

Yet, Tzipi Livni, Kadima’s leader, welcomes dissent as valuable and representative of the diverse nature of the pro-Israel Jewish Diaspora. She has even argued that by allowing for disagreement, Israel actually encourages more of the Diaspora to remain interested in providing support. (Gideon Levy, an Israeli columnist, goes a step further: He says if you are really pro-Israel, if you really love Israel, then you “must criticize Israel as it deserves.”)

But do Israel’s Likud party leaders really understand how pro-Israel should be defined any better than they seem to understand what Israel is inexorably drifting into becoming — a democratic state that is making more and more undemocratic trade-offs and whose Jewish nature is in danger of regressing, as many American Jews and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fear, into a closer alignment with the fundamentalism of Iran’s mullahs than with the religiously diverse (and increasingly secular) nature of its Diaspora support base?

Too many Israeli leaders — often more nominal than real — prefer to avoid developing and announcing complex long-term strategies to address Israel’s internal and external problems because that would require both mobilizing the Israeli public to support them and taking some level of political risk. It is much more tempting and far less complicated to focus on tactics that may bring temporary relief from future problems but that, fundamentally, don’t begin to resolve the actual issues. One Israeli friend compared Israel’s predicament to someone that has a treatable skin cancer that was slowly spreading yet had doctors writing prescriptions for suntan lotion.

Netanyahu’s political team would vehemently disagree with this analogy. They’d offer another one: The Israeli house is on fire and the first step is to put it out. Why strategize to add sprinklers and fireproofing when arsonists are trying to destroy our house NOW?

Yet Israel can’t extinguish the fires by continuing to fight them with its own special gasoline formula. The fires simply grow larger and spread as old issues fester and the embers of new ones, birthed from the old ones, create new fires for future generations.

So is it pro-Israel to continue the traditionally sanctioned policy of whispering disagreement in private, a policy that has historically provided Israel with unquestioning pro-Israel organizational support for almost all of its actions and inactions? After all, there are enemies all around — within easy bombing and delegitimization distance! — of Israel. Over one billion Muslims live in countries largely hostile to Israel and those countries offer few of the democratic norms and human rights values Israel embodies, so why ever give comfort to Israel’s enemies by adding any criticism to theirs? Israel needs its friends to be friendly.

That returns us to the pro-Israel question again. Do Israel’s pro-Israel friends need to follow some type of “Robert’s Rules of Order” (Bibi edition) in order to enter the pro-Israel club?

Carlo Strenger, a prominent Israeli academician and book author, doesn’t think so.  According to Strenger, “Israel is tearing apart the Jewish people.” Writing in Haaretz, Israel’s version of the New York Times, he makes several points: Israel’s illiberal government distances “85% of world Jewry,” who recognize Israel’s difficult “neighborhood” challenges and the Iranian threat, but don’t understand how any of  this “is connected with Israel’s settlement policy, the dispossession of Palestinian property in Jerusalem, and the utterly racist talk about the ‘Judaization’ of Jerusalem.”

He further contends that Israel has never had a government “so oblivious of its relation to world Jewry,” (in) “passing laws that increase the Orthodox establishment’s stranglehold on religious affairs and personal life.” And Strenger laments, “I feel it can’t be true that the country that was supposed not only to be the homeland of the Jews, but a moral beacon, is descending into such darkness…I feel if I were simply in a bad dream; (but) that when I wake up, Herzl’s vision of a Jewish state committed to the core values of liberalism (will once again be) the reality.”

If these thoughts were expressed by an American Jew, and not an accomplished Israeli, the traditional pro-Israel lobby would consider them to be unfair, unbalanced, and certainly not pro-Israel.

But Strenger’s views seem quintessentially pro-Israel. He loves his country and fears for its future. He sees Israel’s drift and fears for its soul. He sees what Israel is becoming and fears that Israel risks losing its core Jewish support.

Israel, a country that has never lived without war or terror, may have leaders and a citizenry that are now more comfortable living with a known evil than with an unknown peace. In some ways, that’s understandable. When it comes time to pass around the hummus with people you have fought with your entire existence, it’s hard to share.

