Much of Jewish history is defined by how the community has dealt with threats. The residual effects of oppression pervade every aspect of Jewish life, from ancient traditions to modern political ambitions. In many ways, the manner in which the establishment Jewish community defends Israel is evidence of how Jewish perspectives are shaped by persecution. Center-right and far-right groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Zionist Organization of America believe that the only legitimate way to be pro-Israel is to relentlessly tout its successes and never mention its wrongdoings. They see their role in the discourse surrounding the issue as a defense mechanism countering those who wish to focus on Israel’s faults.

Steven Rosen, the former director of foreign policy issues at AIPAC, bluntly articulated the establishment’s ground rules for being pro-Israel during a debate on NPR in June 2010: “You’re either going to try to help protect [Israel] or you’re going to jump on the bandwagon of those who are trying to harm it. There’s only two camps here.”

The visceral, unintelligent nature of this line of thinking has resulted in establishment groups refusing to respond to serious issues that Israel’s friends and enemies should acknowledge.

One of the main justifications for this strategy is that there is no reason to criticize Israel when there are more heinous transgressions to focus on, especially in Palestinian-governed territories and other countries in the Middle East. An Oct. 23 opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz exemplified this line of thinking. The author argued that President Obama’s policy in the Middle East is flawed because of his incommensurate focus on Israeli policy in the West Bank. This precludes him from taking greater action to stymie the atrocities committed by Bashar Al-Assad in Syria.

Obama is perfectly capable of being proactive on both issues. There is no reason to think that his interest in pursuing a two-state solution prevents him from being more involved in Syria. The article is evidence of the illogical nature of defense-based thinking.

A recent incident provided a test to the proponents of the relativity argument. On Oct. 14, Hagai El-Ad, the CEO of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, addressed the United Nations Security Council regarding the unethical policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories. He spoke about the malleable nature of Israeli laws and how they allow the Jewish state to enforce immoral and occasionally discriminatory laws such as the audacious seizure of Palestinian land and the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

The speech was intensely controversial in El-Ad’s home country. Criticisms of the content and setting of the speech were to be expected, but the head of the Coalition government, David Bitan, shocked people on both sides of the Israeli political spectrum when he publicly called for El-Ad’s citizenship to be stripped. He followed up this demand with a proposal to preclude Israeli citizens from supporting sanctions against Israel in international forums.

Bitan’s insistence, based on an incorrect interpretation of an Israeli law allowing the government to strip the citizenship of anyone who commits a “breach of trust” with the state, abandons basic democratic ideals which are supposed to separate Israel from more notorious human rights violators. The law is generally applied to perpetrators of more egregious crimes, such as terrorist attacks and treason, according to an Oct. 23 Ynet opinion piece. Even though Bitan’s proposal has been widely condemned by Israeli politicians across the political spectrum, the fact that a major political figure made these remarks still represents a serious threat to the Jewish state’s democratic fabric.

Bitan’s propositions come in the wake of Freedom House, an American democracy advocacy organization, changing Israel’s freedom of the press ranking from “free” to “partly free,” according to a July 30 New York Times opinion piece. The article outlines concerns that publications and news agencies whose owners are close with the prime minister and whose coverage is decidedly pro-Netanyahu are gaining more influence in recent years. One of these agencies, Walla News, is partially-owned by a friend of the prime minister. Its coverage of Netanyahu got more favorable once Netanyahu elected another confidant as communications minister who proceeded to make rulings beneficial to the agency. Sheldon Adelson-owned Israel Hayom, for example, was found to have edited articles to remove criticisms of the prime minister. As a result, journalists at these networks and publications are intimidated into covering Netanyahu in a favorable way rather than however they would normally report on him. This has had the effect of compromising freedom of the press, according to the organization.

Pious defenders of Israel in the United States have little ground to stand on if they wish to keep up their silence on the wrongdoings of the Israeli government. They cannot justify their reticence by using the relativity argument, as the actions of Bitan and Netanyahu are approaching the level of transgression that establishment groups have claimed is solely committed by Palestinians and other Arab countries. Despite this reality, right-wing pro-Israel groups have remained silent on the incident.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a relentless surveyor of western media bias against Israel, often employs the relativity argument — specifically in regard to freedom of expression. For example, CAMERA criticized the Huffington Post’s coverage of Israeli law enforcement arresting a 15-year-old girl for a seemingly innocuous Facebook post on the suspicion that she was preparing to commit a terrorist attack. CAMERA argued that “if HuffPo readers are concerned with freedom of speech on social media, the site should publish articles about the fact that the Palestinian Authority has jailed journalists and others for insulting PA President Mahmoud Abbas.” CAMERA has not commented publicly on Bitan’s remarks or articles reporting on them.

Famed attorney and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, one of AIPAC’s most fervent supporters and a frequent speaker at their conferences, has relentlessly attacked left-wing campus groups in the United States for taking other measures which seem to restrict freedom of expression in attempts to promote cultures of political correctness at their schools. He went so far as warning that “the fog of fascism is descending quickly over many American universities,” during a Nov. 12, 2015 interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. Dershowitz has yet to comment on Bitan’s deliberately anti-free speech proposals.

The right’s clear hypocrisy on issues of Israeli transgressions makes it clear why an ideological gap on Israel is increasingly falling on generational lines among American Jewry. While the older generation — born closer to the atrocities of the Holocaust — has opinions based on visceral, defensive reactions to perceived attacks on the Jewish community, the younger generation has a more utilitarian perspective and is willing to criticize Israel if they believe applying pressure will eventually lead to better outcomes for the Jewish state. A 2013 Pew Research Center poll showed that 25 percent of Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 felt that the U.S. government is too supportive of Israel, while only five percent of those 65 or older felt the same way. Jewish youth are able to realize that a failure to apply pressure to the Israeli government to stop wrongdoings will only lead to worse decisions by the Israeli government down the line and would thus prefer the U.S. government take harder stances against Israeli transgressions.

For thousands of years, the Jewish experience has been defined by the community’s reaction to outside threats. Those threats still exist, but the leniency toward — and outright violation of essential democratic ideals by — the government of the Jewish state presents a new danger to Jewish values, this one endogenous in nature. For the sake of its future and the survival of the Jewish people and its values, the community must once again adapt and learn how to deal with these new threats in an effective way.