Israel and AmericaMichael TomaskyI'm going to refrain by and large from just writing posts denouncing Israel. You can read plenty such essays on this web site and others, and anyway I was hired to write about America, so that's what I'm going to do.And in America, this event really could be a tipping point. The Beinart essay from the New York Review that we discussed previously has kicked up a broader, introspective conversation among American Jews about why younger Americans don't feel connected to Israel in the way older Jews did in earlier generations, and what that lack of empathy portends for Israel's future. Not being part of the circle, maybe it's not for me to say quite so much, except that from what I can observe, this tragedy having happened at the precise moment that such a thoroughgoing evaluation was taking place, it can't but have the effect of creating more anger and disillusion among many American Jews under 40, for whom the occupation looms far larger than the founding Zionist-humanist impulse.There is of course another current here, and the Israel-right-or-wrong contingent is breathing fire today: the flotilla was put together by a Turkish nonprofit with ties to a Saudi umbrella group that has financed terrorism, according to the Weekly Standard. Read the Standard online and the blog at Commentary magazine, called Contentions, if you want to keep up with how this faction is trying to spin the flotilla event. One post actually argued that the main problem here was that the IDF went in with too little force.Arguments like these will continue, but I believe the constituency for them in the US is growing smaller and smaller. Remember, Jews are liberals, by and large. There is a chasm…

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