But what may be understandable doesn’t necessarily make for good policy. Far too few Israeli and Palestinian leaders are actually laying the educational, social and political foundation that will be necessary to help a peace process succeed.

That’s why it’s important for the pro-Israel definition to take on a broader meaning. The new definition would include advocating for Israel to strategize on the steps it can take now to help the prospects for a sustainable peace with the Palestinians and to begin realistically addressing Israel’s social, political, religious and economic contradictions. If that advocacy is balanced with support and praise for Israel’s many successes and encouragement for further progress, then pro-Israel really can begin to mean something.

(The next two articles will explore the pro-Israel issues in much more detail. Consider this to be your appetizer.)

Ron Paul (or his newsletter doppelganger) is better at constructing conspiracy theories than I am, but his spirit must infest those Likud Party coalition members who rarely, if ever, consider any new analysis of Palestinian leaders or their actions. Anything (disturbingly) optimistic is presented in its most unfavorable light.

Even that minimal light is extinguished when it’s sent into the RELIABLE TALKING POINTS black hole, a place where the glow kindled by good news is doomed to never escape the gravity of all the well-worn talking points — the ones that start with history lessons on the Palestinians’ perfidy and then wander through decades of reasons why peace can’t or won’t happen.

It must be a conspiracy.

What else could explain the cone of silence (other than the Get Smart “The Man From Yenta” sale on eBay) when Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal announced that Hamas had decided to switch tactics and accept peaceful means to end its struggle with Israel? Meshaal even accepted the idea of using the 1967 borders as the basis for a Palestinian state. Yet he was ignored and the offer was called unserious.

Meshaal’s statement is one outcome of Hamas’ quasi-merger, quasi-who- knows-how-this-will-work-out reconciliation agreement with Fatah. By one interpretation, Hamas’ acceptance of the reconciliation agreement means they also accept (without the internal political difficulties of publicly declaring it) what Fatah has already accepted in prior negotiations — an end to violence, Israel’s right to statehood, a Palestinian state along 1967 borders, and a very limited right of return for Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Even though Meshaal’s pronouncement came with oversized public baggage — no immediate recognition of Israel or renouncement of the option of an armed struggle —  if Israel truly wants to jumpstart a moribund peace process, why not focus and capitalize on the points of agreement? Certainly there are risks in pursuing an initially imperfect peace process. There are risks in negotiating with people you have been fighting with for most of your existence as a country.

But there are larger risks to Israel’s continued existence as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people if it continues to wallow in and reinforce the currently dangerous stasis. A recent demographic study pointed to the fact that, by 2015, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Arabs located within Israel, will begin to outnumber Jews.

At that point, in the absence of a Palestinian state, it is hard to see how Israel can retain its Jewish character unless it sacrifices its democratic nature. And if Israel continues to restrict voting rights in the West Bank and Gaza — it’s not likely that Israeli politicians would allow themselves to be voted out of office by a Palestinian political bloc — and maintains (de facto and de jure) discriminatory political, social and economic policies throughout the territories and Israel — from schooling to housing to employment  to freedom of movement  to even water rights and allocation of technological spectrum — Israel will not even closely resemble a liberal democracy. If that bleak picture occurs, the depth of support that Israel now receives from the United States, and also from its Jewish Diaspora, will begin an accelerated and inexorable slide.

Israeli leaders must seize the opportunity to create opportunities more than they choose to focus on a truly awful past if they hope to prevent this disaster.

Which brings us to the awful present.

Israeli diplomats, after spending their summer sheltered within the confines of their home territories, recently migrated back to Israel on their annual Christmas-time return journey to Jerusalem.  (The San Juan Capistrano swallow watching still beats the El Al envoy watching, although El Al’s slight edge on “on time arrival” may not endure much longer if the envoys’ migratory patterns continue to be threatened by Israel’s seasonal fuel contamination issues.)

