Glenn Kessler has a helpful roundup of some of the most troubling Chuck Hagel comments (though a much more extensive list can be found at ECI’s ChuckHagel.com). This one in particular, from a 1998 AP interview, jumped out:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ”essentially stopped the process,” Hagel said. ”The Israeli government essentially continues to play games,” stonewalling implementation of the Oslo peace accords.
”What I fear more today is that desperate men do desperate things when you take hope away,” Hagel said. ”And that’s where the Palestinians are today.”
The Israeli government needs to understand that implementation of the peace agreement is in its own interests, he said.
Hagel said Arabs generally believe America ”has tilted toward Israel” in its Mideast relations and there will be no lasting peace in the region without relationships with Iran.
”I think we should continue to pursue openings with Iran, understanding this is still a nation very hostile to the West,” he said. ”We need to understand cold, hard realities and be very clear-eyed and clearheaded, but every opening we should take.”
This is a useful article because it provides three key insights into Hagel’s views on Middle East policy in general:
1. He believes Israel is the main obstacle to a peace deal.
Hagel’s supporters claim he has, on rare occasion, said positive things about Israel. Fair enough. So have groups like J Street, and they’re so toxic in the pro-Israel community that politicians have declined their support.
Saying a few, token niceties about our closest ally in the Middle East means very little. Like J Street, Hagel’s problem is balance. How often and how strongly has he criticized Israel, and how often and how strongly has he criticized the Palestinians? He’s clearly comfortable blaming Israel, in very harsh terms, for obstructing peace. But when asked about Yasser Arafat in a 2002 CNN interview, Hagel demurred, saying he would not “single out the Palestinians and Arafat as the real problem here.” Why not? Because “it doesn’t help when we take public sides on this and castigate and assign all of the responsibility and all the blame to one side.” He certainly seemed comfortable assigning blame to Israel two years earlier.
2. He believes Israel is to blame for problems across the Muslim world.
Hagel believes in linkage theory, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the root of problems across the Muslim world. The article above paraphrases: “Hagel said Arabs generally believe America ‘has tilted toward Israel’ in its Mideast relations and there will be no lasting peace in the region without relationships with Iran.”
Hagel made a similar point in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that same year, but his support for linkage was more explicit.
“Do you believe part of this problem is the perception in the Arab world that we’ve tilted way too far toward Israel in the Middle East peace process?” Hagel asked then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. When Albright said no, Hagel followed up: “But surely you believe that they’re linked? You don’t believe that there’s any linkage between the Middle East peace process and what’s happening in Iraq?”
This is a disturbingly simplistic way for a defense secretary to view Middle East policy. As we saw during the Arab Spring, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the overarching concern for most Muslims. The linkage theory usually leads into the argument that the U.S. relationship with Israel undermines American relations with the Muslim world.
3. He is willing to apologize for terrorism.
”The Israeli government essentially continues to play games…What I fear more today is that desperate men do desperate things when you take hope away,” Hagel said. ”And that’s where the Palestinians are today.”
The implication is that Israeli actions are responsible for Palestinian terror attacks. There’s also more than a note of sympathy in the description of terrorists as “desperate men do[ing] desperate things when you take hope away”–read: when the Israelis, not Palestinian leadership, take hope away. Does Hagel still believe this? And if so, does he also believe U.S. actions are responsible for terrorist “blowback”? Some senators might want to inquire.
Explosive. An idiot nominated by a senior idiot. There must be some patriot in America which can forestall this event. A 'desperate patriot without hope'. Probably not. Unless the patriot is on the Senate committee that interrogates this dangerous fool.
Of course it important to know what the 'desperate' murderers that Hagel refers to were 'desperate' for. Some at least come from wealthy leading families. It must be that these 'desperate' murderers that Hagel excuses are merely desperate to murder Jews. The idea that the president makes policy and not the Defense Secretary is somewhat ameliorating, is false. Why would Obama appoint a Secretary of Defense with opinions that are so deplorable and contrary to his own? Expect the worst because that is what we will get.
Axelrod, 0bamas main advisor is jewish, so are many others. I guess they dont care either or are anti-Israel.
Axelrod's parents were CPUSA – His Torah is the Comintern Platform and Marx is his Moshe Rebeinu. Just remember that many of the Bolsheviks who helped wipe out Russian Jewry were Jews themselves. Sadly, we have a long history of reprobates amongst us.
How can jews help to wipe out jews. It sounds like a mental illness.
