Andrew Sullivan is now on the Jewish identity beat, because he believes American interests are at stake in how Jews define themselves. Here he asks Jewish readers if they can imagine circumstances under which they’d walk away from Israel so as to leverage the country. No, Israel is family, says one. This question is at the heart of Jack Ross’s important new book. The Jewish American and Israeli families were melded in the 1950s after the idea of “Jewish nationality” was created. Ross believes the great unmelding is beginning. (But in the meantime you have a situation in which neoconservatives pressed the Iraq war for the sake of Israel, according to Joe Klein, and in which a liberal Zionist can state on a Jewish stage in NY that he feels loyalty to Israel, and if the U.S. has to take a few hits for the sake of Israel “and come up standing,” he’s OK with that. We need Sullivan on this beat)
