Amiram Barkat, Haaretz, May 7:
Israel fulfils a central role, for good or bad, in the Jewish identity of Jews in the United States. Because of this, many of the Jews there mistakenly think the attitude is mutual and that Israelis, too, are interested in them and anxious for their future. According to the report in Haaretz, the commonplace response to [Israeli writer A B] Yehoshua’s words was to ask, “Does everyone in Israel think this way?” But while the Jewish establishment in the U.S. constantly checks the strength of American Jews’ emotional ties to Israel, the ties going the other way have never been seriously checked.…