Donald Trump is the most disruptive president in anyone's memory, and that disruption has brought shockwaves to the culture. (Would #MeToo have happened if we had gotten the first woman president, rather than a Groper In Chief? I don't think so.)

Trump has also disrupted the Jewish community, in a very good way indeed. His extreme pro-Israel policies have fostered a widening split among Israel-lovers. Rightwing Zionists love what Trump is doing. Centrist Zionists who worry that Israel is going off the rails are disturbed by Trump's actions.

The two groups are now at one another's throats.

This week each faction sent a letter to the president. The one from a group of centrist/liberal Zionists, including the ADL, implored the president not to approve Netanyahu's plan to annex West Bank settlements. The other, from conservative Jewish groups, asked Trump to support annexation of the West Bank!

The centrists clearly reflect the Democratic Party leadership. But the rightwing Zionists still hold the advantage inside the American Jewish community for a simple reason: It has long been a principle of the Israel lobby never to allow daylight between the Israeli government and the American government. So the rightwingers were swift to attack the centrists' letter for apostasy. Ron Kampeas:

The letter is unusual, if not unprecedented, in mainstream Jewish groups pleading with a U.S. president to take steps to restrain an Israeli prime minister.

Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which signed the pro-annexation letter, seeks to enforce the traditional line, We don't send our kids to the army there so we need to support everything Israel does:

I'm sure this will get a lot of hate @ me. Amer Jewish orgs should not tell the democratically elected govt of Israel what to do.. They're a sovereign govt, not a satellite chapter of their group. Just in the same way Israeli orgs shouldn't tell the US govt what to do.

Jonathan Tobin also savaged the letter as a betrayal of the "Jewish nation."

American groups and denominations that wasted no time in not merely denouncing a newly re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but called for the U.S. government to override the will of the Israeli people should reflect on the damage they are doing to the Jewish nation.

And look at the anguish these attacks produce in one of the signatories of the letter, Michael Koplow of Israel Policy Forum. He is extremely defensive: