Uri Avnery writes: One of the most interesting and prolonged private debates I have had in my life was with the brilliant Dr. Nahum Goldmann. The subject: American peace initiatives.

It was an unequal debate, of course. Goldmann was my elder by 28 years. While I was a mere editor of an Israeli news magazine, he was an international figure, President of the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress.

In the mid ’50s, when I was looking for a personality who could possibly contest David Ben-Gurion’s stranglehold on the prime minister’s office, I thought of Goldmann. He had the necessary stature and was liked by moderate Zionists. No less important, he had a clear set of opinions. From the first day of the State of Israel, he had proposed that Israel become a “Middle Eastern Switzerland”, neutral between the US and the Soviet Union. For him, peace with the Arabs was absolutely essential for the future of Israel.

I visited him in a luxury suite in Jerusalem’s classy Kind David hotel. He was wearing a silken dressing gown, and when I made my offer, he responded: “Look, Uri, I like the good life. Luxury hotels, good food and beautiful women. If I challenged Ben-Gurion, all these would disappear. His people would vilify me as they do you. Why would I risk all that?”

We also started a discussion that ended only with his death, some 27 years later. He was convinced that the US wanted peace between us and the Arabs, and that a major American peace effort was just around the corner. This was not simply an abstract hope. He assured me that he had just met with the highest policy-makers and had it from the highest authority. Straight from the American horse’s mouth, so to say.

Goldman was also an inveterate name-dropper. He regularly met with most major American, Soviet and other political personalities, and never failed to mention this in his conversation. So, being assured by the incumbent US presidents, ministers and ambassadors that the US was just about to impose peace on Israelis and Arabs, he told me just you wait. You’ll see.

This belief in an American Imposed Peace has haunted the Israeli peace movement for decades. In advance of the coming visit of President Obama to Israel next month, it is raising its weary head once more. [Continue reading…]

Foreign Policy: As he’s been considered for secretary of defense, one of the most persistent criticisms leveled at Chuck Hagel has been that he has been too critical of Israel. His critiques of Israel pale in comparison to those made by Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, and Avi Dichter, former heads of the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet, interviewed in the new documentary The Gatekeepers. Both Hagel and the former directors of the Shin Bet have voiced some tough love on the subject of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and broader Arab world. We’ve picked some quotes from each. Can you guess who said it, Chuck Hagel or a former head of the Shin Bet?

1. “I know about plenty of junctures since 1967 when in my view…we should have reached an agreement and ran away from [Palestine].” [Answer — continue reading…]

Yahoo News: Add Bob Dole—former senator, former presidential candidate, grievously wounded in World War II—to the list of Republican heavy-hitters urging the Senate to confirm the embattled Chuck Hagel as defense secretary.

“Hagel’s wisdom and courage make him uniquely qualified to be Secretary of Defense and lead the men and women of our armed forces,” Dole said in a statement released by the White House. “Chuck Hagel will be an exceptional leader at an important time.”

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and Republican former senator from Nebraska, already had the support of five former secretaries of defense from Republican and Democratic administrations—Bob Gates, Bill Cohen, William Perry, Harold Brown and Melvin Laird. He also enjoyed the support of former Senate Armed Services Committee chairmen Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) and John Warner (R- Virginia).

While it’s not clear what pull Dole retains with his former colleagues, Democrats already appear to have lined up the 60 votes needed to break through another Republican filibuster and definitely have the 51 needed to confirm Hagel as Leon Panetta’s successor. Republican Sen. Richard Shelby announced earlier Thursday that he would support Hagel.

It might not be Saturday Night Live, but when the well-known and popular host of an HBO talk show, Bill Maher, can say, “the Israelis are controlling our government,” and win a round of applause, it’s clear that truth-telling on the dysfunctional relationship between Israel and the United States is going mainstream. Maher wasn’t taking a wild shot in the dark. He knew his comment would be well received.

For others who still hold back, it’s not that they are unaware about what kinds of views would resonate with ordinary left-leaning younger Americans. It’s a question of whether media figures in the spotlight are willing to catch negative attention in corporate board rooms. Unlike the networks, HBO isn’t beholden to advertisers, so that obviously gives Maher some extra latitude.

The responses of Maher’s panelists were telling. The Daily Caller‘s Jamie Weinstein, clearly aware that he faced an unfriendly audience, seemed to have put himself in a curious position. He was faulting Hagel for saying that the State Department is Israeli-controlled — by implication, other branches of government (e.g. Congress) could more reasonably be described that way. The Democratic Donna Brazile assumed responsibility for changing the subject, while Jon Meacham turned his back on Maher to make it clear there was no way he would get drawn into a discussion on Israel.

The Israel lobby made sure that this Saturday Night Live sketch on the Chuck Hagel hearings was dropped from the show…

Well, maybe the lobby didn’t need to intervene. More likely, the show’s writers had to reconcile themselves to the fact that their audience doesn’t pay too much attention to what happens in the U.S. Senate. It’s hard to satirize a particular form of behavior — in this case, shameless displays of slavish adoration of Israel — if the people who need to get the joke are ignorant about the thing being mocked. Still, thanks to SNL for giving it a shot.

Chemi Shalev writes: Far more Americans know of the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement today than did a week ago. Many millions of people have been exposed for the first time to the idea that Israel should be boycotted, divested and sanctioned for its occupation of the territories. Many more Americans, one can safely assume, have formed a positive image of the BDS movement than those who have now turned against it.

Tafasta merube lo tafasta, the Talmud teaches us: grasp all, lose all. The heavy-handed, hyperbole heavy, all-guns-blazing campaign against what would have been, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, “a few kids meeting on campus” mushroomed and then boomeranged, giving the hitherto obscure BDS activists priceless public relations that money could never buy.

Rather than focusing attention on what BDS critics describe as the movement’s deceitful veneer over its opposition to the very existence of Israel, the disproportionate onslaught succeeded in casting the BDS speakers who came to the Brooklyn campus as freedom-loving victims being hounded and oppressed by the forces of darkness.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz’s article about the “hate orgy’ that is being co-sponsored by the College’s Political Science Department may have been tactically ill advised, but Dershowitz is a private citizen and is entitled to free speech, no less than the Israel-baiting speakers invited by the students. The same is true of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who took out a large ad in Friday’s New York Times in which he reprimanded Bloomberg for “confusing the issues”, and tried to equate support for the Palestinian “right of return” with anti-Semitism, a point which may have been lost on anyone but the most informed and involved of his readers.

But the true tipping point came when attention-seeking politicians got into the act. When a New York City council member engaged in nuclear overkill by claiming that a meeting of several dozen students in Brooklyn is tantamount to “a second holocaust”. And especially when eager beaver municipal pols – emulating, unfortunately, far too many of their counterparts in Israel – thought it proper to threaten cutting off city funding to a well respected academic institution because of one single student meeting that they found objectionable.

The result of all of this surfeit and excess was a clear-cut, perhaps unprecedented PR coup for BDS and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s interests. When the New York Times and Mayor Bloomberg found it necessary to step in and publicly stand up for a decidedly anti-Israeli movement – whatever one thinks of their true intentions- that only a few had ever heard of before. When the “pro-Israel camp” found itself, not for the first time, portrayed not only as heavy handed but a bit unhinged as well. Continue reading →

Center for Public Integrity: Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson isn’t just interested in political giving.

Since 2007, the casino mogul has given into the hundreds of millions of dollars to pro-Israel causes through a Massachusetts-based foundation he and his wife operate, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of Internal Revenue Service filings.

The top recipient of tax-exempt gifts by the Adelson Family Foundation is by far a foundation called Birthright Israel. It has received $123 million from Adelson since 2007, IRS filings indicate.

Birthright offers free 10-day trips to Israel to Jews between age 18 and 26. The goal of the trips, according to Birthright, is to “send tens of thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift” and is made possible through a “unique partnership” between the government of Israel and private philanthropists.

Foremost among those philanthropists is Adelson, whose support accounts for fully 40 percent of the money raised by the Birthright Foundation since 2007.

