August 1989, Page 22

The Other Side of the Coin

Jonathan Jay Pollard and the Problem of Dual Loyalty

By Dr. Alfred W. Lilienthal

Many Jewish-Americans would unhesitatingly declare they are not Zionists and would most vehemently deny the dogma that they are part of a worldwide Jewish nation which has been reassembling in Israel. But they conduct themselves, nonetheless, as if they were part of that nation and thus in possession of two national identities. Jonathan Pollard, the US Navy intelligence specialist who passed to Israel thousands of secret documents, preferred a single Israeli national identity combined with temporary residence in the United States.

Some Jews in the US insist they were never in favor of Jewish statehood, but since the state is now there, it is good that there is a place for homeless Jews to go. Supported by this rationalization, they contribute money to the limit of their means, lend all possible political and moral support, and even participate in political action in their own communities to advance the interests of Israel. This they do with little or no thought of how it affects the interests of the United States. The failure to appreciate that Israel must be regarded as much a foreign state as Italy or Sweden, and not as the 51st state, had led many Jews into pitfalls that others, not afflicted with the duality of religion and nationalism, would more easily have seen.

Dual loyalties do not necessarily involve the conscious process of choice: "This is in the interests of the US, thatis in the interest of Israel, and I choose that." Such is the rare case. Far more common is the unconscious choosing of that without any consideration being given to this."

It is no exaggeration to state, quite aside from the extreme example of a Jonathan Jay Pollard, that when Palestine was partitioned to create the state of Israel, many Jewish-Americans were also split in two. The "passionate attachment," to use the words of George Washington and now of George Ball, of such American Jews to the state of Israel permeates their very being and producers an unnatural relationship between nationals of one state and another.

Pollard was, after all, only implementing the dogma set forth years ago by David Ben-Gurion: "The basis of Zionism is neither friendship nor sympathy. The love of the state of Israel must be an unconditional love. There must be a complete solidarity with the state and the people of Israel."

Many who do not follow Ben-Gurion's injunction somehow feel a sense of deep guilt. Guilt, of course, often underlies the entire relationship between Jewish-Americans and Israel-the guilt of intermarrying or simply running from any practice of the faith, while still insisting on identifying oneself as a Jew. This emotional tie with Israel, even with the simultaneous declaration, "But I am not a Zionist," demonstrates that one is still willing to support Israel in ways that one would never rationally think of doing.

Zionism is not Judaism-Judaism is not Zionism, and to be anti-Zionist is no way to be anti-Semitic.

Intrepid Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann once said: "Jews have to overcome the conscious or unconscious fear of so-called double loyalty. . .American Jews must have the courage to openly declare that they entertain a double loyalty-one to the land in which they live and one to Israel. Jews should not succumb to the patriotic talk that they owe allegiance only to the land in which they live. . .They should live not only as patriots of the country of their domicile but all as patriots of Israel." (Jewish Daily Forward, Jan. 9, 1959)

Similarly, he also declared that "Jews are a single people with two vital centers, Israel and the countries of the exile. One must provide for the other, for the security of continued existence."

Through their tremendous outpouring of financial and political support and their inordinate influence over the media, so many Jewish-Americans indicate that they are moved, if not compelled, by this almost involuntary duality.

Following the 1791 Edict of Emancipation by the French Chamber of Deputies, endowing Jewish citizens, for the first time, with full and equal rights, Berr Isaac-Berr wrote a remarkable letter on Sept. 28 of that year to his coreligionists (then numbering 60,000) in which he urged:

"We must divest ourselves entirely of the narrow spirit of cooperation and congregation in all civil and political matters not immediately connected with our spiritual laws. The name of 'active citizen' which we have just obtained is, without a doubt, the most precious title a man can possess in a free empire. But this title alone is not sufficient. We should possess also the necessary qualifications to fulfill the duties next to it. We ourselves know how very deficient we are in that respect."

The Jewish community needs a leader in the mold of Isaac-Berr to remind it of the obligationss of Jews as American citizens. An Iranian-published 1979 CIA report, which Jerusalem Post Washington correspondent Wolf Blitzer quotes in his book about Pollard, pointed out that "Israeli intelligence representatives were instructed to operate discreetly within Jewish communities" and "to handle their missions with utmost tact to avoid embarrassment to Israel." Attempted recruitments of Jewish-Americans have in the past been rejected by American Jews and reported by them to US authorities.

The same report notes other Israeli instructions to agents "to attempt to penetrate anti-Zionist elements in order to neutralize the opposition." That this injunction is being carried out in the US this writer long ago discovered the hard way! Nothing raises the hackles of the "Israeli first" proponents more than criticism like my own reiteration over 40 years that "Zionism is not Judaism-Judaism is not Zionism, and to be anti-Zionist is in no way to be anti-Semitic."

In a CBS "Sixty Minutes" television program on the Pollard affair, there was the suggestion that Pollard might be only the tip of the iceberg. At this most critical juncture in US-Israeli relations, therefore, it more than ever behooves Jewish-Americans to remember just who and where they really are. At all times they must keep crystal clear the difference between religion and nationalism. In a speech in Philadelphia in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson, certainly no narrow nationalist, stated during another difficult time his own credo: "You cannot become true Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group has not yet become and American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is not worthy to live under the Stars and Stripes.

Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal served in the Middle East in World War II and has spent a lifetime since then educating Americans on Middle East realities. He is the author of What Price Israel?, There Goes the Middle East, and his monumental The Zionist Connection. His column next month will discuss Wolf Blitzer's book on the Pollard spy case.