The diplomats, nestled within the protective confines of the basement level auditorium of the Foreign Ministry building, watched Eran Etzion, head of The Foreign Ministry planning division, present the Foreign Ministry’s succinct evaluation of the Israel-Palestine peace process: It’s dead — at least until next December’s El Al diplomatic sighting.

The large “X” over the “peace process” slide was the giveaway to those who failed to grasp the presentation emphasis.

Yet, the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) recently announced an offer to resume peace talks, without a halt to settlements, if Israel would release one hundred Palestinian prisoners. It was a rather transparent way to help the P.A. construct an internal justification to get back to peace talks, since Israel has refused to meet the P.A.’s demand to halt settlement expansion.  But the silence from Israel was only interrupted long enough for Likud coalition members to decry the proposal’s lack of seriousness. Which then led to a predictable follow-up announcement by lead Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat: Israel must halt settlement construction if it expects to reenter peace talks.

The birds return to San Juan Capistrano and the envoys return to Jerusalem every year, at predictable times, and positive Palestinian-Israeli actions are followed by disappointing ones with predictably the same regularity.

See opportunity. End opportunity.

Then we have Beit Shemesh, the site of an extremist ultra-Orthodox group that operates under the cloak of their ersatz Judaism to engage in various forms of hostility against Israeli society. That hostility has manifested itself into rock throwing at IDF officers — officers in an army they are free to avoid serving in — organized attacks on Palestinians, and dressing their children in Nazi garb to demonstrate that Israeli civil authorities are acting as if they are Nazis. What they have learned from their state supported Talmudic education (which is also, for the majority of them, their state-supported profession) evidently does not fit well with modern society — a.k.a., any society within the last one thousand years or so.

This ultra-Orthodox clan has sought to apply their ancient teachings to modern day rules, such as those related to clothing, hailing taxis and even where to sit on public buses — a requirement ignored by Israel’s version of Rosa Parks, Tanya Rosenblit, who refused to accommodate her seat minders, making her case a cause célèbre throughout Israel. The community most recently stands accused of harassing an eight-year-old Orthodox girl, Na’ama Margolis, whose immodest dress violated their views on proper Jewish hemlines.

These Maccabean extremists, waging their religious battles against a Hellenistic Israeli society, claim their efforts are a way to honor women, albeit through subjugation and strict obedience to men. (I sort of understand. My fatherly studies have taught me that my role is to vet my daughters’ dates and their role is to comply. Unfortunately, they told me that while I may have been studying, it was clear I had learned very little — perhaps a fair analogy to our ultra-Orthodox Jewish miscreants.)

The story of Na’ama is a story that made its way around the world — even to an ultra-Orthodox ally, Saudi Arabia, a place where women are regularly honored: In Saudi Arabia, women must generally remain shrouded, don’t suffer the inconvenience of voting on pre-decided elections, and need different levels of permission from their male guardians in order to drive, work, travel, marry, divorce, study, bank, and have surgical procedures. (They are allowed, of course, to still complain about Israel and its less unique ways of honoring Palestinians.)

But what makes the story so much more newsworthy is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to it — a reaction that was not widely reported.  Instead of simply threatening to arrest those who violate Israeli criminal law, he  offered to give the ultra-Orthodox their own half of the city.

That’s what a political  bloc that represents ten percent of Israel’s population and births future voters at a rate of eight to ten per family — it’s hard to get a precise number when the birthing merry go round  procreates so fast — can do to an otherwise brilliant anti-leader who is usually more focused on giving West Bank settlement groups Palestinian territory than ultra-Orthodox law-breakers their own cities.

And what about the latest news from Iran?

While the United States and Iran are engaging in a war of words over whether Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for about a third of the world’s oil, a real war over Iran’s nuclear ambitions may be less necessary — at least according to Israeli Mossad head Tamir Prado. Prado, speaking to Israeli envoys and journalists at their Jerusalem diplomatic nesting, suggested that even if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, it would not be an existential threat to Israel.

Prado’s comments follow the remarks of his predecessor, Meir Dugan. Dugan has repeatedly accused  Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of recklessly leading Israel into a war with Iran as a first option, without adequately considering diplomatic alternatives.

So what have we learned from all of these disparate news events?

Perhaps it’s this: If the news doesn’t fit, then we must acquit ourselves of the notion that closing our eyes and searching for supportive “facts” can be a successful strategy to achieve anything of long-term value to Israel or Palestine. Those who can and want to still envision a path to peace and understanding must start leading the way, with eyes wide open, before Israel and Palestine descend into a Pandora’s box that no one will be able to close.

An Israel threat.

She acts and critics attack.

Supporters defend.

It is a “Rinse, Wash, Repeat” haiku that works in whatever sequence you want to place your emphasis, especially if you don’t care whether you violate the rules of haiku or the rules of stasis. But Israel and its difficulties can’t be condensed to simple English imitations of Japanese haikus.

So let’s try imitation proverbs that nicely align with the imitation Israel-Palestine peace process.

Here’s the first: The enemy of your enemy may still be your enemy. (This is especially true if, like Israel, you have a fairly expansive definition of “enemies,” and a limited qualification standard for friendship.)

And the second: Your real friends may insist you change. (After years of entrenched behavior, they may want you to remember your dreams or imagine your own potential.)

Unfortunately Israel’s expansive definition of  ”enemies” crosses over into its qualification standards for friendship. Call it Israel’s “if you don’t live here, you have no right to criticize” friendship duty. Your role, should you wish to join the pro-Israel friendship club, is to always support Israel in public.

Should you disagree, that must be done privately or you aren’t a real friend: It’s a hostile world and Israel must, at a minimum, ensure unanimity among its base — the (sometimes literal) Occupy Israel supporters.

This includes AIPAC members. With a membership base of around 1% of American Jews, they have historically defended, lobbied and contributed more successfully (and with far more organizational structure) than a significant number of the other 99% of American Jews who, while choosing not to be AIPAC members, are also choosing to become more detached from a country they feel no longer mirrors their values or welcomes their support. Only the strong can survive their journey outside of the comfort zone and protective wing of the vocal 1%.

Count me as one of those survivors.

Until I wrote my last article on the Christians United For Israel (CUFI) controversy, I was considered to be a reasonable sort — not AIPAC material, but one of the few “good” J Street supporters. Of course, like all of J Street’s 170,000 supporters, I was still embarrassingly wrong and misguided on Israel. But at least I was someone you didn’t have to fear would stab Israel in the front of a BumpSpot blog, which is also now read in Tikkun, The Middle East Post and by Twitter-ites from all around the world, including some deep in the heart of Israel and Palestine. (The real Twitter village may be at the local J.C.C. for all I know. The odds that I’m reading my site visitor statistics correctly are somewhat lower than getting me to actually use my wife’s opera tickets during the middle of the N.F.L. playoffs. Just because I agreed to attend with her, in a fit of compromise a few arguments ago, doesn’t override what everyone knows is an implied marriage vow football exception.)

But I digress.

Let’s get back to my last article and its message:  The embrace of CUFI  has coincided with the virtual exclusion of a large number of pro-Israel Jews. These Jews still strongly support Israel, but they also advocate for Israel to take actions that they feel will help it remain more true to its original values. Unfortunately, Israel won’t always punch their tickets to board the pro-Israel train unless these supporters line up straighter behind the government’s line and agree to take a journey with Israeli conductors who seem to have little idea of their ultimate long-term destination.

Step into the AIPAC section. Or ride with the newest passenger, the deeply exclusionary Emergency Committee For Israel, a Republican operatives-led effort to divide and separate good pro-Israel support (aka Republican) from weak and questionable pro-Israel support (aka Democratic). It’s Israel as a Democratic-Republican wedge issue right up there with tax and spending cuts, national health care, global warming, Canadian pipelines, gays in the military over church in the schools and Newt’s fictional Palestinian people over the all-too-real Israeli settlers.

If Israel chooses to embrace CUFI and all of the values-disconnect and end-times baggage that comes along with Pastor Hagee’s evangelical ride, then shouldn’t Israel’s leaders, if they still see that it’s possible for Israel to be a democratic homeland for the Jewish people, embrace more of Diaspora Jewry, even the Jewish groups that may annoy it when they advocate for more proactive Israeli actions to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians or more progressive internal policies to deal with social, economic or religious issues? What strategic purpose (unless it is to  further prune your Jewish-supporters’ list) is served by closing your playground to the Jews who don’t actually live in your neighborhood, just because they won’t play by your sandbox support rules?  You can wrap Pastor Hagee in a tallit and hand him a shofar to broadcast his love of Jews and of Israel, but at the end of the day his “end of the day” differs. Dramatically.

So what does it suggest when Israel’s largest group of American supporters are evangelical Christians, when Israel has to actually restate that it’s against the law to require women to ride in the back of public buses that run through ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, when West Bank settlers who attack Palestinian holy sites and Israeli military outposts are treated under more favorable rules than Palestinians who attack Jewish holy sites and Israeli soldiers or when Israel’s Foreign Minister still views Israel’s security as best preserved by managing the peace process by focusing on building settlements and  security barriers and demonizing Palestinian leadership than by proactively building a platform for successful peace negotiations? Could this, just perhaps, suggest a need for new Israeli leadership and a need for pro-Israel American Jewish groups to adopt a different approach?

Let’s call it ”friends don’t let friends drive drunk” pro-Israel advocacy. Although this could destroy the hobbyists who love engaging in their fantasy Middle East War Leagues, where who won what issue or tactic is endlessly scored, what Israel most needs is the type of visionary leadership that can end these games. What Israel needs are leaders who can paint a picture of what a step by step peace process will look like and what the benefits will be, much more than they take comfort in following policies that effectively cause Israelis and Palestinians to wallow in a nightmarish cycle of hate, mistrust and violence that impairs everyone’s future.

A quick reset: I know my last sentence is unbalanced. I haven’t equally criticized the Palestinians. I haven’t pointed out their terrorism, missiles, failed leadership, anti-Israel educational system and whatever else it is that the Middle East Fantasy War Leagues score. That’s all true.

But it is the one with more power and leverage that is most able to affect change. We do need two to tango, but if one of the partners doesn’t have all of the moves, then there’s no harm in the other partner extending extra effort to get to the end of the dance. That’s if the other partner believes it can work to build up its partner and it is truly in their best interest to get to the end of the dance. The present Israeli government is clearly not there yet.

It should be a concern when Israel’s most reliable defense to criticism is to point to a hypocritical world that ignores Israel’s neighborhood. Is measuring Israel’s actions against Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria the new math? Is exceeding low standards progress? Does suggesting that Israel may not be perfect, but at least women can drive (even if they can’t always count on sitting unopposed in the front of certain buses through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods) capture the new Zionist dream?

Let’s focus on that. Not the driving part, but the standards part.

Israel is held to a different standard. And Israel and its true supporters should want that. The world already has enough anti-democratic, misogynistic, corrupt, or just plain evil governments. Israel, a country serving as the safe house for a people who, only a few generations ago — an eye blink in history — suffered from a maniacal hatred that destroyed almost half of its people, and a country that has already given the world so much, can’t risk venturing anywhere near its neighbors’ associative quicksand by  passing laws that threaten Israel’s democracy, proposing laws that many argue will weaken dissent, equality and human rights or by engaging in “we’ll show you” settlement building. That merely ensures a more entrenched and expanded pool of enemies, weakens Israel’s relationship with its key supporters and further delays the opportunity to have a successful “two state” negotiation with the Palestinians.

That moves us to the Tom Friedman controversy.

The prominent New York Times columnist and book author wrote an editorial that outlined American Jewish concerns with Israel’s future. But instead of focusing on Friedman’s essential points, two key members of Israel’s rapid response team — AJC and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren — focused on a sloppy sentence about Congress giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an ovation that “was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” The focus should have been on Friedman’s main message: Israel is losing American Jewish support as it pursues policies that tend to create more distance from its core Jewish supporters. Friedman’s poor word choice is a moment in time. Israel’s future is not.

