Haaretz
Tishrei 21, 5765
The "Franklin affair," which began with a CNN
report that Pentagon official Larry Franklin had given the pro-Israeli
lobby AIPAC a draft position paper on American policy toward Iran, reminds
one of the story of the Jew who'd been slandered in his town. The rabbi
invited him over, and told him that people were saying he was having an
adulterous affair. "Rabbi, it isn't true," the Jew said. To which the
rabbi replied: "What? That it should be true, too? Isn't it enough that
people are talking?"
Indeed, as soon as the report surfaced, the
Pollard affair was mentioned, along with all of the sensitivities
associated with it. The current affair seems less serious: Franklin is not
Jewish, it has not been said that Israel initiated the transfer of the
document, and the American newspapers have even raised the hypothesis that
the leak served a dual purpose; Franklin, considered to hold hawkish views
in regard to nuclear development in Iran, wanted to enlist the Israeli
lobby in support of a hard line on Iran.
On the eve of Rosh
Hashanah, another bomb exploded. David Szardi, a high-ranking FBI official
who is conducting the investigation of AIPAC, is the same person accused a
few years ago of harassing a young Jewish lawyer from the CIA out of
anti-Semitic motives, and even causing his discharge from the agency. In
the trial (which has not yet ended) it was said that Szardi demanded the
dismissal of the attorney for suspected pro-Israeli leanings. The
arguments: he had been a counselor in a Jewish summer camp, his family
contributes to Israeli charities and he is related to former president
Ezer Weizman. The lawyer complained, and an investigation was launched
against Szardi. The director of the CIA wrote a letter to the
Anti-Defamation League in which he admitted that elements of the
investigation were "insensitive, unprofessional and highly
inappropriate."
This affair has put an anti-Semitic patina on the
Franklin affair. Nevertheless, the suggestions of "dual loyalty" in this
case do not relate to a single individual, but to a Jewish organization
that is considered one of the strongest and most effective lobbies in
Washington. Quite a few Jews are seeing the handwriting on the wall, or
are afraid that their non-Jewish neighbors will see it. However, the most
significant outcome has been that Jewish public figures and newspapers
have begun to ask if the identification between Jewish leaders and
organizations, and Israel isn't too close.
"At the very least, the
fast-moving controversy highlights the many gray areas created when two
close allies share military and strategic information through a web of
formal and informal contacts," wrote James Besser in the "Jewish Journal
of Greater Los Angeles." "Jewish leaders are worried - and they are right
to be."
The weekly "Jewsweek" had sharper words to say about two
other affairs that have upset the American Jewish community in recent
weeks. One concerned New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. "The fact that
Gov. James McGreevey announced last month that he was `a gay American' who
cheated on his wife wasn't the scandal in the eyes of most observers. It
was the fact that McGreevey had appointed Cipel to a high-paying job as a
state homeland security adviser, in spite of the fact that he wasn't
remotely qualified and, as a foreign national, couldn't get a security
clearance to receive classified information from Washington," wrote
Jonathan S. Tobin on September 7. The incident, remarks Tobin somewhat
ironically, "marks an interesting turning point in the relationship
between Israel and America."
"Yet," Jewsweek notes, "the McGreevey
mess isn't the only example of Israelis becoming players on U.S. shores."
Another appointment of an Israeli raised questions of a different sort,
vexing as well. "The American Jewish Congress has announced that it is
appointing Alon Pinkas (Israel's outgoing consul general in New York) as
its new director-general... Perhaps I'm missing something, but the idea of
a man who was an Israeli envoy just weeks ago taking the helm of a group
that attempts to represent the interests of American Jews strikes me as
more than a bit odd... But don't the good people at AJCongress understand
that blurring the line between American Jewish leadership and Israel isn't
healthy for America Jews or Israel?"
The weekly commented that
Israelis "are not entitled to be parachuted into an American
organization."
The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has in the
meantime imposed a veto on the Pinkas appointment, but intervention in
domestic American affairs was also cited in another Jewsweek article about
the stand taken by the Zionist Organization of America (which identifies
with the Likud) on the U.S. presidential elections. The ZOA has implied,
wrote deputy editor Bradford Pilcher last March 19, that a vote for John
Kerry would be "a vote for the Palestinians." "... the Jewish community
has gone AWOL on domestic issues in favor of backing a pro-Israel
president... It's time we reshuffle our political priorities, and move
Israel down the list."
In the same vein, the editor of the
left-leaning pro-Israeli monthly Moment, the author Leonard Fein, wrote:
"The far more serious threat presented by the unfolding scandal goes to
the question of involvement by the pro-Israel community in shaping
American Middle East policy. One can be `pro-Israel,' however defined, as
part of a general theory of American Middle East interests. If one
honestly believes, for example, that Iraq can be transformed into a
democracy, or even just a law-abiding state, and that such a
transformation would create a domino effect throughout the region - rather
fantastical beliefs, but just this side of utterly preposterous - then the
fact that such a development would be `good for Israel' is an incidental
benefit. If, however, one begins with a pro-Israel commitment and from
that backs into a policy that calls for an American `war of liberation' in
Iraq, that's another matter entirely.... "As the United States now
stumbles its way toward a coherent policy regarding Iran, with the awesome
dangers that an ill-chosen policy would involve, it becomes critically
important that we know for a fact that government policy has been
developed exclusively on the basis of America's perceived
interests."
This, of course, is the heart of the matter: where is
the boundary between support for Israel, and a policy that is to the
mutual benefit of Israeli and American interests, and the promotion of a
policy that is intended to serve Israeli interests, as pro-Arab and
anti-Semitic groups in the U.S. now charge. In this context, it should be
remembered that support for the old homeland is an accepted phenomenon
among immigrants to America, that Israel is considered in the eyes of most
Americans as the "homeland" of the Jews, and that support diminishes in
the second and third generations. Yet it should also be borne in mind that
while most Jews are pro-Israel, only a minority actively support Israel.
Most of the active support lies in the economic realm, with fairly little
in the political sphere, although it is much more focused and effective
than among other ethnic lobbies.
Financial and professional
support is not usually a problem: when a Jewish millionaire (or professor)
supports institutions such as the Holocaust Museum in Washington or Hebrew
University, for instance, this does not raise any notice outside the
circles of the American elite in which that individual functions. The
problem arises when he seeks to support bodies of a political nature: such
activity frequently leads to identification with a political party or
movement in American society, to which there are, of course, vocal
opponents who strive to cast aspersions on their motives. At present, the
subjects on the agenda are Iran, Iraq and Islamic terror; also in the
sights are neoconservatives who support Bush, a prominent number of whom
are Jews.
I have a lot of American Jewish friends and
acquaintances, and it would be hard to assume that any of them would ever
imagine - in spite of all their sympathy for Israel - to prefer loyalty to
Israel over loyalty to the United States. Dual loyalty exists in the eyes
of the anti-Semites and in the eyes of those Israelis who delude
themselves into thinking that American Jewish support for Israel can
compete with the intensity of their American identity. But as long as this
scarecrow exists, the government of Israel ought to demonstrate more
sensitivity, and must not encourage the impression among Jewish leaders
and businesses that absolute identification with Israel is the primary
test of their success.