When my parents used to catch me bunking class to go down to the snooker hall in Kentish Town, my plaintive cries of "but all of my mates were there too" cut no ice at all. "We're not talking about your friends - it's you we're concerned with" replied the united front that is my mum and dad. And the lesson stuck. Nowadays, when I watch the way that British Jewry refuses to criticise Israel for its oft-suspect policies, I can't help but apply the same logic that my parents used all those years ago. Who cares what the other "kids" are doing - in this case Hamas, Hizbollah, et al - it's our child we should be concerned with. Our 58 year old teenager Israel, who needs a few life-lessons in order to mature into the adult we all hope it will become. Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Sitting around my parents' Friday night table on a recent trip home, the subject of criticising Israel was served up along with the hors d'oeuvres, and outlasted each course until it was time for the post-prandial whisky to be downed. Sparking the debate was the news that internecine war had broken out at a nearby synagogue, whose monthly magazine had been scheduled to include a piece critical of Israel, until certain community stalwarts intervened. The ensuing furore culminated in two long-standing bastions of the synagogue resigning their membership in disgust, and the publication of the offending article caused no end of bitter splits in the communal camp.

As we went round the table expressing our opinions, it became clear that a generational divide was firmly in place. My grandparents had reservations about "any public criticism" of Israel - espousing rhetoric akin to that which counsels us not to air our dirty linen in public. One guest took this argument a step further, stating that "the only time when it's OK to criticise Israel is when Israel's image is good in the eyes of the world". He illustrated this point by saying that the last time that he had publicly censured Israel had been in 1998, when he was teaching at Berkeley. Israel had enjoyed a brief period of communal approval at this pre-second-intifada time - and apparently this was the only reason he had felt comfortable making disparaging remarks about the state.