Yet another dual-loyalty scandal has broken, this time an American army engineer with a Jewish-sounding name who has allegedly given secrets to Israel, some of them about nukes.
How ironic that the Times published a big piece on spying and dual loyalty
two days ago and never mentioned Israel. An omission made more glaring–realist scholar Mike Desch points out–when you consider that ten years ago
the Government Accounting Office issued a report saying that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally." Or when you consider the AIPAC case in Washington…
Is the media implicated in this mess, too? Well, yeah. The dual loyalty issue
here is one in which many American Jews are engaged, consciously or
not, because of the modern definition of Jewish identity as supporting a Jewish state, right or wrong. John Judis made the same point on the New Republic site
a year ago (a comment that I believe has been ethnically-cleansed
since, leaving my blog the only record of it). Jews in the media feel funny about this stuff because they too are engaged by Jewish
nationalism but by and large have not really interrogated their
identity visavis nationalism (as Barak Obama and John Judis have). The
rationalization that liberal Jewish media guys might offer is that American and Israeli
interests are identical–a rationalization that is fraying by the
second–or that it doesn’t affect their work. I don’t buy that, it’s in the water.
Here’s another way of looking at it. Former Egypt Ambassador and Fox News commentator Marc Ginsberg is described by AIPAC Arizona in this manner:
His
younger brother’s death in the recent Israeli war [2006] made Ginsberg more
committed to Israel’s 59-year cause. Calling himself “a truly dedicated
Zionist,” he has taken up the AIPAC flag to play a crucial role in
helping Republicans and Democrats partner for a strategy to stay
involved in the Middle East. [emphasis mine]
If my brother had died fighting for
Israel, I would probably feel the same way. I don’t believe that this
background suits someone to invoke the American interest on Fox news,
or in an embassy. Yet Ginsberg’s position is considered completely legit, ho-hum. Lately he attacked Jimmy Carter, on the blue-state-tribune HuffingtonPost, all but calling him an antisemite, over the Hamas meetings. Why do I trust Carter more?
