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?

Politics rewards creeps — individuals whose desire to please others makes them willing to sacrifice any principal in the pursuit of power. The more pliable the politician, the more useful he is to the lobbies he serves.

This is why Chuck Hagel has made enemies in Washington — not because of any specific views he holds, but because he lacks the servile disposition that has become the norm. As former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage puts it: Hagel “doesn’t care if people like him or not.”

Bloomberg reports: If Hagel wins confirmation, he will face challenges such as the increasing threat of cyber warfare, readying military contingency plans for the volatile Middle East and jockeying with China for naval influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The former enlisted combat veteran is uniquely equipped to take on four-star generals over how fast to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and how to cut forces and weapons in a time of restricted defense spending, according to friends such as Richard Armitage.

“He’s got proven guts,” Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration, said in an interview before the appointment. “He doesn’t care if people like him or not. He knows who he is.”

Hagel, whose father died when he was 16, dropped out of college and worked as a radio disc jockey before going to serve in Vietnam with his brother Tom. When their armored personnel carrier hit a mine in 1968, Chuck, suffering burns to his body, dragged his brother from the vehicle to safety.

He came back from that war with two Purple Hearts and a conviction that, as he put it in a 2002 interview, “War is the last resort that we, a nation, a people, call upon to settle a dispute.”

“The horror of it, the pain of it, the suffering of it — people just don’t understand it unless they’ve been through it,” Hagel said in the interview for the Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center. “There’s no glory, only suffering in war.”

It is widely reported that President Obama will nominate former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense today.

Peter Beinart writes: Hagel says in public what others only say in private. In his 2005 book, The Much Too Promised Land, former Clinton administration Middle East hand Aaron Miller notes that “of all my conversations [about the Israel debate in Congress], the one with Hagel stands apart for its honesty and clarity.” That’s because when Hagel told Miller that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” he was saying the same thing that people who work in Congress and the executive branch say all the time. As Thomas Friedman has noted, “I am certain that the vast majority of U.S. senators and policy makers quietly believe exactly what Hagel believes on Israel.” But the operative word is quietly. I’ve also heard many government officials, some of them Jewish, say things similar to what Hagel is now being flayed for having told Miller. The difference is that those other officials first confirmed that they were speaking off the record. One even lowered his voice and closed the door.

Hagel’s uncommon honesty isn’t restricted to Israel. Among the statements that critics now decry is Hagel’s 2007 declaration that “People say we’re not fighting for oil [in Iraq]. Of course we are.” In The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol calls Hagel’s statement “vulgar and disgusting.” What Kristol doesn’t note is that the same article that quotes Hagel also quotes noted radical Alan Greenspan saying virtually the same thing. The difference: Greenspan said it in his memoir, published once he was safely retired from government service.

As John Judis notes, Hagel was considered a plausible Republican presidential candidate in 2008 until his blunt criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies ended his career in the GOP. He is, therefore, one of the very few public figures in recent memory — Joe Lieberman, whose blunt support for the Bush administration’s Iraq policies ended his career in the Democratic Party, is another — to have forfeited a national role in his political party because of his policy views. In the process, Hagel has incurred the wrath of the same hawkish “pro-Israel” forces whose influence he was rash enough to acknowledge. He has done, in short, exactly what people who aspire to jobs like secretary of defense in Democratic administrations learn not to do.