Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious settlers to steal Palestinian land. Yet there s also another Israel as well, one that I mightily admire. This is the democracy that tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America. It s a citadel of civil society. And, crazily, it s the place where some of the most courageous and effective voices on behalf of oppressed Palestinians belong to Israeli rabbis like Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.

Israel s hard-line policies are depleting America s international political capital as well as its own. Gen. David Petraeus noted two months ago that the perception that the United States favors Israel breeds anti-Americanism and bolsters Al Qaeda. The chief of Mossad, Meir Dagan, was quoted in the Israeli press as making the point more succinctly: Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.