Some 3,000 Israelis, the vast majority of them Jewish, answered the call to rally on Aug. 9 in support of an Israeli family. Members of the Likud came in droves, many of them bussed in, to demonstrate their solidarity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, who portray themselves as besieged by the media and the liberal left, which they say is plotting a coup against the Israeli government.

Thousands of other Israelis have been going out every Saturday night for almost 40 weeks to demonstrate against corruption. On Aug. 18, dozens of demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem’s Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to express solidarity with the Shamasna family, who faced an eviction order from their hovel of a home. Had Israel been merely the “state of the Israeli people,” the willingness of its citizens to leave their air-conditioned homes at the height of the summer months would have been a commendable display of civic involvement.

But even 70 years after its founding, Israel is not content with what it has. It keeps boasting of being the Jewish state, and its leadership is currently striving with the Nationality Law to anchor its status as the “state of the Jewish people.” Such a title implies responsibility for the fate of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. Responsibility devoid of involvement is like a demonstration devoid of demonstrators — like the empty town squares in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv while American Jewry is experiencing one of its hardest moments.

Many in Israel tut-tutted and cringed at the sight of Americans in Charlottesville marching in swastika-printed T-shirts raising their arms in Nazi salutes toward the cameras and waving Nazi flags. They were shocked to hear protesters shouting, “Jews will not replace us,” “blood and soil” and other Nazi-era slogans.