One says: Instead of insulting the U.S. vice president, let’s take a deep breath and rededicate ourselves to the core issue of coming up with provisional borders for a Palestinian state — which, after all, is the substance of the dispute here — instead of losing time on mutually destructive outrage.

Another says: The Obama administration should stop getting offended by Israel insulting it and get back to the work of building a constituency for punitive measures toward Iran and headfaking toward a two-state solution, even though Israeli obstacles to that solution are what occasioned the insult in the first place.

One of these groups thinks the American people and, in particular, American Jews, are intelligent people. The other thinks frivolous poltroonage has worked too well in the past to stop now.