In 2008, Adelson’s $27.5 million gift to Birthright constituted 57 percent of all money raised by the organization. His patronage accounted for 19 percent of the group’s revenue in 2011, the most recent year IRS records are available. [Continue reading…]

Henry Siegman writes: Of the many controversial statements made by Senator Chuck Hagel over the years, none seemed to enrage Senator Lindsey Graham more than his remark that the Israel lobby intimidates U.S. Congressmen into advocating “stupid” policies. He challenged Hagel to name one such senator and to identify one such stupid policy.

The challenge created an unusual opportunity for Hagel, for there could be no better and conclusive evidence of the Israel Lobby’s power of intimidation of U.S. senators on the subject of Israel than these hearings themselves, and most particularly Senator Graham’s own behavior.

Unfortunately, Hagel could not take advantage of that opportunity. Had he done so, his nomination by President Obama to head the Department of Defense would undoubtedly have been dead in the water, for his former Democratic colleagues are no less guilty of yielding to that intimidation than Hagel’s former Republican colleagues.

But the truth of Hagel’s charge must be affirmed, particularly by those who are more concerned about Israel’s ability to survive as a Jewish and democratic state than about jeopardizing contributions to their own electoral campaigns. The truth that needs to be affirmed speaks not only to the existential dangers created by the current Israeli government’s illegal and often immoral behavior in the Occupied Territories but to the violation of the shared values that supposedly form the foundation of the unprecedentedly close ties between Israel and the United States.

It is not enemies of Israel but some of its most loyal and patriotic citizens, six former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet, the internal national security agency on which Israel’s security and existence depend, who blasted the policies of the government headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as threatening Israel’s very survival because of its colonial ambitions in the West Bank and its lack of interest in reaching a peace accord with the Palestinians. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand lectured Senator Hagel that America’s ties with Israel are “fundamental” and not to be questioned, even if according to Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, its right wing government’s policies have put the country on a path to apartheid, a judgment with which two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, concur.

The heads of the IDF reportedly refused to implement a demand by Prime Minister Netanyahu to prepare for an assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities, believing it would have catastrophic consequences for Israel. Whether they are right or wrong–given their unanimity, the high likelihood is that they were right–no one can question the patriotism of these generals and security chiefs or their motives. Successive Israeli governments trusted them and relied on their judgments in safeguarding Israel’s existence. But such words of caution, when expressed by an American Congressman, are considered heretical, because the Israel lobby says so. [Continue reading…]

Harvard law professor and opponent of academic freedom, Alan Dershowitz.

An editorial in the New York Times says: One dispiriting lesson from Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense secretary is the extent to which the political space for discussing Israel forthrightly is shrinking. Republicans focused on Israel more than anything during his confirmation hearing, but they weren’t seeking to understand his views. All they cared about was bullying him into a rigid position on Israel policy. Enforcing that kind of orthodoxy is not in either America’s or Israel’s interest.

Brooklyn College is facing a similar trial for scheduling an event on Thursday night with two speakers who support an international boycott to force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. While this page has criticized Israeli settlements, we do not advocate a boycott. We do, however, strongly defend the decision by the college’s president, Karen Gould, to proceed with the event, despite withering criticism by opponents and threats by at least 10 City Council members to cut financing for the college. Such intimidation chills debate and makes a mockery of the ideals of academic freedom.

Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator, has repeatedly declared support for Israel and cited 12 years of pro-Israel votes in the Senate. But that didn’t matter to his opponents, who attacked him as insufficiently pro-Israel and refused to accept any deviation on any vote. Mr. Hagel was even forced to defend past expressions of concern for Palestinian victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the Brooklyn College case, critics have used heated language to denigrate the speakers, Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, leaders of a movement called B.D.S., for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, that espouses “nonviolent punitive measures” to pressure Israel. Alan Dershowitz, a Brooklyn College graduate and Harvard law professor, has complained that the event is unbalanced and should not be co-sponsored by the college’s political science department. On Monday, Ms. Gould said other events offering alternative views are planned.

