Rabbi Seth Winberg deserves credit for refusing the easiest accusation. The fact that many young American Jews support a binational state does not automatically mean that they hate Israel, reject Jewish collective existence or have joined an anti-Zionist crusade. That is already more responsible than the familiar communal reflex in which every departure from the approved answer is treated as betrayal.

Unfortunately, his generosity ends there. Having declined to call these young Jews enemies, Winberg turns them into pupils. Their political judgment is explained through insufficient historical knowledge, limited contact with Israel, weak Hebrew, attenuated communal bonds and an American moral imagination trained to see conflict through equality and civil rights. The remedy is predictable: more Israel, more Torah, more Hebrew, more Shabbat and more carefully organized encounters with Jewish belonging.

This is not quite a conversation but a curriculum correction in which the conclusion has already been reserved. The young Jews in question are allowed decent instincts, but not yet serious judgment. Their position is interpreted not as the possible result of knowledge, experience and moral reflection, but as evidence that their education remains incomplete.

The assumption hidden inside this pedagogical tenderness is severe. A properly educated Jew will eventually reach the expected conclusion, while a Jew who does not must have studied too little, visited too rarely or belonged too weakly. The system is perfectly protected from falsification because agreement proves understanding and disagreement proves deficiency.

One may call this education, but it is also the management of disobedience. What disappears from Winberg’s account is the obvious possibility that many young American Jews are not distant from Israel at all. Some have studied there, traveled repeatedly, spoken Hebrew, attended Jewish schools and camps, participated in Hillel, maintained Israeli friendships and family ties, and followed Israeli politics with an intensity unavailable to earlier generations.

Their disagreement may not arise from knowing too little. It may arise from having seen too much.

That does not make their conclusions automatically wise. A binational state may be politically dangerous, constitutionally implausible or incapable of protecting either Jewish or Palestinian collective life. But intellectual adulthood begins when a position is answered as a position rather than diagnosed as a developmental defect.

The asymmetry becomes especially stark when this pedagogical tone is compared with the way American political culture treats young supporters of Donald Trump and the ideological ecosystem around Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. Their views are not explained away as the product of too few visits to Washington, insufficient knowledge of the Constitution or a shortage of Sunday dinners with moderate Republicans.

They are granted political agency. Their media environment is studied, their language is taken seriously, and their........

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