Israel Isolation Spawns ‘Dual Loyalty’ Charge Worldwide

by JJ Goldberg
Forward dot com
February 26, 2013

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky probably thought he was stating the obvious when he welcomed his board of governors to Jerusalem on February 17 with a bromide about Israel-Diaspora solidarity. “It is increasingly clear,” said the chairman, still best known for his years in a Soviet prison, “that world Jewry depends on Israel and Israel depends on world Jewry.”

It’s a familiar notion, and contains much truth. But “increasingly clear” it’s not. If anything, it’s increasingly murky. Right now, no fewer than three major Diaspora Jewish communities — in Australia, Argentina and the United States — are embroiled in crises arising from their relationships with Israel, facing noisy, threatening allegations of dual loyalty.

This could be a harbinger of the future. Some top Israeli officials see the country’s actions becoming increasingly unpopular around the world. As that happens, they say, Israel’s defenders are on the defensive. The more isolated Israel becomes, the greater its dependence on Diaspora Jews — and the higher the cost to those Jews.

The most dramatic crisis involves a young Australian Jew who, like Sharansky, ended up in a prison cell as a consequence of his love of Zion. But his prison, unlike Sharansky’s, was Israeli. And unlike Sharansky, this inmate, Prisoner X, never got out alive. He died in December 2010, allegedly having hanged himself in Israel’s most closely monitored cell.

His fate was top-secret for two years, until an explosive documentary aired February 14 on Australian television. It told how the idealistic young Zionist Ben Zygier immigrated to Israel in the 1990s, joined the Mossad and ultimately got caught in a deadly conflict between Israeli and Australian security interests. At the heart of the dispute, it appears, is the Mossad’s practice of recruiting Jews whose Western passports let them travel where Israelis can’t.

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