The sad truth is that there is more honest discussion about American-Israeli policy in Israel than in this country. Too often in the United States, supporting Israel has come to mean meeting narrow ideological litmus tests. J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that was formed as a counterpoint to conservative groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has argued for vibrant debate and said “criticism of Israeli policy does not threaten the health of the state of Israel.” In fact, it is essential.

Belen Fernandez writes: It comes as little surprise that Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, Brooklyn College alumnus and raving apologist for Israeli crimes, has appointed himself commanding general in the assault on the college’s Political Science department for co-sponsoring a February 7 panel discussion on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As the BDS website notes, the non-violent movement was launched by sectors of Palestinian civil society as a means of pressuring Israel “until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights”. BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti and philosopher Judith Butler are scheduled presenters.

Among the opening salvoes of Dershowitz’s war was a January 30 Huffington Post article entitled “Brooklyn College Political Science Department’s Israel Problem“, in which his familiarity with the subject matter was underscored by his use of an incorrect acronym for the BDS movement – DBS – no less than 12 times. The error has since been rectified; the article’s more profound defects have not.

In the introductory paragraph, Dershowitz rails against “[t]he international campaign to delegitimate Israel by subjecting the Jewish state – and the Jewish State alone – to divestment, boycotts and sanctions”. No attention is paid to the possibility that Israel’s singling out in this case is perhaps a result of the fact that most other states in this world are not presently engaged in anachronistic colonial exploits, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. [Continue reading…]

Jordan Michael Smith reports: Though secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings were bruising, thanks to aggressive questioning from Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, it could have been worse. His staunchest critic was absent.

More than anyone else, it is Elliott Abrams who has questioned the former Nebraska senator’s qualifications and character. Abrams twice called Hagel an outright anti-Semite, a smear other neoconservatives hinted at but couldn’t bring themselves to utter. So outrageous was Abrams’ slur that the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, where Abrams is a senior fellow, publicly criticized it.

Neoconservatives deploy baseless accusations of anti-Semitism as frequently as they indulge in nepotism, of course. But that Abrams has, once more, pushed himself to the center of a foreign policy debate is remarkable: The man is, after all, a convicted criminal. And yet, not only was Abrams exempt from serving prison time for his misconduct — he was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush, in the days after his loss to Bill Clinton — but he has since been fully accepted back into the highest echelons of the Republican foreign-policy community. Abrams’ bizarre reincarnation as a pseudo-statesman shows that even committing crimes counts as insufficient to merit excommunication from government service.

Abrams seems cooked from a neoconservative recipe. Born to a Jewish New York home, he was once a reliable Democrat. He opposed the Vietnam War and criticized police handling of student protesters in the 1960s. But he rejected the counterculture and began writing for Commentary and the Public Interest, magazines themselves alienated from the New Left and on a trajectory from left to right. He joined the staff of hawkish Washington Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a key influence on so many neocons, from Abrams to Paul Wolfowitz to Richard Perle, and later went to work in New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s office.

1980 was a big year for Abrams. He married the daughter of Norman Podhoretz, the longtime Commentary editor before his son succeeded him. And he joined Democrats for Reagan, having been disgusted by Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy and personally offended by being shut out of Carter’s government. “Carter never had a human rights philosophy except that the U.S. was generally a bad place going around the world doing bad things,” he complained to a reporter. Abrams was tapped for the innocuous-sounding post of assistant secretary of state for international organization — but there was nothing innocuous about Abrams. [Continue reading…]

Eli Clifton reports: While the Sunlight Foundation estimates the ad blitz by anti-Hagel astroturf at over $100,000, research by Lobe Log suggests that the actual total probably exceeds $1 million.

Sunlight based its conclusions on FCC-required disclosures on ad buys by two groups who hide their donors’ identities: Americans for a Strong Defense and Use Your Mandate. But that barely scratches the surface of the anonymously funded media campaign aimed against Hagel’s nomination as the next secretary of defense.

