This seems a useful time to say a word about the American commitment to Israel -- which, if you listen to particular Americans, not to mention particular Europeans and Middle Easterners, makes us complicit in manifold deeds of evil and aggression like the ongoing battling in Lebanon and Gaza.

Evil? Aggression? Rubbish! That's the word I was looking for. Though other words of like import cue up for notice.

The American commitment to Israel, whatever reproach it excites from the excitable among us, is more than inevitable. It is just. It is right. Hooray for Israel. The day America turns its back on Israel, for reasons of expediency or just plain moral flaccidity, will be one of the worst days in our history. We should all pray -- Israelis and Americans, speaking to our common God -- that such a day never comes.

I think no American -- no non-Jewish American, perhaps -- is obliged to have a viewpoint regarding the Jewish aspiration for a Holy Land home. I think all we need do is acknowledge two truths about modern Israel:

1. It is Western-oriented and democratic. Real elections take place there. The rule of law exists. These are claims I doubt anyone would make concerning, say, Syria and Iran.

2. Israel is a firm and important ally of the United States -- even when, as sometimes happens with allies (as with spouses), we don't see eye to eye.

There is yet a third truth that could be called a corollary of the first two: Israel's Islamic enemies -- failures at nearly everything normal people are supposed to pursue for their betterment -- work and conspire to mash the Israelis into pulp. How about another Syria where now there is Israel? How about a Hamas stronghold in Tel Aviv? We could eventually have either scenario, or a fetching combination of both, by beginning now to talk, as do the Russians and French, about "disproportionate" responses to aggression. Continued...