Thoughts on dual loyaltyin wake of Monroe man’s arrest

As I said yesterday, the news that a Monroe man has been arrested on espionage charges connected to the passing of weapons information to Israel is raising the insidious charge of dual loyalties once again.

It’s a dangerous avenue to travel down, though I will say that it no longer has the mainstream cache it carried during the mid-1980s, when Jonathan Pollard was charged and sentenced for similar — and allaegedly related — activity.

But it remains out there. As an editorial in the New Jersey Jewish News notes, the allegations against Ben-Ami Kadish

rockets Americans and Israelis back to the bad old Pollard days, when U.S. officials were outraged, Israeli officials were humiliated, and American Jews cringed under charges of “dual loyalty” and bristled that a rogue American and his reckless handlers would jeopardize so much to betray a friend.

Reporting on the Kadish case has already unleashed an avalanche of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic invective on Web sites, by the usual gang of Internet cranks and inveterate bigots. They are bound to spin elaborate conspiracy theories out of the allegations, just as some pro-Israel commentators will hint ominously at the “timing” of the charges and toss out tall tales of their own.

That mainstream news organizations have stayed away from the charge, along with most of the mainstream conservative voices, can be attributed both to the special place in which Israel is held as an American ally and to the marginalization of anti-Semitic language.

The dual-loyalty argument, however, remains a mainstream argument — even if American Jews are no longer overt targets (covert, yes, attacked in whispered charges by organizations that prefer to stay out of the sunlight). The prime targets these days are Arab-Americans and American Muslims, who are consistently asked to denounce the violence done by extremists — in a way that no other ethnic group is.

Consider the attacks on Barack Obama tied to his middle name, Hussein., coming from rightwing radio — and many mainstream groups and commentators tied to the Republican Party. The blog, Democracy Arsenal, outlined the issue this way in December:

There is a sizable cross-section of Republicans who think that being a Muslim disqualifies one for higher public service (you can count Mitt Romney, who has been quite open in peddling anti-Muslim remarks, among them). I suspect that a good number of Democrats may feel similarly, but due to political correctness, would never openly say so – that being a Muslim, while we face a predominantly Muslim terrorist threat, would represent a conflict of interest and would bring about questions of “dual loyalty.” If the dual loyalty smear sounds familiar, it should, as it is one of the more pernicious smears that can be leveled in American politics.

Beyond the attacks on Obama, we’ve seen the same kind of noxious innuendo leveled at U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim to serve in Congress, and other prominent Muslims — as well as prominent Chinese Americans and others.

The other side of this, unfortunately, is the use of the dual-loyalty slur by the likes of neo-cons like Daniel Pipes and Richard Perle to defend themselves against charges that they are slavishly committed to Israel, regardless of Israel’s policies. It is interesting that, over the years, supporters of Israel have conflated criticism of Israel’s government and criticism of prominent American allies of Israel with anti-Semitism and that neocons have developed a rather large bag of tricks to counter legitimate criticism without addressing the actual critique.

In the end, the dual-loyalty charge does nothing more than damage our discourse.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet