Man, I hope this isn’t true. But if it is, I hope that it will cause some rethinking both in Jerusalem and in the American Jewish community.
American Jews who are more loyal to Israel than to the United States are, in my view, unpatriotic Americans, but their choice is their choice. But about American Jews who are officials of the American government there should be no doubt: if they’re acting disloyally, they’re not just bad Americans, they’re bad Jews, because they cast doubt on the loyalty of the rest of us. (The technical term is “shandeh fur de goyim.”)
And American Jews need to make it clear to the Israeli government that attempts at espionage and subversion directed by Israel against our country make it harder for Jews here to support Israel.
Wasn’t Pollard bad enough?
Update: I hoped this was some overenthusiastic reporter at CBS overinterpreting something said by someone at the FBI, but it looks real:
CBS News, which first reported the story, said the FBI had developed evidence against the suspect, including photographs and conversations recorded through wiretaps.
Doubleplusungood.
Second update
By the clear light of dawn, and of Laura Rozen’s excellent reporting, the above seems overwrought in several respects.
1. Most outrageously, it assumes that an “Israeli spy” in the Pentagon would naturally be Jewish. I don’t know anything about Larry Franklin, but that’s not obviously a Jewish name, and reading it made me aware that I’d made an utterly unjustified assumption.
2. If Rozen’s account is correct, Franklin might have been using AIPAC as an end-around to get information he cared about to higher-ups outside his chain of command, rather than spying for Israel.
3. It doesn’t look as if any of the information passed along was damaging to U.S. national security.
On the other hand, Rozen suspects that Franklin may not be the real target here: perhaps he’s being squeezed to provide testimony against someone more important.
And there seem to be links to forged Nigerian documents (and thus to the Valerie Plame affair), to our old friend Ahmed Chalabi, and to many of the usual suspects from Iran-Contra days.