Anti-Hagel advertising — including tv and newspaper ads, website banner ads, and direct mailing — paid for by the American Future Fund (AFF), the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), Log Cabin Republicans, and Use Your Mandate brings the estimated total to over $1 million, according to Lobe Log’s research. [Continue reading…]

Rami G Khouri writes: For anyone who wonders why so many people around the world criticize American and Israeli foreign policy and militarism, this has been a valuable learning week. I refer to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next U.S. defense secretary, and the twin Israeli attacks against military targets in Syria.

The juxtaposition of these two events clarifies again two core trends in American and Israeli foreign policy: their insistence that they are above international law and can use their military anytime, anywhere in the world, if they feel this serves their security interests, regardless of the credibility of the evidence to justify their attacks; and, the unwritten rule that American policies in the Middle East should conform above all else to the dictates of Israel, before considering the interests of the U.S. itself or the nearly 600 million other people who live in the Middle East.

My gut reaction to watching some of the Hagel confirmation hearings is to thank the American Founding Fathers for implementing the doctrine of the separation of powers and checks-and-balances among the different branches of government. For if some of the ideological zealots, intellectual wrecks, and pro-Israel songbirds who sit on the Senate foreign relations committee were ever to assume executive power, the world would be a much more violent and dangerous place. [Continue reading…]

Michael Cohen writes: [W]hat made Hagel such an interesting secretary of defense candidate was that he was willing to make provocative statements about national security and the actual limits on US power. This week, we saw the neutered version of that candidate and it wasn’t pretty.

In defense of Hagel, though, it’s hard to imagine a sadder display of senatorial prerogatives than what the country witnessed in Thursday’s hearing. There were basically three categories of questions asked of Hagel:

• “Is Israel a great country, or is it the greatest? And if it’s the former, can you explain your lack of support for America’s most important ally?”

• “Why don’t you think Iran is crazy, unbalanced and a military competitor of the United States, as I do?”

• “Let me tell you more about the vital national security rule played by the weapons system or military base located in my home state.”

I’m not really exaggerating when I say these three themes accounted for practically 80% of the questions asked of Hagel, particularly by Republicans. In fact, according to a tweet from Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran that made the rounds yesterday evening, Israel was mentioned 136 times in the hearing and Iran 135 times:

At Hagel hearing, 136 mentions of Israel and 135 of Iran. Only 27 refs to Afghanistan. 2 for Al Qaida. 1 for Mali.

— Rajiv Chandrasekaran (@rajivwashpost) January 31, 2013

Even though the defense secretary nominee said repeatedly that he supports Israel, that he considers Iran a state sponsor of terrorism and that he wouldn’t take military force off the table in dealing with its potential nuclear program, Republicans mined practically every statement ever made by Hagel (and often taken out of context) in an effort to assert that he doesn’t hold as uncompromising a position on these issues as they do.

The day reached its point of high comedy when Senator Lindsey Graham began interrogating Hagel on whether he believes – as he allegedly said several years ago – that the so-called “Jewish lobby” causes US senators to occasionally do dumb things that harm US foreign policy. Hagel hemmed and hawed on the question when, in an ideal world, he should have said, “Yes, and this hearing is example A.”

Senator Lindsey Graham: Name one person in your opinion who’s intimidated by the Israeli lobby in the United States Senate?
Chuck Hagel (if he felt at liberty to speak the truth): With all due respect, Senator Graham, I think you are? Why else would you be asking me this question?

Cartoon by Matt Wuerker appearing in Politico, January 23, 2013.

The cartoon above, which appeared in Politico a few days ago, is pretty straightforward in identifying who is behind the campaign against Chuck Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary: the Israel lobby. (It’s worth noting, Politico is a fairly lobby-friendly publication, so the willingness of its editors to name names in this case has more to do with stating what is blindingly obvious rather than springing from some desire to ‘out’ the lobby.)

How does the New York Times cover the same story? Assign it to a reporter who apparently doesn’t believe the Israel lobby exists.

In Jim Rutenberg’s mind, the campaign against Chuck Hagel is a story about the effects of the Supreme Court decision, Citizen’s United. You have to go all the way down to paragraph nineteen in his report before Rutenberg mentions the Emergency Committee for Israel (creators of the anti-Hagel ChuckHagel.com website which doesn’t even get mentioned in the article).