It’s easy to attack critics. It’s hard to start moving to make the type of changes necessary to stop Israel’s gradual drift into a country that, a generation from now, American Jews and American political leadership will possibly see as more closely resembling Iran than the Zionist vision of Israel.

Many Israel supporters will no doubt see that as an overstated or even a ridiculous portrait. But considering Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian birth rate, the severe reduction in aliyah (perhaps even a negative imbalance between immigration and emigration), and the absence of a two state peace agreement between Palestine and Israel, it is not difficult to see Israel having to face incremental decisions affecting its  democratic and Jewish nature. Does anyone seriously doubt that democracy will lose out when Israel is forced to face decisions affecting Israel’s raison d’ etre as a homeland for the Jewish people?

The fundamental reason for American Jewish and governmental support of Israel is because of a strong values connection. Israel also provides the United States with a regional security benefit. As the first reason slowly evaporates and as the second is possibly attenuated by a stronger Turkey, what is, may no longer be.

At that point, the apocryphal Obama-lack-of-support-for-Israel controversy could easily transition into a very real United States and American Jewish reduction in support for Israel controversy. But if Israel’s attention remains overly focused on reacting to what others do and say more than the strategically important actions it needs to take then Israel’s next action is just as likely to be investigating the Hellenists’ historical responsibility for preventing the menorah oil lasting for more than eight days than it is to focus on the substantive steps it needs to take to right its course.

Pray that’s not the case, if only to avoid another haiku leading my next column about Israel’s controversies.

When so many citizens and governments of so many countries regularly bathe in an anti-Israel bias, why would Israel ever reject a loving embrace?

Christians United For Israel (CUFI), founded in 2006, is now the largest pro-Israel (see Israel’s pro-Israel definition) group anywhere in the known universe and afterlife — over 500,000 strong and bountifully multiplying. All committed and loyally engaged in their Biblical struggle to defend the home team by enlisting, along with AIPAC, Israel’s much smaller Jewish quarterback, as Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s American blocking back and unofficial coalition party member.

Just as Netanyahu feels he speaks for generations of Jews, as he proclaimed before Congress in May, Pastor John Hagee, CUFI’s leader, has proclaimed to speak for all right-thinking evangelical Christians — evangelical Christians who know that Jews are God’s chosen title holders to all of pre-1947 Palestine: In July, while speaking at the sixth annual CUFI summit in Washington, D.C., he said, “The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people….they own the land of Israel! The boundaries…are given exactly in the Bible.”

It’s God as The Supreme Cartographer.

Presumably, in Hagee’s view, the over 5,000,000 Palestinians now scattered throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are just eschatological squatters whose presence can only serve to delay the evangelical dream —- the second coming of Jesus, a time when Tim Tebow will win every game with a “Hail Mary,” and Team Judaism will no longer have enough players to field a team.

But, before any of that can happen, more of the Jewish flock needs to fruitfully multiply all over Greater Israel.

While Hagee is based in San Antonio, Texas, due south of Rick Perry, he is clearly Israel’s star television evangelist. He continually beseeches his American Christian Zionist base to give, and then to give some more, to support some of what CUFI supports in Israel — settlements —  but not to give to what it doesn’t support — the (abortion-providing) Hadassah Hospital. (Quick aside: “Christian Zionist” should lead any oxymoron examples list,  just ahead of “jumbo shrimp,” “open secret” and “larger half:”  Consider Zionism’s history as a largely secular movement  focused on claiming Palestine for the Jewish people and Christian Zionism’s history as a deeply religious movement that views Jews as God’s chosen people — chosen to live in Israel, but also chosen to eventually convert when Jesus reappears or to depopulate Israel on a very hot journey south.)

Christian Zionists are poised to faithfully defend Israeli positions, attack disagreement with Israel as disloyalty to the Ultimate Power (the one high above, not the one thousands of miles east in the Knesset in Jerusalem), and poised to step in and serve in the vanguard of Israel’s Jewish supporter replacement strategy — a strategy necessitated by Israel’s efforts to disqualify and delegitimize any Jewish defenders that give it too much tsuris.

