To the Editor,
International Jerusalem Post
In the International Jerusalem Post (Jan. 20-26, 2023) you published an editorial,
“Dual Loyalty Trope.” You cite an Anti-Defamation poll which found that 39% of 4,000 adult Americans polled agreed with the statement that “American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S.” Your editorial states that, “It is impossible to know exactly how nearly 40% of Americans reached the decision that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S….”
This phenomenon may be more easily understood than you think. In his important new book, “We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel,” Eric Alterman, professor of English at Brooklyn College and himself a former Zionist, writes: “The term is poison in public discussion of Israel and raising it almost always leads to charges of antisemitism. But it is also an undeniably genuine phenomenon. For instance, at an American Jewish symposium held at the Library of Congress in 2006, the brilliant Jewish novelist Cynthia Ozick announced, ‘I have a dual loyalty to the country where I live and the same feeling toward Israel.’ She was attacked for this by the Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua —-not for being disloyal to the United States but for being insufficiently committed to Israel.”
In early 2020, The Forward published an article by a Jewish New York teacher based on her experience at six different Jewish schools. She said she judged the schools’ respective connection to Israel to be “the most essential attribute” of their identity. At these institutions, she noted, “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, was more commonly heard than the Pledge of Allegiance, or the “Star Spangled Banner” and Israeli national holidays were taught with greater reverence than either religious or American ones. Veterans Day was never discussed, but Yom HaZikeron , Israel’s Memorial Day, “had special projects and assemblies.” She also quoted fellow faculty members saying to student assemblies, “You don’t belong in America. Israel is your country, the IDF are your soldiers.”
Joshua Shanes, an Orthodox Jewish scholar who is director of the Arnold Center for Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, sends his children to a Jewish day school in Illinois, where Israel is referred to as “our homeland.” He observed the presence of Israeli flags at many synagogues as well as the fact that while “most synagogues that recite a blessing for America and/or its military forces also recite one for Israel and/or its military forces, some do so only for Israel.”
Zionism believes Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews and that those living outside of Israel are in “exile.” It has transformed parts of American Judaism into a religion which has made the state of Israel, not God, the virtual object of worship, a form of idolatry much like the Golden Calf in the Bible. Did they think non-Jewish Americans wouldn’t notice?
The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans do not think they are in “exile,” but that they are very much at home. They believe that they are Jews by religion and American by nationality, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim. They may have a warm feeling for Israel, but they know it is not their country. If the ADL finds that 40% of Americans are guilty of thinking Jews have “dual loyalty,” the reason may not be “antisemitism” but observing the behavior of the Zionists among whom they live.
Sincerely,
Allan C.Brownfeld,
Editor of ISSUES,
The quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.