Even though Rutenberg refers to Sheldon Adelson as a prominent backer of the anti-Hagel campaign, he only comes up after mentioning major conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS who are not involved in the fight against Hagel.

Scott McConnell writes: The neoconservative decison to charge that Chuck Hagel is an anti-Semite strikes me as a tactical blunder — a decision grounded in the idea that since they can’t defeat the nominee on the issues, their better option was to try to assassinate Hagel’s character, presumed to be one of his greatest strengths. Such accusations raise the temperature around the nomination, with consequences difficult to foresee. But just as anti-Semitism is a blight, so are false accusations of it. Peter Beinart has perceptively noted that no one in America ever pays a penalty for falsely maligning someone as an anti-Semite. This may be true today, but like all social rules, it is subject to renegotiation.

Ali Gharib at Open Zion has done a superb job deconstructing the evidence, or, I should say, “evidence,” on which the charge is based: leaders of the Nebraska Jewish community who are alleged to think that Hagel has a Jewish problem deny there is anything of the sort. Hagel may not always have acted like Alfonse D’Amato in his attending to them, but really, why should he?

Since we know that genuine anti-Semitism has deep social and psychic roots in Western societies, it shouldn’t be surprising that the leveling of false anti-Semitism charges for political ends also has contours worth exploring. Quite unexpectedly, the Hagel nomination is opening a rich vein for their study. One thing one finds is that those who are quick to deploy false charges of anti-Semitism have begun to take on traits historically associated with bigoted paranoia.

Take for example the Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens, the first to play the anti-Semitism card against Hagel. Last month he notoriously wrote, “Prejudice—like cooking, winetasting, and other consummations has an olfactory element. [With] Chuck Hagel…the odor is especially ripe.” Beinart and others have deconstructed Stephens’s charge, the centerpiece of which is that Hagel, in an interview, used the term “Jewish lobby” instead of “Israel lobby.” But connoisseurs of literary criticism may notice an eerie parallel to Stephens’ toxic paragraph. If evidence of Hagel’s anti-Semitism cannot be substantiated by facts or logic, it can nonetheless be smelled. It’s as if Stephens is seeking to transport us back to the world of Marcel Proust and the Dreyfus Affair, where the anti-Dreyfusards (the anti-Semitic precursors of French fascism, and, via Theodore Herzl, a propellant fuel for the birth of Zionism) were confident they could smell the Jew, an outsider even when an habitué of the best salons of Paris. Only, of course, Stephens has reversed the roles, as it is he who smells Hagel. [Continue reading…]

At Forbes, Doug Bandow writes about the ongoing no-holds-barred campaign to prevent Chuck Hagel being confirmed as the next secretary of defense: The overriding objection to him is that he is the living refutation of everything the War Party stands for. He fought in battle, understands the human cost, offers skepticism rather than enthusiasm for new interventions, and would be no Pentagon rubber stamp. A liberal with no military experience and little confidence in military matters might be cowed or, better yet, coopted. Not Hagel.

Of course, it wouldn’t do even for the Neoconservatives to charge Hagel with being insufficiently enthusiastic for war. So they have come up with a number of other charges. For instance, he opposed some sanctions again Iran and even urged — shock, shock! — negotiations with Tehran. However, this makes eminent sense. If you liked war with Iraq, you would love war with Iran. Lighting a match to the Middle East, the likely consequence of an attack on Iran, should be a very last resort. After being lied into war with Iraq, Americans want to make sure the same does not happen again with regard to Iran.

Even more serious to Neocons is the claim that Hagel is anti-Israel. Never mind that he routinely voted for aid to Israel and backed Israel in other ways. And that Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, commented after interviewing Hagel in 2008: “Hagel is a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values.” The latter didn’t — the mind boggles at the thought! — sign every letter presented to him by AIPAC, the spear point of the Israel Lobby in America. Indeed, Hagel had the temerity to call some of them “stupid.”

