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Why do American Jews remain silent as the Arab-Israeli peace process falls apart? With every day that passes, another thread snaps in the fabric that Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres wove so carefully, and the hopes that most Israelis share to resolve the Palestinian problem and achieve real peace with their neighbors fades.

The deafening silence of American Jewry concerning the state of Middle East peace is even more noticeable when held against the community's outcry over the legislative initiative in Israel's parliament to bar non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel.

Outraged leaders of the Jewish community have taken out full-page ads in newspapers, warning that this move could lead to a rift between the diaspora and the Jewish state. They are actively lobbying in Israel and in the United States to fight Israel's rabbinical Orthodocracy, and are engaging in public and private debates with Israel's political leadership over this legislation.

No similar effort has been mounted, however, to register concern over the fate of the Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn nearly four years ago.

Why?

Traditionally, American Jews have been reluctant to criticize Israel's foreign policy moves. But that taboo has long ago been broken. First, during the 1982 Lebanon war, then during the Palestinian intifada of the late '80s, and finally, most aggressively, when U.S. supporters of the hard-line Israeli right conducted a bitter campaign against the Oslo Accords.

Initially, like most Israelis, American friends of Israel held back from criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They were willing, like their brethren in Israel, to give the new prime minister the benefit of the doubt. It was only fair to see if he would make good on his promises to pursue peace from a position of strength.

But during more than a year in office, Netanyahu has made his policy clear. While paying lip service to the Oslo Accords, he has actively worked to undermine them.

He has weakened the power and legitimacy of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, and has taken a series of unilateral steps that shattered the sense of partnership that is the core spirit of the Oslo formula.

He has allowed a virtual freeze in the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and a severe erosion in the embryonic relations that Israel was building with some Arab states on the foundation of the Oslo process.

Even when presented with such deterioration, American Jews are not reacting. The crisis in the peace process is mounting to a possible existential threat to Israel. It doesn't take much to imagine the consequences of the arrangements in the West Bank and Gaza collapsing into Israel's reoccupation of these territories. Still, American Jewry is silent.

Without some backing from the American Jewish community, the Clinton administration has little incentive to prod Netanyahu toward reviving the peace accords and proceeding with their implementation. If American Jews don't care, why should a lame-duck president?

So far, the administration has not presented an initiative, its own plan to rescue the process. It has only rejected Netanyahu's proposed "fast-tracking" of negotiations with the Palestinians. Administration officials saw it for what it was: an attempt to turn the current situation into a permanent one and maybe even erode it, while haggling over the most disputable final-status issues.

The Clinton administration's efforts to get Israeli-Palestinian talks back on track are halfhearted at best. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright signaled last week that the administration intends to pull away even further.

Here is where American Jews can make a difference. They can push to keep their government involved and active as the only credible broker between Israelis and Palestinians.

Public expressions of concern for the fate of the peace process and for the future of Arab-Israeli peace are not a gratuitous intervention in Israel's affairs. Neither are attempts to strengthen Israel's peaceful character.

American supporters of a tolerant and pluralistic Israel must realize that the freedom of religion they so ardently seek in Israel cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Civil rights, tolerance and pluralism can and should be reinforced by a peaceful political pragmatism, by respect for human rights and by concern for Israel's place among world nations.

A part of the modern Jewish ethos, shared by Israelis and diaspora Jews, is that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. This is the premise for the moral and financial assistance that American Jews are generously granting Israel, and for their concern over the character of the Jewish state.

Based on that premise, American friends of Israel are more than entitled to take a stand in the battle, which is currently taking place in Israel, between national-religious conservatives and a majority of Israelis, who support religious pluralism, tolerance and an assertive strategy in pursuit of peace and reconciliation with the Arabs, even if it involves some painful compromises.