A few weeks back I brought up the charge of dual loyalty with respect to the neocons who claim that Israel’s interests and the U.S.’s interests are identical. A very sensitive question, yes, and a lot of people got upset with me, including friends.
Well now in The New Republic, John Judis has joined me in legitimizing this question. Here is the money quote:
On the one hand, Rosenfeld, Harris, and others want to deny that
American Jews and American Jewish organizations like AIPAC suffer
from dual loyalty in trying to influence U.S. foreign policy. It’s
anti-Semitic or contributes to anti-Semitism, they say, to make
that charge. On the other hand, they want to demand of American
Jewish intellectuals a certain loyalty to Israel, Israeli policies,
and to Zionism as part of their being Jewish. They make dual
loyalty an inescapable part of being Jewish in a world in which a
Jewish state exists. And that’s probably the case. 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.
This is intellectually valiant work, Judis should be applauded; and TNR praised for running the piece. As for the demand made on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, it is one that anyone who has worked for the New Republic (I did it once, and carried Marty Peretz’s anti-U.N. water for him) has experienced.
Wow, I’m just stunned by this. It’s another achievement of the AJC report, which Judis’s piece addresses (and of Walt-Mearsheimer, who broke the whole thing open). Don’t you see what is happening? The dual-loyalty question is being mainstreamed. The degree to which neocons and neolibs and American Jewish journalists generally have been recruited in passive/unconscious identification with Israel is, as I’ve said here before, a legitimate issue. The suppression in the American Jewish community of any alternative discourse to Zionism—well, thanks to the AJC, the bridges are being dynamited…
