Serving in the military is the ultimate test of loyalty. When young Americans raise their right hand, they pledge to defend their nation, their Constitution, their people. Yet for many young Americans, that oath is NOT made to the United States military. Instead, they pack their bags, fly across the Atlantic, and enlist in a foreign army—the Israeli War Machine, aka, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Image by Ian Hutchinson.

Serving in the military is the ultimate test of loyalty. When young Americans raise their right hand, they pledge to defend their nation, their Constitution, their people. Yet for many young Americans, that oath is NOT made to the United States military. Instead, they pack their bags, fly across the Atlantic, and enlist in a foreign army—the Israeli War Machine, aka, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

The numbers speak loudly. According to the Washington Post, 23,000 Jewish American citizens are currently serving in the Israeli military. By contrast, U.S. Department of Defense data shows that in 2006 fewer than 4,000 American service members identified as Jewish. A later DoD report, released in January 2019, placed the figure at roughly 0.4 percent of active-duty personnel. Put simply, more Jewish Americans—both in raw numbers and percentage—serve under the misappropriated Star of David than under the Stars and Stripes.

Naturally, many new Americans maintain personal cultural and ancestral ties to their homelands—a land they actually come from, with real last names, not Hebraized East European family names. Furthermore, no group has a lobby dedicated to serving a foreign country, like AIPAC. Mexican Americans celebrate Mexico’s victory on Cinco de Mayo, but do not promote enlisting in Mexico’s military. Irish Americans rejoice Saint Patrick’s Day, but had not lined up to join the Irish Republican Army. No ethnic American group raises nonprofit tax-deductible funds for a foreign army, other than the Jewish billionaires, who bankroll “Friends of the IDF.”

Controlled by this foreign lobby, Congress not only tolerates this Israeli exception, it tries to reward it. Two Jewish Republican lawmakers; Guy Reschenthaler and Max Miller, have proposed legislation, H.R. 8445, to amend the American Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to include (Jewish) Americans serving in the Israeli army. If passed, it would grant these “foreign” soldiers the same benefits reserved for Americans in uniform.

Let that sink in: Israeli (American) soldiers would have the same protections as American army soldiers. An Israeli soldier starving babies and committing a war crime in Gaza would be legally indistinguishablefrom an American Marine guarding Camp Pendleton.

When it comes to Israel though, AIPAC, through the disproportionate Jewish representation in both Houses—three to five times higher than their share of the U.S. adult population—exerts outsized clout. Combine this with the campaign finance power over other elected officials, AIPAC can flex its muscles to institutionalize the Israeli exception. In any case, if this is good for Israeli (American) soldiers, why not provide all Americans serving in foreign armies the same benefits? Maybe for Muslim American soldiers, if any, serving in Pakistan or Egypt. Such idea would most likely cause a revolt in Washington. Accusations of dual loyalty, even treason, would dominate the headlines. Why not in the Israeli exception case?

One of those soldiers is David Meyers from California, who spent six years in the Israeli navy. He explained his decision to enlist in the Israeli military, citing “… an incredibly deep and long connection that I have to Israel.” When asked why he chose a foreign army over his own, his answer was more telling: “The United States with its strength and size, perhaps, isn’t quite needing your abilities and your efforts.”

Since when did America’s strength become an excuse to abandon it for a foreign army? At any rate, Meyers’s statement suggests he does not have a deep or long connection to the country of his birth—or at least not one as deep as to a foreign country. America is strong only because its citizens choose to serve it, not because they shirk duty in favor of a foreign uniform. To dismiss the U.S. military as too mighty to need Jewish Americans isn’t about necessity; it’s about misplaced loyalty.

Many of the Americans serving in the Israeli army are called lone soldiers. They are the young Americans with New York or Texas accents that I’ve encountered at Israeli checkpoints. Their job is to humiliate Palestinians in the West Bank, and enforce a starvation siege on Gaza.

Some may frame it as defending “the Jewish people.” Even though they’re not safeguarding a synagogue in New Jersey or families in San Diego. On the contrary, they are fueling Jewish hate in the West for being the face of the “Jewish-only” colonies built on stolen Palestinian land, or for imposing an apartheid occupation on behalf of a foreign political entity, whose leaders stand indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

With this in mind, these Americans are participating in a war the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have described as war crimes—from the engineered starvation of babies in Gaza, to the subjugation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. As the ICC continues to investigate Israeli crimes, one day, these “Americans” could face reality, not as heroes, but for their roles in the crimes against humanity. Ironically, Congress wants to make these foreign soldiers, and potential war criminals, as equal to American servicemembers.

The numbers do not lie. Jewish Americans enlist in the Israeli army at more than five times the rate they serve in their own country’s military. While this by no means represents all Jewish Americans, it raises a troubling question: why are so many Jewish Americans more willing to die for a foreign country than for the nation that gave them everything they have? That is not an anti-Jewish statement; it is a fact that would, and should be uniformly applied to any ethnic group in the U.S.

If some Jewish Americans choose to devote their lives and loyalty to a foreign state, that is their business. However, it is an insult to every American in uniform when Congress considers equating American soldiers with those serving in a foreign army. Worse, by ignoring the moral and legal consequences, U.S. policymakers risk entangling America in war crimes committed by these so-called American citizens, crimes that may one day be judged in The Hague, and for which today’s members of Congress should be held to account by their own constituents.

The post American Citizens on the Frontlines of Gaza’s War Crimes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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