Just look at George Soros, possibly Obama's best heeled backer. Soros and his father bought their survival by turning fellow Jews in to the Nazis. Axelrod would fit perfectly into Hitler's Judenrat. The Judenrat was mostly those Jews who extended their own survival time by doing the bidding of the Third Reich. Jews have sadly known for a long time that there are anti-Semitic Jews.
bingo! option a: don't care
They should not be referred to as JEWs. They are KAPOs. Descended from Jews, but traitors to the Jewish people. As I understand the term, it originated in WWII to describe those 'Jews' who worked with the Nazis for various reasons, profit, save their own lives, or just self hate. J-Streeters would be a good term to use instead.
Well desperation is desperation. Hagel understands the desire, bordering on desperation to kill or harm Jews. n nHagel himself is desperate to shaft Israel and perform analingus on Khamenei. n nDesperation explains a lot . . . n nThe SecDef job is his great opportunity, and vindication. His arrival as a player, instead of a fringe hater.
Do not underestimate Kelly Ayotte — she is on that committee and very much is a Patriot. Also a former Attorney General who took some tough stands.
Scratching your head over why Hagel is reflexive hostile to Israel will only leave you bald. He is hostile for the same reason Pat Buchanan is hostile. The same reason Zbigniew Brzezinsky is hostile. The same reason Jimmy Carter was hostile. n nThere is nothing gained in making simple things complicated. n n n n
Is Axelrod hostile?? Makes you wonder.
Axelrod is an opportunist of the lowest type. Would you buy a used car from this sleazy goniff?
It is beyond pathetic to watch the liberal Jews contort themselves trying to put a positive spin on this. At this point, I think they would have voted for Hitler if he had run as a Democrat…
Do you imagine that there weren't German Jews who thought they were wiser and better integrated than their coreligionists and voted for Hitler running as a National Socialist in 1933? Wake up and smell the coffee, Doc.
I just had a comment deleted that suggested that there were, indeed, German Jews who voted for Hitler in 1933. Too raw for Commentary?
LOL! I didn't know that but it does not surprise me. Of course, at that time, I doubt there were many people who could foresee what he would eventually become…
not for long
And we haven't yet seen the worst of Obama. Seems oxymoronic–an empty suit full of spite and malevolence.
What's your evidence for that statement and how many are you talking about? Certainly, no significant number of German Jews voted for Hitler's Nazi Party in 1933.
I have said that German Jews voted for Hitler for some time — if you look at the demographics and the election results, there HAD TO BE German Jews who voted for him — although in fairness they well may have been voting *against* the Communists whom Hitler had promised to control.
It is worth noting here that today Hussein O. chose Jack Lew as his Treasury nominee. Since Lew is Jewish – even supposedly observant – expect Hussein's Jewish lackeys to point to his nomination as proof positive that Hussein doesn't have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. But if one is looking for a historically apt analogy, recall that FDR was giving the middle finger to European Jewry while Henry Morgenthau Jr. ran Treasury.
I was worried about this that CNN and the Huffington Post would feel almost forced to start screaming about Jews and money as a result. The jury's still out though. As it is the left's main complaint is not that he's Jewish is that he comes from Citi. As if Obama was going to give THIS job to Elizabeth Warren too.
Normandy Beach counts for something…
The NY Times has already reported that Lew is calling around various Jewish and pro-Israel groups in order to assure them re: Hagel. In terms of his own nomination, various sources have referred to him as one of the most partisan and ideological of Obama's team. Lew is not exactly representative of the typical Orthodox Jew. Prob. abt as much as Dan Kurtzer.
I hate to bring up Isaiah- 'from amongst yourselves, will the destroyers rise…
Yep!
Always. If we were together, we'd be invincible. n n4 Germans soldiers could separate the children, men and women from among 1000 Jews, and herd them into gas chambers without so much as a skirmish. Everyone was looking out for themselves, No one would risk rushing the soldiers to give the others a chance. n nThe Germans marvelled at it. n nNo doubt Obama laughs inwardly when he thinks of he Jewish support he has as he defecates all over Israel.
The Jews faced Germans as a beleaguered minority. there was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Wehrmacht just leveled the streets building by building. dead is dead. and the gas chambers were the last stop on a brutal road of separation, ostracism, and dehumanization. for shame.
