James Besser’s recent piece in the Jewish Week publication takes a good look at the evolving relationship between the United States and Israel as strategic partners. He says:

But the notion of a strategic alliance has become more complicated. Many analysts here — from the mainstream Cordesman to the more extreme Walt and Mearsheimer faction of the foreign policy establishment — argue that U.S. foreign policy goals are often impeded by Israeli policies and missteps.

And some argue that the whole idea of the alliance has become skewed, with Jerusalem demanding unwavering U.S. support for all its policy decisions without a corresponding willingness to factor U.S. priorities into Israeli policymaking.

More and more “there is this unrealistic view that we always have the same interests, and that the United States must always support Israel’s view of what those ‘shared interests’ are,” said Hadar Susskind, director of policy and strategy at J Street, the pro-peace process lobby group. “There’s this idea that you don’t support the U.S.-Israel relationship if you acknowledge differences of opinion.”

Over the years, the sense that there is an imbalance in the alliance has focused on U.S. concerns about settlement building and quality-of-life issues for West Bank Palestinians, and what is seen in Washington as Israeli indifference to those concerns.

Today, it is being refocused on the issue of the Gaza blockade as Washington faces huge international pressure to push Israel to loosening or ending it, and with Israeli leaders and their friends here arguing that any concessions to that pressure will represent a violation of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

“The people who are responding to the flotilla tragedy by circling the wagons, and arguing that Israel was 100 percent right are perpetuating this absolutist myth of a relationship that can’t possibly be met in real life,” Susskind said.

Most important, however, is the larger determination of what the meaning of an alliance really is. Does an alliance between two people, two groups or two nations imply that each has to accept the actions of the other on faith? Is the greater connection that initially drew them together ultimately more important and more powerful than the sum of the trials and tribulations that follow? And simply put, can one not disagree with the other without breaking the alliance?

These kinds of questions as they pertain to the American-Israeli relationship easily extend to the Jewish diaspora at large. The parallels are in plain site: Should a Jewish person blindly favour all of Israel’s decisions because of faith; because of how they were raised; because of loyalty to their parents, or any other reason?

No. And those who do are sorely misguided. Whether they realize it or not, they are unwilling to put the well-being of all of humanity before that of their own.