That includes J Street, an organization with 180,000 primarily Jewish supporters —  part of the group of Jews Netanyahu claimed to speak for (but not to) when he spoke before Congress. These supporters include over 600 rabbis and cantors, and prominent Israelis ranging from Knesset members to former IDF chiefs of staff and generals to prior leaders of Israel’s Shin Bet and Mossad, Israel’s version of America’s FBI and CIA.

J Street believes that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine 44 year old soap opera — 63 years if you include the prequel — is critical to Israel’s survival as the Jewish homeland. That’s  hardly an unusual belief within Israel or within the American Jewish community.  However, J Street finds itself, along with other center-left Jewish organizations, advocating for a country that largely rejects that advocacy. That’s because the proffered support is perceived to feature too much criticism and too much congressional lobbying for two-state peace efforts that conflict with Israel’s script.

But let’s return to CUFI.

CUFI is led by Pastor Hagee, an organizational and motivational genius.  He is sort of a Christian male version of Jennifer Rubin, only much more polished, right-wing and prone to apologize for his bloviations. While Rubin, a Washington Post reporter whose only Palestinian shade is black and blacker, recently wrote a blog post that literally encouraged Palestinian genocide, Hagee has engendered even more controversy: He has called the Holocaust a tactic used by God — see Hagee’s special dispensationalist definition —  to force Jewish people to return to Israel. Yet he was also wise enough to apologize and raise lots of money for Israel — reportedly over fifty million dollars and counting — which entitled him to receive absolution from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League’s Get-A-Pass-If-You-Stimulate-The-Economy-In-Israel division.

Hagee has also attacked the Catholic Church on several occasions, once calling it “the whore of Babylon.” But he vowed to cease and desist and expressed his sincere apology for his word choice — after all, calling the church “the great whore” might have been meant as a compliment considering the sexual predilections of some of its priests. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, was equally gracious in accepting Hagee’s apology. He was probably hoping to minimize the number of times that Donohue, the Catholic Church and Hagee would share a future too-public affiliation in the event of another Mount Hagee explosion — like when Hagee shared his insight into God’s views on gay rights, calling Hurricane Katrina God’s retribution for a planned gay rights parade in New Orleans. (Strangely, Hageee had no explanation for the Saints’ Super Bowl win.)

Then there is Hagee’s not so warm and fuzzy messaging on behalf of Israel, and how that messaging can affect the views of  progressive Jews, the dissed Jewish majority that votes reliably Democratic in national elections, but are increasingly marking their ballots as ”uninterested” when it comes to Israel and predominately Jewish causes and organizations. (As a national election issue, Israel doesn’t make any pollster’s top five list of Jewish voting concerns. In addition, not only are Jewish Federation contributions reportedly half of what they were ten years ago, contributions to mainstream Jewish organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, are off 30% to 40% just in the last three years. Some of that could, of course, be related to the economy, but then that is also the same period of time that J Street was founded and has experienced meteoric growth.) Hagee has divined that “President Obama is not pro-Israel,” which of course means that progressive Jews need to start watching more Republican party commercials, just so they’re prepared to back the right Palestinians-aren’t-a-people-Jerusalem-can’t-be-divided-I-worked-on-a-Kibbutz-I-went-to-the-Wall-I-bought-a -Jewish-tchotchke-I-know-some-Hebrew-words candidates in the upcoming elections. (If you click no other link, click this one.)

But first Jews have to figure out their own path to November 2012 since, as recently as 2006, Hagee expressed his certainty that anyone who failed to accept Jesus as their savior was condemned to Hell. (Of course, Hagee’s near-term vision of Hell — Obama as President — is less than otherworldly.)

Hagee also wants all to know that he has intimate knowledge of God’s views on Israel’s borders and His range of punishments: “God will bring this nation into judgment” (if the Obama administration pressures Israel to give up land). And God shared his thoughts on Jerusalem with Hagee, too : “If our government forces Israel to divide Jerusalem, you can mark that day as the day God will turn His back on the United States of America….”

