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Ilhan Omar's Dual Loyalty Charge Was about More than Anti-Semitism
(The Hill) Gregory J. Wallance - The fundamental fallacy of Rep. Ilhan Omar's comment is that national loyalty is a zero-sum game. The more loyal you are to Israel, in her view, the less loyal you must be to the United States. In fact, in my experience, American Jews are both loyal American citizens and strongly supportive of and emotionally loyal to Israel (even when criticizing it). There is no contradiction. Omar needs a crash course, not just in anti-Semitism, but in how the accusation of dual loyalties has been leveled throughout history with catastrophic consequences against minorities of all kinds, including Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims. Alleged dual loyalty was the justification used by the Ottoman Empire to launch a genocide against its Christian Armenian population during World War I, which killed a million men, women and children. During World War II, America interned Japanese-Americans, the majority of whom were Buddhists, whom the FBI and the War Relocation Authority claimed were likely to be more loyal to Japan than their own country. The writer was a federal prosecutor during the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author of America's Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDR's State Department and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy.