Jewish dual allegiance – the notion that Jewish citizens of, say, Britain, France, the United States or some other country could be as loyal, or even more loyal, to a foreign state, Israel, than they are to their own country – is understandably a sensitive and inflammatory subject.

The idea that some of your compatriots are potentially traitors creates distrust in society, undermines social cohesion and, in the worst cases, could lead to religious and racial strife. Consequently, to encourage dual allegiance among Jewish citizens, or to sow doubt about the loyalty of the Jewish citizens of countries whose populations are predominantly non-Jewish, is not just amoral but criminal.

Yet, this is precisely what Israel has been doing for decades through its absurd claim that it is the state of all Jews – a claim that allows it to confer rights on Jews who are not actually yet citizens or present in Israel.

Recently, in what seems to be a concerted attempt by Israel and its Zionist American backers to create a ghetto of disloyalty to the United States among American Jews, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, acting through the Israeli American Council (IAC), has been distributing tens of thousands of leaflets to Jewish Americans asking them to indicate where their allegiance would lie in the case of a crisis between the two countries.

The IAC is a private non-profit group established in Los Angeles in 2007. In September it announced plans to expand by establishing new branches throughout the United States, funded by Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the biggest financial backers of both Binyamin Netanyahu and failed US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Why, you might ask, would Israel want to promote disloyalty among US Jews or sow disharmony and hatred between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the United States?

The answer is simple: to create anti-Semitism in the US and thereby back its fallacious raison d’être argument as the haven of last resort of Jews the world over.