But I come not to gratuitously slam Hagee or his acolytes. (His actual statements seem to offer enough fuel for his own self-immolation.)

It’s not that Israel and so many traditional pro-Israel supporters have lovingly embraced Hagee, or that Glenn Beck and Hagee are aligned in a sort of J Edgar Hoover-Clyde Tolson philosophical embrace. It’s that every invitation sends a message. And it’s who has and hasn’t been invited to this selective pro-Israel party and who gets to define what is and isn’t pro-Israel.

Certainly, as an Israeli official once told me in explaining Israel’s Christian Zionist love affair, and I paraphrase because I am not yet established enough to  make up unsourced quotes on background: If a ship is sinking you can’t be picky about who gets to throw you a life preserver. You take what you can get. Israel is smart enough to know that the evangelicals are supporting us primarily because of their religious beliefs. Many of them think that when Jesus comes they can convert us, but we don’t worry about motivations. We worry about tapping into 50,000,000 Christians that can influence America to keep supporting us. Without America, where would Israel be?

The real question, however, should be this: Without more Jews actively supporting Israel, what will Israel grow to be?

Will an Israel without stronger and consistent Jewish support from all of its Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, unaffiliated and even secular flanks, still preserve the founding vision of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that “ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all of its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex?”

Or will Israel become a Jewish state only in the same sense that the designer knock-offs sold on lower Broadway are the same clothes as the ones sold in Macy’s? At a distance, it may be hard to tell the difference. But move in closer and the differences soon become more apparent.

The growing ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalist influence over Israel’s politics and economy, the de facto discrimination against Arab citizens and Palestinians, and now Israel’s decision to align with Israels’ newest BFF’s — its  Christian Zionist supporters — while simultaneously rejecting a large segment of its Jewish base, risks permanently damaging Israel: Current and future Jewish generations will increasingly choose to remain on the sidelines and America’s strong support, which is based at least as much on a values connection as a strategic political connection — which Stratfor, a leading private intelligence service, feels that Turkey will increasingly fill —  will inexorably fade.

Israel needs to recapture the Jews who no longer feel welcome if they express concern over what they perceive as Israel’s drift away from its founding vision. These people aren’t disloyal simply because they fail to always toe the Israeli line. They are actually providing an advocacy mitzvah by relentlessly fighting through Israel’s rejection — all in an effort to refocus Israel on its raison d’etre before Israel becomes a country Jews no longer recognize or feel the need to support.

Let’s stipulate the obvious: Israel needs more supporters. It’s understandable that Israel would feel compelled to accept whatever support it can get and to reject those who are truly not supportive. But Israel’s definition of support is too short-sighted. Israel is who it chooses to associate with and who it chooses to disassociate from.

If Israel truly wants a two state solution, have broader support within the Jewish Diaspora, and remain steadfast in adhering to its founding ideals, then an alliance with CUFI is likely to prove strategically counterproductive in achieving any of that. This is especially true if Israel continues to reject loyal and engaged Jewish supporters who may not live in Israel — a silly and irrelevant criticism used to attack  Diaspora criticism — but still want Israel to be a country they would want to live in.

Unrequited support, as with unrequited love, normally results in reduced interest. Israel can’t afford to operate as if Christian Zionists are a  Jewish Diaspora replacement strategy any more than it can (continue to) allow Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists to increasingly influence Israeli society and its economic and political policies.

An Israel that chooses to follow policies that no longer represent the beliefs of the majority of the Jewish Diaspora, and an Israel that finds it has Christian Zionists as both its largest and most fervent supporters, will lead to an ersatz Israel — one that has sadly and unnecessarily lost its way.

There is still time to change. But it will take recognition that there is a severe problem. That recognition is not yet widely shared, which is why it is so critical for Israel’s traditional and non-traditional supporters to start working together building new roads to Jewish engagement, Israel advocacy and support. That’s why it is so critical to stop rejecting Jews who advocate for the types of changes that will reduce Israel’s need to embrace an unnatural CUFI affair of convenience over what should be Israel’s long-term marriage to its fellow Jews.