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.

Dear Yuyutsu

I have family both in Australia and in the UK.

I agree that nationalism and national identity can be a cause of wars, or at least sustain them. “My country, right or wrong” has always seemed to me a stupid and dangerous creed. But our families, history and experiences shape our values and the causes we champion. Australian Jews and Australian Muslims understandably are more likely to take an active interest in Middle Eastern politics than the rest of us; some to the point that they will travel there and work or fight for what they believe.

There is a difference between fighting for Israel/Palestine because you are a Jew/Muslim, and holding a conviction that the Israeli/Palestinian cause is worth fighting for influenced by the fact that you are a Jew/Muslim.

No and no James. What is the point of secure borders for squatters and illegal migrants living in someone else's country? The country is Palestine and it has never, ever been a jewish anything as many historians have now proven.

Dear Marilyn,

<<What is the point of secure borders for squatters and illegal migrants living in someone else's country?>>

So you call people "squatters" merely for being born where they were?

<<The country is Palestine and it has never, ever been a jewish anything as many historians have now proven.>>

Why do you think I should care? The fact is, that under a Jewish state (which I may otherwise dislike) my family survives, while under an Arab/Muslim state they would all be slaughtered.

You may keep being right while my family remain "wrong" but alive!

Marilyn, you have repeatedly proved your antisemitic credentials, so enough already.

I have no idea where you are getting your information from, but even Arab sources will tell you that there never was a country called Palestine. It is and has been a region, since it was renamed very early in the CE, the date of which I forget, that was pre-Islam

The Romans renamed it in the hope the could rid the area of its Jewish connections. The area along the Jordan was Judea and Samaria and the coastal plain was Canaan. The Old Testament which is over 3,000 years old back up that fact.The Arabs come from Arabia, hence their name.
http://www.differentspirit.org/articles/boundaries.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel

This was a comment from a person I became acquainted with recently on a blog.
"I have spent considerable time in Jordan and Israel, mostly in my archaeological pursuits. I am a field archaeologist who has worked with the University of Adelaide, Israeli Antiquities, Associates for Biblical Research and a private contractor. I have a great interest in the history of Israel and find that the archaeological proofs back up that the Jews have indigenous connections to the land."

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7416#115027

"What is the point of secure borders for squatters and illegal migrants living in someone else's country?"

I already pointed out one reason why. I doubt you'd care but in suicide bombings Israeli Jewish peace activists have been killed.

"The country is Palestine and it has never, ever been a jewish anything as many historians have now proven"

Who has proven that? There's a possibility that you maybe uncritically accept any sources that agree with your politics. Here's a quote from a 2008 comment of yours re the holocaust:
---
"Official figures for the Jewish populations of Germany in 1933 were 450,000, two thirds whom fled before the holocaust.

IN Austria it was only 180,000 and two thirds of them escaped. Where the 6 million comes from is obviously another load of bunkum."

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7416#115027
---

so the lies continue. Contrary to those lies:

!. Israel was not created by the UN to be a Jewish state. It was created to ensure a homeland for Jewish people. The rights of existing residents in that territory were not to be diminished. The UN authority establishing ISrael was quite specific on that point.

2. Palestinians are not Arab, and not all Arabs threaten Israel. To say otherwise is a discrimination.

3. Jewish people apart from those from some parts of Russia and Palestinians are all semitic people.

Marilyn I know you are not anti-semitic. I know SF often defames people on this site with that assertion. I think you should threaten to sue the little cowardly mongrel. That usually sees him turn tail and gallop away like a frightened little ass.

Dear Imajulianutter,

<<2. Palestinians are not Arab, and not all Arabs threaten Israel. To say otherwise is a discrimination.>>

I must hope that you actually meant: "To say otherwise is lack of discrimination"

- Discrimination is a good thing, a most important faculty!

All people who call themselves Yuyutsu are anti-semitic. They oppose freedom for the semitic Palestinian people.

We should silence them.

According to you I am not indulging in discrimination. Really?

Dear Imajulianutter,

Most people who call themselves Yuyutsu, being an Indian name, never even heard about the semitic race, or about Jews, or about Palestinians, let alone oppose any of these.

In your use of the word "all", you included even such Indian toddlers who still know only 3 words - their own name, "Yuyutsu", "mata" (mom) and "pita" (dad). By failing to distinguish between myself and perhaps a million Indians (and some others) of all ages, castes, political views and levels of education, you just demonstrated your extreme lack of discrimination.