When a Foreign Government Claims Your Loyalty

Imagine you're an American.

You vote in American elections. You pay American taxes. Your children attend American schools. If your country is attacked, you expect your fellow citizens to stand together in its defense. Like every citizen, your political loyalty belongs to the nation in which you live.

Now imagine that the prime minister of a foreign country announces that you are one of his people. He declares that his government represents your interests, speaks in your name, and regards you as one of its constituents simply because you share a religion with many of his country's citizens.

How would your neighbors react?

Would they continue to see you simply as another loyal American citizen? Or would some begin to wonder whether your primary political allegiance lay somewhere else?

This is not merely a hypothetical question.

One of the central arguments made by opponents of Zionism for more than a century is that once Israel began presenting itself as the state of all Jews, it inevitably exposed Jews living in other countries to questions about where their political loyalty lies. Zionism promoted the false idea that all Jews are members of a single political nation whose government is in Israel.

Certainly, accusations of dual loyalty have a long and ugly history. Jews have repeatedly been slandered as being more loyal to one another than to the countries in which they lived. But there is another question that deserves to be asked.

What happens when a government itself encourages the world to think that Jews everywhere belong to one political nation?

The issue is not whether such suspicions are fair. They're certainly not. The issue is whether the claim that Israel represents Jews around the world makes those suspicions more likely.

Consider what happened with Jonathan Pollard. Pollard was not merely an American who spied for a foreign government. Pollard and some of his defenders framed his actions in explicitly Jewish terms. His wife publicly stated that what they had done was their "moral obligation as Jews." Years later, Pollard himself declared that Jews would "always have dual loyalty" and even suggested that American Jews working in sensitive government positions should spy for Israel.

Misguided statements like these have consequences.

If loyalty to Israel is part of what it means to be Jewish, it's natural to suspect all Jews of placing Israel above their own countries.

Torah Jews entirely reject that idea, yet they are the ones left dealing with the consequences.

The problem extends far beyond one notorious spy.

In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington to urge Congress to oppose President Obama's Iran nuclear agreement. He spoke forcefully, not merely as Israel's elected leader but as speaking for the entire Jewish people. Then he returned home to Israel.

American Jews remained behind to answer questions from neighbors, colleagues, and fellow citizens about whether their political loyalties lay with their own elected government or with a foreign prime minister who claimed to speak in their name.

That is the dangerous pattern this series has been exploring.

• Israel acts.
• Israel claims to represent Jews.
• The world begins treating Jews as though Israel represents them.
• Suspicion falls on Jewish communities living in dozens of other countries.
• What makes this especially striking is that these consequences were predicted long before the State of Israel existed.

In 1917, while the British government was considering the Balfour Declaration, Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet, warned that declaring Palestine the national home of the Jewish people would encourage governments to regard their Jewish citizens as foreigners. Countries, he argued, would naturally conclude that if Palestine was the Jews' national home, then Jews living elsewhere did not fully belong where they were.

Montagu was hardly alone. American Reform leaders, prominent Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, the American Jewish Congress, and many German Jews, Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike, expressed similar fears. They worried that falsely redefining Jews as a political nation rather than a religious community would strengthen the very accusations that had endangered Jewish communities for centuries.

Today, Israeli politicians frequently refer to Jews worldwide as "our brothers and sisters." They speak of Israel as the homeland of every Jew. They often imply that Jews outside Israel are politically represented by the Israeli government. For many people, these phrases sound warm and reassuring.

Yet these claims carry life-and-death  consequences.

If a government says it represents people around the world—even though the claim is baseless—others will start to believe it.

If that government enters conflicts with other nations, people may begin wondering where the loyalties of those individuals really lie.

Citizens should be free to give their complete political loyalty to the countries in which they live without having a foreign government claim them as constituents because of their religion.

Governments should represent their own citizens. Religions should not have governments claiming to speak for all of their adherents. And no individual should have to answer questions about his loyalty because another country's leaders insist that he belongs to them.

That is why this issue matters. It is not simply about Israel. It's about a principle that applies everywhere.

When a government claims people who are not its citizens as part of its political nation, it should not be surprising if others begin questioning where those people's loyalties lie.

The tragedy is that the people who bear the consequences are often the very people who never asked to be represented in the first place.