In New York, no less, days before a primary, a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination declares that Israel used “disproportionate” force in Gaza in 2014, that “we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity,” that the United States has to play “an evenhanded role” and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “is not right all the time.”

Wow! Sensation! Hold the presses!

That candidate, of course, is Bernie Sanders, a Jew in the party that is the political home of a majority of American Jews, and the fact that his words are deemed shocking or even newsworthy reflects the degree to which, over many years, major American Jewish organizations have been able to dictate the line that says there is only one way to support Israel and win elections — and that is uncritically.

In most of the rest of the world, Sanders’s position would be uncontroversial, reflecting a consensus. In fact, his statement in the debate with Hillary Clinton that he is “100 percent pro-Israel in the long run” would almost certainly have caused more of a ruckus in Europe.

Many people in Brooklyn cheered Sanders. He has overwhelming support with young Democratic voters, and it is among those ages 18 to 29 that a sense of alienation from Netanyahu’s right-wing government and the Israel it reflects has been growing most rapidly. The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu’s heavy-handed interventions in American electoral politics and his relentless attempt (even in extremis) to stop the Iran nuclear deal have all been factors in undergirding the view that it is no betrayal of Israel to be critical of some of its policies.