Time magazine columnist Joe Klein has triggered a firestorm with a recent blog post asserting that the neocons and Joe Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war and tough action against Iran raises questions about dual loyalty:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives — people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary — plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

He also seemed to endorse the theory that the president and vice president are sending American troops to die in order to boost oil company profits:

And then there is the question — made manifest by the no-bid contracts offered U.S. oil companies by the Iraqis — of two oil executives, Bush and Cheney, securing a new source of business for their Texas buddies.

The column drew swift criticism from members of the Commentary crowd, including Peter Wehner and Jennifer Rubin.

Klein fired back:

Then, what can one say about Jennifer Rubin, who accuses me of antisemitism? I must say that’s rather thrilling coming from the Commentary crowd. You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the “benign domino theory” that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about–off the record, of course–in the runup to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel’s security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel’s enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn’t, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel? Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none–for the moment–to the United States…unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran–it may come to that–but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.

Furthermore, as a Jew, I find it offensive that the American Jewish Committee would support such an ideologically unbalanced publication as Commentary, one that spouts a Likudnik bellicosity that is out of sync with the beliefs of the vast majority of American Jews. A question to all concerned: When was the last time you opposed a policy, any policy, of the Israeli government–other than one that attempted to move toward peace?

Before I could tweak him, Klein was able to post this correction: “The American Jewish Committee is no longer associated with Commentary, thank God.”

As for when the last time a prominent neocon opposed a “policy, any policy, of the Israeli government — other than one that attempted to move toward peace”… How about Doug Feith playing a main, if not lead, role in cracking down on Israeli arms deals with China? It’s hard to think of any other issue that caused a bigger problem in U.S.-Israeli relations during the Bush administration — and Feith reportedly was the one delivering the hammer on Jerusalem.

This isn’t just a case of overlooking an example. There is a larger point here: Feith and his ideological brethren may have what Klein thinks is a crazy world view, but it is just that — a world view, as in China and Taiwan, Contras and Sandinistas, etc.

As for the question of fighting a war to make Israel safe, it may or may not be a bad idea — but plenty of non-Jews support the concept and it wouldn’t be the only time the United States determined that it was in America’s interest to take up arms to aid an ally. So why the talk about “dual loyalty”? At least Tim Russert was polite — and responsible — enough to raise the issue in a form of a question, and allow for a response.

Bonus: The O.U.’s D.C. blog has audio of McCain ripping Klein.

The publisher of Ha’aretz, Amos Schocken, has a piece today under the headline “Citizenship law makes Israel an apartheid state”:

The law stipulates that the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for a resident of Judea and Samaria (unless, of course, they are Jews - that is, settlers). This is so even regarding family reunions, meaning marriage, when it comes to Palestinian spouses who are younger than 35 (for men) or 25 (for women). In effect, the law prevents young Israeli citizens from marrying the spouse of their choice and living with this spouse in Israel, if the spouse is a Palestinian from Judea and Samaria.

It is obvious that this has barely any effect on the right of young Israeli Jews to live in their country with the spouse of their choice, because there are hardly any marriages between Israeli Jews and Palestinians from Judea and Samaria. On the other hand, these Palestinians constitute Israeli Arabs’ natural pool for choosing a spouse. For this reason, the law severely discriminates when comparing the rights of young Israeli Jewish citizens and young Israeli Arab citizens.

When the law was first passed in 2003, supposedly as a temporary one-year measure, it was accompanied by security reasoning - the risk of implanting terrorists in Israel via marriage. The reasoning was faulty even at that time: Every Palestinian who wishes to enter Israel must be addressed individually. It is the Shin Bet security service’s task to do this and thus carry out its mission - protecting the security of Israel’s citizens such that the country remains democratic, with equal rights for all. However, as the years go by, it becomes clear that the security argument and the term “temporary measure” are merely a deception aimed at “koshering” discriminatory legislation for demographic reasons.

The claim that there are indications of an apartheid state in Israel is widely heard in the Western world. The word apartheid is catchy and understood in many parts of the world, which makes it useful to send a message that we resent and which we claim has no connection with reality in Israel. However, we do not have to identify the characteristics of South African apartheid in the civil rights discrimination in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly the kind of practice that leads to the use of such a term, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in the law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who now chairs the Shalem Center’s Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies (yes, that Adelson), says all of Israel’s current problems can be traced to one core problem: the decline of Israel’s Zionist identity.

It is to blame for changes made in the 1990s to Israel’s code of military conduct, which hampers the ability of Israeli troops to defend themselves and the country; it’s to blame for the culture of political corruption in Jerusalem, where Knesset members are more keen on keeping their jobs than on guiding the country to where it needs to go; and it’s to blame for the persistence of the belief among Israel’s enemies that they can wear down the Jewish state and eventually destroy it, he says.

Sharansky, who sat down with me Thursday in New York, strikes the same theme in his new book, “Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy.”

In a nutshell, Sharansky argues that ethnic identity, rather than threatening freedom, guarantees liberty and democracy. He was in the United States for a book tour (which, he noted wryly, is less lucrative than it used to be, given the decline of the dollar against the shekel).

In our conversation, Sharansky told me Israel’s enemies are becoming stronger only because Israel looks like it is becoming weaker.

Why does Israel look this way? Post-Zionism.

The cure? A Jewish, Zionist identity.

Sharansky sounds some of the same themes American Jews sound when speaking of the dangers of assimilation. Except whereas the price in America is the gradual watering-down or disappearance of Jewish identity among American Jews, in Israel the very survival of the Jewish state is at stake.

To promote the return of Zionist ideology to Israel, Sharansky is collaborating with the likes of Moshe (Boogie) Ya’alon, Martin Kramer, Michael Oren, Yossi Klein Halevi and others on researching the problems and suggesting possible solutions.

One of the things he’s not doing is running for Knesset, which he left in 2005 to protest Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza, which Sharansky insists was a big mistake.

Will Sharansky ever return to politics? “Nobody can leave politics in Israel,” he says.

In a follow-up to his recent piece arguing for ignoring Israel’s national interest and releasing terrorists in exchange for captive Israeli soldiers, former Rabin aide Eitan Haber writes in Thursday’s Ynet that convicted murderer Samir Kuntar should be freed by Israel, if needed. Kuntar is the Lebanese Druse who snuck into Israel in 1979 and killed four people, including a 4-year-old girl and her father.

If Fatah militants are now firing Kassam rockets at Israel in a bid to embarrass Hamas and prompt the collapse of the group’s cease-fire with Israel, does this mean Israel should bolster Hamas’ military wing so that it cracks down on these renegade Fatah militants and can impose its rule on Gaza?

Madness, you say? Perhaps. But I recall Israel doing just that some years ago when the tables were turned and it was Hamas militants trying to ruin the truces between Israel and the Fatah faction of Yasser Arafat.

Now it’s Hamas’ gain, Fatah’s loss.

An editorial in Thursday’s Daily Star of Lebanon suggests Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may launch a war this summer in a bid to rally Israeli public opinion and ensure his political survival. Possible targets: Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, write the Daily Star’s editorialists.

Though tensions long have been mounting on the Gaza and Iran fronts (click on those links for recent JTA pieces on the subjects), the Daily Star editorial relies on flawed logic to reach the conclusion that the likelihood of war with Lebanon is higher as a result of Olmert’s political problems. It ignores the lack of public will in Israel for another confrontation in Lebanon of indeterminate success, Olmert’s own bitter experience from the 2006 war with Hezbollah and (dare I say it?) the integrity of a prime minister who would not wage war merely for political survival.

But in the Hezbollah-dominated (and intimidated) state that Lebanon has become, it’s telling to read the roundabout way the editorialists warn Hezbollah against provoking Israel (which really is an implicit plea to the Shiite militia not to invite more destruction upon Lebanon. The editorialists can’t flat-out say that, because that would be blaming Hezbollah for the last war with Israel, in 2006, and that’s a dangerous proposition in today’s Lebanon):

All of these potential targets should take great care to avoid providing Olmert with a pretext that would both make an attack inevitable and dilute whatever condemnation might come from more responsible members of the international community… Rarely have so many factors converged so perfectly to increase the likelihood of Israeli aggression. Rarely has it been more important, therefore, for the region’s indigenous forces - especially Hamas, Hizbullah and the Iranian government - to think long and hard about anything that might give the Jewish state an excuse to lash out. Indeed, even if an onslaught is launched without a pretext, all of these actors should consider turning the other cheek in hopes of preventing escalation and, thereby, of preserving the viability of the diplomatic solutions that such an attack would be designed to doom.

While I applaud the sentiment, it’s highly doubtful any of these parties would even consider turning the other cheek. They don’t really have a very long track record with that.

When it comes to making deals to return captive Israeli soldiers, dead or alive, successive Israeli prime ministers have ignored Israel’s national interest and their own pronouncements to do all they could to bring Israel’s missing boys home, writes Eitan Haber, a former aide to Yitzhak Rabin, in Ynet. This is not necessarily a bad thing, Haber says; it’s a Jewish virtue.

When captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was 11, he wrote a story about two mortal enemies, a shark and a fish, making peace. This month, the Israeli Consulate in New York posted a video on You Tube with Bronx middle-school students reading the story. Watch the video here.

After the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem handed out more than 100 cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank to document their harassment by Israelis, it didn’t take long for the investment to pay off. This month, Muna Nawajaa of Khirbet Susiya recorded an attack by masked men, believed to be Israeli Jews, beating members of her family with clubs.

The video of the incident, which took place in the South Hebron hills, prompted Israeli police to take action. Three suspects from the nearby Jewish town of Susiya already have been arrested. Tuesday’s New York Times carries a feature on the June 8 incident and its aftermath.

While the project, called “Shooting Back,” is a good way to root out the thugs among Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank, it shouldn’t be limited to the West Bank — or Israel, for that matter.

Imagine if this project were expanded throughout the Middle East. Just as Israel has taken action against this thuggish and criminal activity, authorities from Riyadh to Cairo would take action against thugs in their societies who target Arab innocents.

There’s just one problem: Nobody’s interested in how people in those places are beaten, murdered and maimed — and, in some cases, the persecution is carried out by their own governments. B’Tselem, or at least the United Nations, would do well to protect those innocents as well.

At a time of mostly bad news on the Arab-Jewish coexistence front, a recent Harvard University study on Arabs and Jews in Israel finds some good news to report. Among the key findings:

• 77% of Arab citizens would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world.
• 68% of Jewish citizens support teaching conversational Arabic in Jewish schools to help bring Arab and Jewish citizens together.
• A great majority of both Jewish citizens (73%) and Arab citizens (94%) want Israel to be a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities.
• More than two-thirds of Jewish citizens (69%) believe contributing to coexistence is a personal responsibility; a majority (58%) of Jewish citizens also support cabinet level action.
• Arab citizens and Jewish citizens both underestimate their communities’ liking of the “other.”
• Urgent action on coexistence in Israel is desired: 66% of Jewish citizens and 84% of Arab citizens believe the Israeli government investments should begin now, and not wait until the end of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.