Yesterday I faulted the U.S. press for not doing surveys on American public opinion re Jews & Israel. Well, it turns out that Haaretz just published such a poll in Europe, conducted by the Anti Defamation League, showing that over half of Europeans think that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home nation. Also:
[Abraham] Foxman [of ADL] said he was "especially concerned that the
survey found a large percentage of all respondents, and a majority in
Austria, Hungary and Switzerland, believe that American Jews control
U.S. policy on the Middle East, an old canard that has been resurrected
in mainstream America and bolsters existing European attitudes."
This is of course the very canard that I as a leftwing Jew have done something to support. In fact, during my evening with the progressive Zionists a few weeks back, Dan Fleshler implored me not to make statements about dual loyalty. The Foxman tactic is, alas, something of a blackmail. We’ve reached a point in world events where a discussion of dual loyalty is inevitable. Michael Walzer’s assertion that Jews have an "anomalous" citizenship that entails membership in the nation of Israel, Walt and Mearsheimer’s forthcoming book, and John Judis’s plaint in TNR online that dual loyalty is "inescapable" for American Jewish intellectuals —
Many Jews now
suffer from dual loyalty–the same way that Cuban-Americans or
Mexican-Americans do. By ignoring this dilemma–and, worse still,
by charging those who acknowledge its existence with anti-Semitism–
the critics of the new anti-Semitism are engaged in a flight from
their own political selves. They are guilty of a certain kind of
bad faith.
These statements make the dual loyalty question a serious one. And the neocons have made it a pressing one. When will such a poll be done by a reputable news organization, not the Israel lobby? When will it be done in the U.S.?
(Thanks to Joachim Martillo for tip.)