Moreover, he did not automatically absolve Israel from responsibility for the consequences of its actions. To the contrary, he joined with many Israelis in recognizing that after decades of military occupation of millions of Palestinians, Israel shared responsibility for the tragic results: “Both Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a war not of their making.”

Worse, Hagel understood that shared people and values did not mean that the U.S. and Israel always shared the same interests. This truth is anathema to Neocons, who insist that Washington policy should be defined by the demands of the most extreme parties in Israel. However, Hagel believed that the duty of American officials is to promote America’s, not Israel’s, interests. As Hagel explained: “I’m a United States senator. I support Israel. But my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States. Not to a president. Not a party. Not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that.” This same sentiment should apply if a legislator is a Polish-American, a Southerner, a fraternity member, or a Mason.

Since Hagel’s positions fit well within mainstream support for Israel, some of his critics pulled out the Big Smear: he obviously is an anti-Semite. Normally one would expect the burden of proof to fall on those who made the charge, but his critics offer no personal statements or actions that actually are anti-Semitic. They prefer innuendo. One of the more vicious pieces came from Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute who intoned: “I do not know that he is one, nor am I convinced that he is not.” Among her evidence that he might be: “It could even be his questionable taste in friends around Washington, or the fact that the government of Iran has welcomed his nomination.”

Others complain that he pointed out the obvious (that there is an Israel Lobby). He once referred to the “Jewish Lobby” (which he acknowledged was a mistake, and he referred to “Israel Lobby” elsewhere in the same interview). And he did all those other terrible things, such as refuse to turn on his autopen for whatever letters AIPAC sent his way. Oh my!

Were the smear not so vicious it would be worth a laugh. Just as anyone who dissents from liberal orthodoxy risks being called a racist, so too anyone who dissents from Neoconservative orthodoxy now risks being called an anti-Semite. Indeed, the definition of anti-Semitism has changed. It once meant someone who hates Jews. Today anti-Semitism means someone hated by Neocons.

There’s a tragic danger of calling wolf once too often. There are anti-Semites. They should be shunned by polite society and denied political power. But Hagel is not one. By promiscuously using the charge to intimidate and bully for political purposes, the Neoconservatives are making it less likely they will be believed if a real anti-Semite arrives on the scene. Unfortunately, today no one can believe any charge of anti-Semitism coming from the usual suspects.

The Emergency Committee for Israel launched a website to attack Hagel's nomination.

Bernard Avishai writes: I think it is time to acknowledge, bluntly, that certain major Jewish organizations, indeed, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations — also, the ADL, AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, political groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition, along with their various columnists, pundits, and list-serves — are among the most consistent purveyors of McCarthyite-style outrages in America today. Are there greater serial defamers of public officials in fake campaigns against defamation? Starting with Andrew Young and the late Charles Percy, and on to Chas Freeman and (now) Chuck Hagel, the game has been to keep Congresspeople and civil servants who might be skeptical of Israel’s occupation and apologetics in a posture that can only be called exaggerated tact.

Fault Israel and you are accused of faulting Jews in our collective state, or, the same thing, overlooking the venality of our enemies — things only an anti-Semite would do and, of all times, in the wake of the Holocaust. This is not a charge anyone in public life wants to suffer or try to deny. My Israeli friends love that old Borsch-belt joke, that anti-Semitism means disliking Jews more than necessary. For American Jewish organizations, the very idea that dislike is ever warranted is proof of bigotry, like Philip Roth’s early novels were proof of “self-hatred.”

AIPAC et al know that if American politicians — and especially those fighting routinely for Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio — are not cowed by the fear of being branded as anti-Semitic they may not be embarrassed into backing Israeli actions ritualistically. Where is the shame and who is our Murrow?

I won’t presume to go through the credentials that make Chuck Hagel fit for appointment as Defense Secretary; I saw and heard him in person only once. I also won’t repeat, or defend him against, all the fatuous charges leveled against him. Others have done this better than I could. (If you want a comprehensive list of the AIPAC-inspired letters Hagel refused to sign, you can find it here.)

