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By Ira Sharkansky
 JERUSALEM—It is premature to declare a crisis in relations between the United States and Israel. Harsh words and mutual criticism need not escalate to anything more severe.
Threats of public opinion turning sharply against Israel do not square with surveys showing consistently greater support for Israel than Palestinians. There is more criticism of Israel from officials, academics, journalists, and in letters that newspapers publish. There is also more criticism of the American government and overseas Jews in the Israeli media, as well as surveys showing that many Israelis view Americans as naive and biased against them.
Opinions are fickle. They are somewhere among the elements that influence public policy, but not among those bound to be important. A classic study of what influences policy employs a model of the garbage can. There are so many influences that it is impossible to know what, in any particular instance, will emerge from the can to shape the decisions of officials. And then official decisions are only one of numerous factors that produce action and decide the ultimate question of who gets what.
With all the skepticism that is appropriate, it is possible to sense some of what is roiling people from personal contacts. A lot comes to me over the internet, in response to what I write or what--in the view of correspondents--I should be writing.
I began these columns several years ago to a small number of my family and friends. The list has grown to where I estimate that several thousand people receive them either directly, or passed on from intermediaries. Most I have never met, but several new friends have visited us in Jerusalem. Initially I wrote every week or 10 days. The incidence increased around events that seemed important. The Obama administration has upped the incidence to one every couple of days, or even a couple a day. Each column produces responses: some only one or two, but others into the several dozen.
Some endorse what I say.
Some ridicule me for not being sufficiently assertive in criticism of the Obama administration. Among my contacts are those who view him as an actual or virtual Muslim, have used the term anti-Semite, or even project that he will be compared to Hitler. A friend in the locker-room, who reached a high position in government and votes left of center, describes Obama's posture toward Israel as the work of fools.
Others accuse me of ranging into the realm of the fascist, racist, and war criminal. One distant cousin asked to be dropped from my list because my letters "were no longer funny." An old Jewish friend has begun writing letters dripping with something between sarcasm and hatred for what he calls my typical Israeli arrogance in the face of world opinion that rightly condemns Israel for gross violations of human rights.
The recent uptick in accusations against Israel invite yet another consideration of the age old problems of judgment. And insofar as Israel is Jewish, the discussion ranges into the nature of anti-Semitism.
There is nothing simple in any of this, but one can extract from recent discussions points worth thinking about. These are not final conclusions. There are no such things in difficult questions with political relevance.
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Anti-Semitism is a relatively new term for something ancient. Arabs assert that they cannot be anti-Semites because of their Semitic language. They are among those leading anti-Jewish rhetoric similar to what Josephus reported from the Greek population of Alexandria in the first century. Severe criticism of Israel has become fashionable among leftist academics and others, to the point where it is acceptable to use the label of anti-Semite for individuals who judge Israel with standards far above those used for judging other countries. Jews, and individuals with Jewish friends and colleagues, join with organizations that claim to be concerned with human rights and condemn Israel alone in the court of their opinions.
Gaza and Lebanon provide some knotty problems that these judges ignore with deft assertions of "overreaction."
Were the several hundred civilian deaths in the sum of both operations indeed an overreaction? What about those resulting from Lebanese and Palestinians fighting from residential neighborhoods, schools, or hospitals?
It is not only on matters of life and death that Israel is targeted. Currently the American State Department, echoed by western media, is taking sides in a Jerusalem property dispute. After years of deliberation, an Israeli court has decided in favor of Jews claiming ownership. Other cases have come down in favor of Arabs. In this case, the decision has brought assertions of improper public policy.
I will not wade through the many kilos of documents concerned with the claim and counter-claim, but I am sufficiently familiar with Israeli justice to guess that the decision was at least as weighty as those producing the acquittal of O. J. Simpson or some of the death penalties carried out in Texas. When it comes to Israel, Americans are elevating political convenience over the rule of law.
The extremism of those who criticize Israel for violations of human rights appears not only in their lack of proportionate condemnation for what occurs in Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Zimbabwe, Lebanon Saudi Arabia, and among Palestinians, but also for their failure to tackle what seem to be offenses no less severe committed by soldiers and officials of the United States.
One of my earlier notes compared the small number of civilians killed in Israeli military operations to the large number killed since American troops entered Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the numbers that can be found by Googling, it is not clear whether more or fewer Iraqis have died since 2003 than during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
The numbers do not settle the merits of the Bush decision to invade. However, they are relevant to a discussion about the human costs of what the United States has accomplished. The trials of Saddam and others may have been justified, but his widely televised execution was not a high point for western media. Some of the American low-lifes photographed being sadistic in Abu Ghraib have stood trial, but I have not heard of Donald Rumsfeld or any American general being threatened with charges by foreign or international courts like their Israeli counterparts.
Demands for fair comparisons are met with the platitude of "our wrongs do not excuse your wrongs."
Historically Jews have not done well against mobs incited to hate them. One of Golda Meier's first memories was being frightened by the prospect of a pogrom in Kiev. Aharon Barak tells of being smuggled through German lines in a potato sack. The rabble now targeting Israel is composed of intellectuals and activists of main line parties, many of them Jews.
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