Jane Harman, Haim Saban, and AIPAC: The Disloyalty Issue in

[MikeWB]

Jane Harman, Haim Saban, and AIPAC: The Disloyalty Issue in Multicultural America

Kevin MacDonald
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/ar ... arman.html

Disloyalty is an age-old issue with Jews, and for a simple reason: Jews often have interests as Jews that stretch beyond national boundaries. Even before the existence of Israel, Diaspora Jews often could be said to have a "foreign policy" in the sense that there was a general consensus among Jews to favor some nations and disfavor others.

For example, the Spanish Inquisition targeted Jews who pretended to be Christians, with the result that Jews in other countries sought Spain's downfall. From 1881 until the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was seen as an enemy of Jews. As a result, the organized Jewish community in other countries often opposed Russian interests. Jacob Schiff, the preeminent Jewish activist of the period, financed the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and he financed revolutionaries in Russia.

At times, Jewish foreign policy interests were in conflict with those of the wider society. In 1908 Schiff also led the successful effort to abrogate the Russian Trade Agreement which was opposed by the Taft Administration as not in the interests of the United States. Schiff's motive for helping Jews in Russia conflicted with US national interests as understood by the US government.

Questions of disloyalty are by no means unique to Jews. Loyalty issues are common for minority groups living as a Diaspora, as with Overseas Chinese and Indian groups living as minorities abroad. In the US, issues of divided loyalties arose among pre-1965 immigrants who retained attachments to their countries of origin. During World War I, many German-Americans were reluctant to support the Allied cause against Germany because of their ties with their homeland. ...

However, until the multicultural utopia legitimizes all loyalties in the name of world citizenship, divided loyalties will likely be a chronic issue.  For example, ethnic Chinese who are American citizens have been convicted of spying for China. An April, 2008 Washington Post article listed 12 cases of ethnic Chinese spying on the United States.

We should not, therefore, be surprised that at least some American Jews may be more loyal to Israel than  to the United States. Unlike the German-Americans who assimilated to America, Israel remains a powerful source of identity for the great majority of American Jews. Chi Mak, the Chinese spy who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for sending information on military technology to the Chinese, has as his counterparts Jonathan Pollard and Ben-Ami Kadish, convicted of spying on behalf of Israel.

Besides Pollard and Kadish, there is a bumper crop of neoconservatives who have been credibly accused of spying for Israel: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, and Michael Ledeen.

None of the neocons were convicted, and now we have the AIPAC espionage trial in which former AIPAC employees Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman have been accused of providing information to Israeli Embassy employees. Jewish Congresswoman Jane Harman has allegedly been caught agreeing to "waddle in" to help get the charges against Rosen and Weissman reduced.

As part of her defense in the media, Harman pointedly noted that "anyone I might have talked to was an American citizen, and these were conversations that took place in the United States."

This is the multicultural defense par excellence. Harman was talking to an American about the business of AIPAC, an American organization that has not been required to register as an agent of a foreign government. What could possibly be wrong with that?

One problem with that is that the American citizen that Harman may well have been talking to was Haim Saban who is not only an American citizen but also a citizen of Israel. Saban's commitment to Israel seems almost a caricature of a nut case Zionist — someone who makes Alan Dershowitz and  Martin Peretz seem lukewarm by comparison. ...

Haim Saban is an American citizen, but can there really be any question where his loyalty lies? I suspect it's the same with the neocons accused of spying, and with AIPAC's Rosen and Weissman. A big part of my article on neocons was simply to document their intense commitment to Israel.

Nevertheless, I suppose that if we asked these people whether they are more loyal to Israel than the US, they would deny it and they may be utterly sincere in their denial.

But how could any reasonable person believe what they are saying? Psychological research shows quite clearly that people with strong ingroup loyalties are likely to suffer cognitive distortions that would bias their attitudes and their policy recommendations. They may well believe that their recommendations also benefit the United States, but they might not even be aware of how their commitment to Israel can bias their judgment.

The big picture here is that the Israel Lobby has managed to create a climate in which issues of the loyalty of American Jews are off limits at the highest reaches of government. However, this sensitivity to Jewish concerns (and susceptibility to Jewish pressure) has not filtered down into the intelligence and military establishment, especially at the lower echelons.

Commenting on the Harman case, "an official with an American Jewish organization," stated that suspicion of the loyalties of American Jews is "rooted deep in the system and it comes from the bottom up." An Israeli official is paraphrased as claiming that "suspicion toward Israel [is] prevalent in the military and intelligence establishments but [is] not common at the political and diplomatic levels."

These lower-level people are less susceptible to public pressure because they represent an institutional consensus that has not yet embraced multiculturalism and the slavish American commitment to Israel. Instead, they seem committed to the quaint view that America is a nation state with interests that are different from other nations, including Israel. ...