“This unambiguous verdict means we are confident that Israel will emerge from the Katsav trial with renewed faith in both its robust democracy and independent judiciary,” trumpeted David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee.

But the conviction raised an important, if complicated, question. How does an organization dedicated to promoting Israel respond when bad – perhaps even shameful – news comes out of the country?

“I don’t think we need to hide from Jewish or Israeli imperfections,” said David Bernstein, executive director of The David Project. “We have to remind ourselves of the big picture, every liberal democracy has scoundrels, and Israel is no exception.”

The David Project is a non-profit organization that teaches middle school through college students how to advocate for Israel. Part of that education, Bernstein said, is learning to differentiate between criticism of Israel and attacks to delegitimize the country.

In order for students to make a “strong case for Israel,” they must be willing to honestly talk about what goes on in the country, Bernstein said, even when those topics are difficult and potentially damaging to Israel’s reputation.

“We worry about further damage, but we have to be publicly mature enough to realize that these things are going to happen in any liberal democracy,” Bernstein said.

But what about those that argue Israel must be held to a higher standard, to be a “light upon the nations” as commanded in Isaiah?

“The rest of the world can hold us to the ideals that the rest of the world is held to,” said Rabbi Chananel Weiner, CEO of Aish Campus Boston. “We have to hold ourselves to the higher standards.”

Aish Campus Boston, a branch of Aish HaTorah, is a Jewish and Israel education organization. As part of the Hasbara Fellowship program, Weiner took a group of students to Israel this year, showing them the country beyond the tourist attractions – visiting border towns and meeting with people from a wide range of organizations, including Bedouins, Palestinians and Israeli officials.

“You can’t just think it’s a fairy tale, you have to learn that there is more to the country,” Weiner said.

He and his students were in Israel when Kastev’s conviction was announced. They discussed the conviction as a “strong selling point” for Israel, Weiner said. “This is democracy in action.”

The New Israel Fund, a nonprofit organization that works to promote social justice in Israel, also praised the Israeli judicial system in a press release, but used the case to highlight the “still-troubling problem of sexual harassment in Israel.”

Naomi Paiss, communications director of the New Israel Fund, said that Americans often overlook societal problems in Israel, such as abuse and economic equality. “Some people only see Israel through the lens of the [Palestinian] conflict, and that is a very skewed view,” Paiss said.

While the conflict does “create specific challenges that make Israel different from many other places,” Paiss said, the country still grapples with many of the same problems faced elsewhere.

“The American Jewish community can gain a lot by seeing Israel as it is,” Paiss said. “It’s hard to let go of the myth of the perfect country.”

Rob Leikind, director of the American Jewish Committee Boston, said problems in Israel tend to be magnified because the country is under constant scrutiny.

“The United States has had many, many profound deficits – slavery, Jim Crow [laws] – but in the DNA of our society we have found a way to confront and address these problems,” Leikind said.

Israel, he added, has the same DNA.

“There is somehow an expectation that a society is measured by the bad things that happen, but that is not measure,” he said. “The measure is when bad things happen, how they deal with it.”