Memory is that the Warsaw Ghetto had a grand total of THREE rifles. And look what they were able to accomplish with just that. n nI have long said that if just 10% of the European Jewish population (remember that Warsaw was in Poland, i.e. not in Germany proper) had been armed, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. n nAnd the Warsaw Ghetto was not totally in vain. In forcing the Wehrmacht to level the buildings street by street, they tied up the Wehrmacht and its support network and hence precluded either for being used for anything else concurrently. This well may have enabled other to survive the Holocaust — either directly or indirectly via a shortening of the war itself as all the resources deployed against the Warsaw Ghetto couldn't be deployed against the Allies.
No, sorry. Jews were lining up to die without a fight long before the Warsaw ghetto uprising. n nAfter a cattle car ride, one would think you knew what was in store for you, particularly when your children were taken away. n nThere are many psychological explanations put forth for for why they went like lambs. No doubt the reasons are somewhere there, but at the end of the day, the poor souls went without a fight, when others might not have. n nWhen we see Jews crapping on Israel (which is our final defense against against another Holocaust), we catch a glimpse into the psychopathology of appeasement and self abasement and craving to behave well (and so 'be spared' what is in store) we showed in WW2, in my opinion. n nIs it a consequence of being over educated, over-civilized and unable to fathom the savagery of our fellow man? Our lack of martial skills and instincts (in the diaspora)? n nDoes the latter result in a sort of penis envy of the muscular, practical Jews of Israel, who function in a tougher world that is not wholly structured of nuanced abstractions we deal with as Jews in America? n nI don't know for sure, of course.
n nI thought about the awesome passivity of most of the Jews- n nand I realize that- n n what if, the Jews had risen up and fought the Germans- n nthen what? n ntheir own neighbors were looting Jewish homes, and killing Jewish survivors n nthe Jews in Europe had n nnowhere n nto go- n nnowhere in the world-except (was it) Costa Rica? n nIf not for a handful of righteous gentiles, who risked their lives and the lives of their parents and children, to save a pathetic few
It means something to go down after an honest fight for the lives and dignity of oneself and one's family, rather to have it stripped and stolen ignominiously and anonymously. n nAnd besides, sometimes pushing back actually works, and other opportunities for survival open up. Would German civilians have massacred Jews? I doubt it. Romanians – unquestionably. Ukrainians too. But better to take a few with you, no?
"Would German civilians have massacred Jews? " nPlenty of them did during Kristallnacht. And the SA was made up of civilians as well.
Hagel is merely the latest in a long line of anti-Israel political hacks to come along. He will be a faint blip on the world stage, leaving no trace except more sour relations with a close ally and more anger and dashed hopes among the Arabs. n nHis "desperate" militants would of course include Bin Laden's team who took out two towers in New York 11 years ago? These were mostly middle class college educated guys, brainwashed by the most evil pseudo-religious cult the world has seen since Nazism. n nThe State Department will find Hagel to be a welcome fellow traveler; they have always regarded Israel as an inconvenience if not a downright evil state, one that has complicated our relations with the Muslim world and made their jobs so much harder. He'll feel right at home in Washington, D.C., even if his views are at odds with those of the vast majority of Americans.
I do not see the Democrats as anti-Israel, and I think that this righteous criticism the Republicans are dishing out, claiming to be more pro-Israel because they suport blockading which is a violation of the human rights of Palestinians, is ridiculous.
Sorry, Gaza is not starving or even deprived, and the blockade has been ruled legal and not a human rights violation by no less a pro-Palestinian group than the UN. Your facts are wrong and so is your understanding of the law.
What do you think of Peter Beinart, another Orthodox cheerleader for Hagel? I thought to go have a look for what he has had to say about the nomination and found this, "The rabid conservative pro-Israel lobby has already trained their attack dogs on Chuck Hagel’s rumored nomination for Defense." Ain't that something, calling those of us who oppose Hagel (and the guy who nominated him) "rabid" because we see him as about as objectionable a choice as Obama could have made. And Beinart sees his own views as especially credible since as he points out at every opportunity he is himself observant and sends his kids to day schools. n nI never cease to marvel at and be repelled by the singular kind of Jewish psychopathology that affirms its Jewishness by acting against the collective interests of the Jewish people, and feels all the more self-righteous for doing so. If anyone thinks I am wrong in saying this is a singular kind of Jewish psychopathology, I would appreciate them pointing to something like it among other religious or ethnic groups facing serious existential threats.
