Hillel Halkin, as is almost always the case, has a very interesting column in The New York Sun about the concept of “dual loyalty.” The hook, of course, is the Larry Franklin (Pentagon) case.

Halkin writes:

While the “dual loyalty” charge has generally been treated as an anti-Semitic canard both by Jews and non-Jews well disposed toward them, the matter is not quite so simple. An American Jew who takes his Jewishness seriously does not and cannot have the same attitude toward Israel that an Italian-American or Polish-American has toward Italy or Poland, even though this is the kind of comparison that has commonly been made in dismissing the notion that there is any problem.

Native-born Americans of Italian or Polish ancestry are not Poles or Italians; while they may feel a sentimental attachment to the country of their ancestors’ origin, this is rarely strong enough to make them care deeply about its fate. A strongly identified Jew, on the other hand, must care deeply about Israel’s fate, because Israel is the state of the Jewish people and a sense of Jewish peoplehood is an intrinsic part of being Jewish. A large number of American Jews feel attached to Israel in a way that no other American ethnic group feels attached to any other country, and it is not only false but also demeaning for Jews to deny this.

In this sense, “dual loyalty” is not an anti-Semitic libel but a fact of life. Many Jews do feel an allegiance to Israel that is as great as their allegiance to America, not because they do not love America — it would be hard for them not to love a place in which Jews have lived better and in a friendlier atmosphere than they have anywhere else in their long history — but because they love Israel, too.

Read the rest here.