This article raises some interesting questions that are worth exploring.

As a dual citizen myself, the case of prisoner X has made me think of where my own loyalties would lie in if I had to choose sides between my country of birth and my country of residence. My immediate response would be Australia – it is the place I choose to live, to which I have voluntarily given allegiance, where I have lived most of my life, and whose culture, values and strengths I cherish.

And yet … what if I thought that Australia was completely in the wrong and my birth country completely in the right. I hope I’d stay here and argue the “right” case, but that would look a lot like divided loyalty, or even treason.

As the article points out, many dual citizens are required to perform military service. Some of these may end up be fighting for governments and causes we disapprove of – for example, in the Syrian army.

And what of all the young people – many Jews certainly, but also Muslims and others – who feel passionate enough in the cause of their non-Australian identity that they are willing to promote it and even volunteer to fight for it.

With so many Australians of mixed ancestry and overseas born, it is quite surprising the issue comes up quite rarely.

Dear Rhian,

I must assume that your family is also in Australia, but what would you do if they were still living in your country of birth? Or what if they were in danger because the country they happened to live in was at war with Australia?

This whole "nation" thing is completely stupid and the biggest cause of wars. It all started in the not-too-distant past, with Napoleon, causing for example French and Russian Jews of the same family to fight and kill one another. One is naturally loyal to their own family and so it should remain, and secondly to their friends, not to an arbitrary bunch of strangers most of which one didn't even meet.

Wakim properly questions whether the same response to dual citizenship would be made if such a person was an Arab and not a Jew. He chooses to forget that a dual Australian/Lebanese HIzballah agent was implicated in the terror attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and our FM's response was so very different.

Wakim seems to not comprehend the difference between loyalty to two countries and treason to one of them. If an Australian chooses to serve in another country or some foreigner serves in Australia, as long as they do not act against either country's interests, the act should be regarded as kosher.

The Birthright Program in which one of my grand-nephews participated gave him some basic military style training. He is a Zionist just like his gentile father, a proud Jew and a proud Australian. There is no contradiction in him or me valuing democracy in Australia or in Israel because, contrary to Wakim's slander, Israeli Arabs do not suffer discrimination.

Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was killed by a group using Australian passports, but none have proved Mossad was involved. It is wrong to base guilt on assumptions and it is wrong to equate eliminating a terrorist group's bag-man to murdering tourists.

Wakim's whinge about Israel's vote against "Palestinian" statehood ignores UNSC 242 and Oslo. His denigration of Israel's democracy has nothing to do with prisoner X. His claims of discrimination, killing, and ethnic cleansing is pure bile and propaganda. And there is no occupation; Israel has a right to Judea/Samaria retaken in a defensive war. He chooses to ignore that no Arabs are displaced and that the PA has declared it would form a Jew free nation. Typically of the way his group plays politics, he engages in inversion.

The prisoner X question will be answered. But will there ever be and answer to how someone as factually challenged and so biased as Wakim was ever appointed as an Australian multicultural affairs commissioner?

Dear Paul,

<<He is a Zionist just like his gentile father, a proud Jew and a proud Australian.>>

The whole idea of nationhood is stupid to the core. It seems that his family values brawn more than brains and his poor father must have gone to a great length to please and compensate for being named "gentile" = "not one of us".

<<There is no contradiction in him or me valuing democracy in Australia or in Israel because, contrary to Wakim's slander, Israeli Arabs do not suffer discrimination.>>

Of course they don't - it's Israeli Jews who suffer discrimination: their Arab friends can proceed straight to university at the age of 18 while they are forcefully conscripted for 3 years.

Your "democratic" values seem to include kidnapping innocent boys (girls too, but less) whose only crime was to be born in a certain country to certain parents and reach the age of 18 in relative health, making them slave and be abused for 3 years, risk their life, limb and sanity, often requiring them to act disregarding their conscience and making them live in constant fear of falling into jail-within-jail, extending their initial 3 years imprisonment if they fail to carry their exact orders to the dot.

A country doing so has no right to exist.

@Yuyutsu

Nationhood may very well be stupid - I have no idea if it is or not, but what would happen if Israel didn't have secure borders? The Jews living there would be slaughtered. They put up a fence and suicide bombings stopped.

As for the comment about the army - is there such a shortage of soldiers so that the 18 year olds have to be "kidnapped?" From what I've seen people volunteer for combat units, and the % of people volunteering for them compared to other roles has been increasing in recent years. Plenty of other people work desk jobs.

Dear James,

I fully support Israel having secure borders, including a strong fence around it - not because otherwise "The Jews living there would be slaughtered", but because otherwise my family living there will be slaughtered. You see, it has nothing to do with nationhood.

You may be correct that there is no shortage of 18 year olds in Israel and if you are, that renders Israel's atrocities even worse because then Israel could survive without kidnapping children, but does so anyway. I have no problem with volunteers.