Perhaps because we are, after all, a nation of immigrants, we are frequently defined as Irish-American or African-American or Hispanic-American or whatever-American.

In many ways, it's a source of our strength, most of us believing we have taken the finest qualities of our disparate cultures and stitched them into the fabric of the American flag.

However, there are those with questionable agendas who prefer to place undue emphasis on the word preceding the hyphenation.

Two things that appear certain to occur in the near future — a war and economic hard times — will be difficult for all of us, but particularly for my particular hyphenation group.

I'm a Jewish-American, and through the centuries, Jews have been handy scapegoats for just about everything bad that has ever happened.

Whether it was starting plagues or using the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzoh or causing the Great Depression or pushing the United States into World War II, there are those who will always blame "the Jews."

And as the United States prepares to go to war in Iraq, we are hearing from some quarters — absurd as it sounds — that the Bush administration is doing it all for Israel and the Jewish-American lobby.

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," said Rep. James P. Moran Jr., a Virginia Democrat. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

Moran, although a seven-term congressman, has always been regarded as kind of a wingnut. He hurriedly apologized for his remarks when the quote hit the fan, even adding that his daughter and grandchild are converting to Judaism.

Yes, and I'm sure some of his best friends are Jewish.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Moran's statements reminded Foxman of remarks by commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan during the Gulf War in 1991.

Back then, Buchanan said we fought Iraq for the benefit of "the Israeli Defense Ministry and its Amen corner in the United States."

That's funny. I thought we did it to liberate Kuwait and its oil wells.

"Moran is only symptomatic of a more serious problem, and that is that the classical anti-Semitic canard that Jews are responsible for everything and now, of course, responsible for the possibility of war with Iraq," Foxman said.

Buchanan is at it again. In the March 24 edition of "The American Conservative," he has a perfunctory paragraph condemning anti-Semitism, then unjustly accuses American Jews in high places of caring more about Israel then America.

"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars ... "

Presumably, Buchanan is referring to Jewish-Americans in the Bush administration such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, National Security Council official Elliott Abrams and policy adviser Richard Perle.

He conveniently doesn't mention higher-ranking government officials such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell or National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Maybe that was because none of them is Jewish.

Buchanan accuses the "cabal" of harboring "a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America."

The ADL's Foxman is more than concerned.

"In 1991 when Pat Buchanan issued his call about the Amen corner, he didn't have a chorus," Foxman said. "He's out there again, but now there's a chorus."

The chorus includes columnist and CNN commentator Robert Novak, a longtime critic of Israel. Novak, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has called the pending conflict with Iraq "Sharon's war,"

Washington Times columnist and Israel hater Georgie Anne Geyer took issue with "the fanatic neoconservatives around the administration, the rabid Israel supporters in the White House and the Pentagon."

Former and perhaps future presidential candidate Gary Hart said we "must not let our role in the world be dictated by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests."

It's absolute rot, of course.

Certainly Israel, as the only democracy in the Middle East, would welcome a democratic Iraq whose leader did not — like Saddam Hussein — subsidize suicide bombings that kill innocent Israeli civilians.

But to question the patriotism of Americans who happen to be Jewish because United States and Israeli interests coincide is against everything America stands for.

By the way, a January poll shows 59 percent of American Jews support the pending military action. That's almost exactly the same percentage as ... the rest of America.

Pat Buchanan and ilk can just go hyphenate themselves.

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 441-7208.