Belén Sisa, deputy press secretary for the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, questioned on Facebook early this week whether the “American-Jewish community has a dual allegiance to the state of Israel.”
Following condemnation from Jewish leaders across the political spectrum, Sisa apologized and told POLITICO that “I used some language that I see now was insensitive. Issues of allegiance and loyalty to one’s country come with painful history.”
Sisa’s original post was an attempt to defend United States Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn), who had come under fire from fellow lawmakers and the American Jewish establishment for her use of what many called anti-Semitic tropes in her criticism of the State of Israel and its US-based supporters.
The freshman lawmaker made comments at a panel discussion at the Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C. on February 27, in which she referred to support for Israel among America’s Jewish community as “allegiance to a foreign country.”
Liberal commentator Jonathan Chait utilized his New York magazine column the next day to accuse Omar of employing the Palestinian cause “to smuggle in ugly stereotypes.”
“Accusing Jews of ‘allegiance to a foreign country’ is a historically classic way of delegitimizing their participation in the political system,” he wrote. “Whether or not the foreign policy agenda endorsed by American supporters of Israel is wise or humane, it is a legitimate expression of their political rights as American citizens.”
Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), chairwoman of the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, attacked Omar on Twitter, calling it anti-Semitic to claim that American Jews who support Israel are divided in their loyalties.
“Anti-Semitic tropes that accuse Jews of dual loyalty are equally painful and must also be roundly condemned,” Lowey tweeted. “I am saddened that Rep. Omar continues to mischaracterize support for Israel. I urge her to retract this statement and engage in further dialogue with the Jewish community on why these comments are so hurtful.”
But perhaps most telling was a piece in the Atlantic last week, in which Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned Omar’s “dual loyalty” statements for calling “our devotion to America into question” and “intimating that we place the concerns of Israel above those of the country that we call home.”
Unlike his colleagues, however, Emanuel didn’t stop at merely criticizing Omar’s comments or dismissing dual loyalty charges as anti-Semitic. He wrote that he and other pro-Israel Jews in the US “champion American interests when they come into tension with Israeli goals” and provided a concrete example of his own behavior, boasting that he personally convinced former US President Bill Clinton not to release Jonathon Pollard during the 1998 Wye Summit.
At that summit, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was pressured into surrendering 80% of the ancient Judean city of Hebron, releasing Palestinian “terrorists with blood on their hands” and relinquishing his demand for reciprocity in dealings with the American-backed Palestinian Authority. One of the incentives dangled by Clinton to help Netanyahu overcome his reservations was a promise that the prime minister would return home to Israel together with a free Jonathan Pollard. But once Netanyahu signed the agreement, Clinton reneged on his commitment.
In his effort to prove the loyalty of US Jews to their country of residence, Emanuel went as far as to show how he had personally placed Washington’s interests above those of the Jewish people.
“On my very first day after leaving Bill Clinton’s administration as his senior adviser in October 1998, I received a call at 5 a.m. from the president,” Emanuel wrote.
“He was at the Wye Plantation in Maryland, where he was hosting a summit meeting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The president was frantic that the summit would collapse if he didn’t release Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. intelligence analyst who had delivered sensitive state secrets to Israel, as Benjamin Netanyahu was demanding.”
“I told Clinton not to give in on Pollard’s release, believing that Netanyahu needed the agreement more than he did. The president followed that advice, and Netanyahu ultimately signed the Wye River Memorandum.”
The significance of Emanuel’s story may require some basic background information on the Pollard Affair. Jonathan Pollard was a US Naval intelligence analyst who, in the early 1980s, discovered information that Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran were developing weapons of mass destruction with the intention of attacking Israel.
When bringing this to the attention of his superiors, Pollard discovered that certain elements within the US intelligence establishment were deliberately withholding the information from the Israeli government, despite Jerusalem being entitled to the intelligence according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two governments.
According to high level Washington officials at the time, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush had been violating the memorandum in order to make Israel increasingly dependent on Washington in matters of national defense.
Once aware of the Reagan administration’s betrayal, Pollard took it upon himself to warn Jerusalem of the threat. Israel took the necessary actions to neutralize the dangers but then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres ordered Pollard’s handlers to abandon him to the FBI in order to avoid a diplomatic confrontation with Washington.
In an effort to avoid an embarrassing public trial, both the US and Israel urged Pollard to enter into a plea agreement. Although the usual punishment for Pollard’s offense is up to four years in prison and although the whistle blower was promised a light sentence in exchange for his cooperation, Pollard was condemned to life behind bars, a punishment considered excessive for passing even highly sensitive information to a friendly country.
Pollard was eventually paroled on November 20, 2015, following 30 years in prison, but is still barred from leaving New York. As part of his parole conditions, he wears a GPS monitoring system and must adhere to a 7pm to 7am curfew. In May 2017, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Pollard’s appeal to ease his parole conditions. His poor health was also rejected as a reason for permitting him to move home to Israel.
Among Israelis Pollard is a national hero, a “Prisoner of Zion” on par with Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union.
Pollard was granted citizenship by the State of Israel in 1996, as well as recognition as an agent. As such, Jerusalem pledged to fund his legal expenses. But in January 2006, Pollard was denied official “Prisoner of Zion” status by Israel’s Supreme Court, likely for fear of antagonizing Washington.
We should be grateful to Rahm Emanuel for introducing the Pollard issue into recent conversations about Jewish dual loyalty in the United States. While Emanuel and the chorus of Jewish leaders attacking Omar seek to deny the fundamental conflict between American and Jewish national interests, the entire Pollard story forces pro-Israel Jews in the US to confront their own cognitive dissonance.
Pollard should be viewed as having corrected the sin of American Jews during the Holocaust. At that time, the Jewish community was so desperate to be accepted into the American mainstream they had been barred from that they refused to cry out and fight for their brothers and sisters in Europe for fear it would call their loyalty to America’s war effort into question. Pollard was faced with a similar dilemma and chose his people over Washington’s interests in the Middle East.
One of the fundamental lessons of the Purim story is that the secret to Israel’s liberation can often be found in the accusations of our enemies. The hysterical response by Jewish political figures and organizations to Representative Omar’s comments likely come from the fact she touched a deep sensitive nerve. More productive than attacking Omar and dismissing her dual loyalty accusations as anti-Semitic, US Jewish leaders should engage in an uncomfortable exercise of introspection.
In many ways, Pollard is the only free Jew in the United States because he ventured to ask himself difficult questions and arrived at liberating conclusions. Honestly confronting his story may just be the key to psychologically freeing the broader American Jewish community.
Jonathan Pollard should be seen as the antithesis to Rahm Emanuel, AIPAC and all the other Jews desperate to convince themselves that they can continue to live their decadent American lives and express loyalty to both nations because both will anyway forever be on the same team. In fact, it has been precisely this attempt to frame Israel as the Robin to America’s Batman that has psychologically blocked many Jews from appreciating the historic significance of Israel’s national rebirth.
Once US Jews stop trying to prove their loyalty and the indistinguishability of Israeli and American interests, they might be able to entertain the type of questions Pollard must have asked himself. They might realize that a fundamental conflict of interests exists between Washington and Jerusalem and that successive American administrations have actually spent decades seeking to control and limit Israel’s economic, military and diplomatic independence. These Diaspora Jews might also discover that they are actually part of a proud ancient people with an inspirational story and an incredible destiny that they could choose to become part of rather than attach their futures to an empire in decline.