Suffice it to say that Hagel is a man of independent judgment whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict track pretty much exactly with those of Haaretz. He was distinguished guest at J Street’s first national conference. Nothing he’s said has not been said by leaders like Ehud Olmert and intelligence chief Ephraim Halevy. Hagel is also a man, like George McGovern, who having served with distinction in the military knows the unknown dangers of resorting to military force without a clear diplomatic strategy and except as a last resort. So he refuses to speak glibly about using force against Iran the same way he refused to endorse war with Iraq. A Vietnam purple heart, he would in retrospect have engaged with the Viet Cong. Should he not now endorse engagement with the Taliban or Hamas, for that matter?

Why should this stance be thought anathema to Jewish organizations? Let’s get real. The latter throw their weight around, presumably on behalf of us Israelis, but really on behalf of the Israeli right, whose orthodoxy and pathos they relate to more readily than to Israeli peace advocates. The weight they have derives from their being able to hold American politicians to endorsing a “special relationship” with Israel, where special means unconditional, so that (as James Baker and Howard Dean discovered) even the desire for “even-handedness” is treachery. [Continue reading…]

Yousef Munayyer notes: What the debate on Hagel is sorely missing is a loud public voice akin to Colin Powell’s on Obama’s faith in 2008, who would respond to allegations that Hagel isn’t pro-Israel by simple stating, So what if he’s not? Hagel is, after all, an American nominated for the role of U.S. Defense Secretary and shouldn’t be pro-Israel or pro-any-country-other-than-the-United-States. If he was, that should lead to controversy.

This debate, however, has it the other way around because it is grounded in the notion that American support for Israel is as American as our Constitution. It isn’t, and it can’t and should never be.

Yet, this type of debate, framed around “pro-Israel” interests, dominates mainstream discussions about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically as it relates to Israel/Palestine. For as long as that is the case, Washington is only kidding itself if it thinks it can ever successfully mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Advice from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1990: keep quiet about the "Jewish lobby."

In 1990, American troops deployed to Saudi Arabia in advance of the Gulf War against Iraq, were advised by the Pentagon — then under Dick Cheney’s control — that they should not make pro-Israel, anti-Arab remarks while stationed in the Islamic kingdom.

That might sound like a no-brainer — clearly it was advise crafted for the purpose of making sure that young American soldiers lacking knowledge about the Middle East might avoid getting themselves in trouble or alienating themselves from their hosts.

But that’s not how organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center responded to the advice laid out in the Defense Department’s “Troop Information Handbook.”

In a letter to Cheney, Sholom Comay, AJ Committee president, and David Harris, its executive vice president, made it clear that they regarded the presence of American troops in the Gulf as being primarily to serve the interests of Israel.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported:

“No one can be under the illusion that our presence in Saudi Arabia is intended to protect a fellow democracy,” Comay and Harris wrote, dismissing the kingdom and its neighbors as “current allies” of the United States.

Perhaps the most egregious element in the Pentagon handbook — the part that most offended these Jewish organizations — was that they were included as one of the taboo topics of conversation and referred to as the “Jewish lobby.” Troops were advised not to discuss the “Jewish lobby” or “U.S. intelligence given to Israel.”

The Associated Press reported:

Writing to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the World Jewish Congress said it wishes to convey “our sense of distress at what appears to be a capitulation to bigotry and a surrender of our democratic values…”

The letter, from WJC Vice President Kalman Sultanik, urges that the material be withdrawn from circulation.

The American Jewish Committee, expressing to Cheney its “deep sense of hurt and anger,” says U.S. troops should not be asked to “submerge entirely those values of tolerance, pluralism, and open-mindedness that have made the U.S. a unique democratic society.”

Cheney neither withdrew the handbook nor apologized for its contents.

During the current hullabaloo over Chuck Hagel’s use of the term “Jewish lobby“, it’s reasonable to ask: given the level of loyalty to Israel which so many members of the Senate seem to expect from America’s top civilian defense official, would Dick Cheney also face strong opposition from his own party if he was once again nominated as defense secretary?