This all goes back to the first Bush administration. n nSecretary of State James Baker told an American-Israel Public Affairs Committee audience on May 22, 1989, that Israel should abandon its expansionist policies, a remark many took as a signal that the pro-Israel Reagan years were over. n nFormer President Bush raised Israeli ire when he reminded a press conference on March 3, 1990, that east Jerusalem was occupied territory and not a sovereign part of Israel as the Israelis claimed. n nThe United States and Israel disagreed over the Israeli interpretation of the Israeli plan to hold elections for a Palestinian peace conference delegation in the summer of 1989, and also disagreed over the need for an investigation of the Jerusalem incident of October 8, 1990, in which Israeli police killed 17 Palestinians. n nThis goes back to Bush I, and before. Perspective matters.
James Baker is the man who introduced the meme "F*ck/screw the Jews"
What is your source for Beinart being Orthodox?
I understand he is a Conservative Jew – which almost always means non-observant – and sends his children to a Jewish day school.
wiki n n nSince 2003, Beinart is married to Diana Robin Hartstein, a lawyer. They live with their two children in New York City.[6] He keeps kosher,[2] regularly attends an Orthodox synagogue and sends his children to a Jewish school.[20] n
Figure it out! BHO now knows that it no longer matters that he is revealed as an anti-Semite. The election is over. This is a clever way to divide those Jews from the conservative base who have discerned his antisemitism long ago. Let's face it; he has been steeped in antisemitism virtually all his life, from his mother, his grandparents, Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and the contentions of his biological father. Remember how gleefully he was heralded by Lewis Farrakhan and Hamas was instrumental in getting out the vote in his first election. They had phone banks set up in Gaza to do just that. n nI well recall Lanny Davis's at first expressing reservations concerning his exposing his two daughters to Jeremiah Wright's ant-Semitic diatribes during those infamous sermons. Davis used the song from "South Pacific" to accentuate his concern. The lyrics saying, "You have to carefully be taught to hate." Yet now Lanny Davis supports this guy. Lanny Davis is basically a good person. And one wonders how much soul searching he is now doing.
Lanny Davis is a schmuck.
Conservative certainly does not mean non-observant. Wherever did you come upon so insulting a notion? r nr nConservative and Orthodox rabbis can hairsplit points of difference until the cows come home. The only difference their congregations recognize are separate seating vs mixed seating.r nr nMy kids were educated at Orthodox Hebrew day schools and attended an orthodox synagogue. Today they attend orthodox and conservative synagogues interchangeably and my wife and I, when we visit, are happy to join them in either.
I have attended conservative shuls where microphones / amplification are used. Never saw that in the orthodox . . . .
Sadly, David, you are mistaken, as I learned when I started questioning the CJ Movement and eventaually became Orthodox. The Conservative movement has discarded the concept of Torah Mi Sinai. Its rabbis put themselves (or at least put the Law Committee of their Rabbinic Assembly) on the level of the Tannaim. In so doing, they have discarded halacha in numerous ways, including ordaining women, authorizing people to drive on Shabbos where life is not at stake, disregarding the laws of kashrus (e.g. stam yayin, cheese with no hechscher, and sturgeon), marrying kohanim to divorcees or converts, or putting a hechsher on mishkav zachor. To even think these are hair splitting shows how far from halacha the CJ movement has come.
Ms. Goodman's analysis was brilliant and as she was summarizing Hagel's position, the error is his and not hers — but it must be noted that THE IRANIANS ARE PERSIANS AND ***NOT*** ARABS! n nHence Hagel's analysis of the Middle East is even more overly simplistic because I am not really sure that the other Arab countries (Saudi Arabia in particular) would really welcome a warming of US/Iranian relations — they are also terrified of the Iranians… n n
Some interesting points to make here: n1- Citing a 1998 interview about Israel raises questions about the relevance of the accusations agaisnt Hagel. n2- I believe that he is not apologizing for terrorists, but explaining their actions. If you were to ask them why they are committing these atrocities, they would reply the same thing. Israel are not in the right, and it is not a crime to say so. n3-As for claiming that Israel are the cause of the problems in the Muslim world- they may be a part of the problem, but they are not the cause of it.
Wow. Glad you stopped by to share your finely nuanced perspective. n nAnyone else would have said that Hagel was justifying terrorist actions. n nThanks again!
At one point in my life, I was responsible for half the judicial matters on the UMass Campus and the above (DrRubinstein) reminds me EXACTLY of what rapists and other schmucks of a similar sort used to say in justification of their heinous acts.
Felix Homogratus, Dimitri Chavkerov Rules! You pay us we post good about us!!
and of course this 'hit' is all over the news………… n nNOT