On Fox News Sunday this morning, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward said that some Democratic senators have called the White House asking if Chuck Hagel will withdraw from the battle to confirm him as secretary of defense. The apparent answer to that question is not yet. But the furor over the Washington Free Beacon’s reporting of a statement Hagel made in 2007 alleging that the Israeli Foreign Ministry was running the U.S. State Department is turning up the heat on the nominee.
On Thursday, Contentions called on some of the major Jewish organizations that have been conspicuous by their absence from the debate about Hagel to finally break their silence on the issue and to demand an explanation about the 2007 speech given at Rutgers University during which Hagel is alleged to have made the crack about the Israelis and the State Department. Last night, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that both the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have made such statements. The ADL told JTA Hagel needed to explain the remark but the American Jewish Committee went farther in saying that “further Senate deliberation is called for before any final vote is taken.”
These comments are part of the growing furor over Hagel that is not going to be defused by the nominee’s assurance to Senator Lindsay Graham that he “doesn’t recall” making the controversial statements about Israel and the State Department. The allegations about the Rutgers speech are credible not just because of the contemporaneous account of the event but also because of Hagel’s history of saying similar things about the “Jewish lobby” and disavowals of past stands favoring outreach to Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. As Hagel “twists in the wind” — a Watergate allusion made today by Woodward —pressure is growing on pro-Israel Democrats to abandon him.
With each passing day during the Congressional recess over the next week, the Hagel deathwatch will become a bigger and bigger story. Though Democrats closed ranks behind the president’s choice in a partisan votes on Hagel last week the failure to block a delay of the decision on him via a filibuster on Thursday will give some of them the time to change their minds. Some of the pro-Israel senators like Chuck Schumer who have been using the silence of mainstream Jewish groups about his nomination as cover for their decision to go along with what they knew was a questionable choice are now on the spot. As John wrote in the New York Post on Friday, it’s time for Schumer to live up to his boast that he was the “guardian” of Israel in the Senate. In light of the latest revelations about the nominee’s record, that pose is meaningless if he doesn’t jump off the Hagel bandwagon.
It is true that many of the Republicans who voted to oppose cloture of Hagel on Thursday were doing so in order to try to force the White House to give up more information about what the president knew about the Benghazi terror attack. But the extra time gives members on both sides of the aisle to reconsider the Hagel fiasco.
The White House campaign to silence concerns about his prejudicial statements about Israel and its supporters that had seemingly quashed opposition to the nomination is no longer working. The nominee’s incompetent performance during his confirmation hearing only served to reinforce the qualms that many senators had about both his qualifications and his troubling record of out-of-the-mainstream stands on Israel and Iran. The administration can grumble all it likes about how unfair the scrutiny on the nominee has been but the fact is Hagel’s chances of leading the Pentagon are being sunk by the nominee, not his critics.
In the coming days, the calls for Hagel to withdraw will grow. So, too, will the pressure on pro-Israel Democrats to stop acting as the nominee’s guardian rather than the cause they have pledged to protect.
And where is AIPAC? n n n
It's time for all Jews and Israel supporters in America to leave the Democrat party in droves. Apparently a pro Israel Democrat doesn't exist.
Well, I am grateful that I voted against both Feinstein and Boxer here in California. They pretend to be Jewish, but have revealed themselves to be otherwise. There are quite a few Christians in the Senate who are far more 'Jewish' – in terms of character. But it is unfortunate that I cannot vote against Schumer and Levin. Hope some of their constituents will do the job next time they're up for reelection.
people in the Senate are supposed to be Americans, child, and their religious affiliation and everything else should be secondary.
right, n npeople should vote according to race and sexual orientation…. n nha
Face it, Joe Leiberman was the only real Jew in the Senate, always leading a Jewish life, which is why many secular Jews loathe him. The other Senate Jews at best only have a connection to Judaism through their mother. Which explained why Diane Boxer was so thrilled to give her daughter away to Hijab Hillary's dissolute brother – didn't work out so well anyway. I was at a Jewish wedding with Carl Levin held in a New York state park along the Hudson River two days before 9/11, where I watched him standing before a table full of kippot, holding a sign requesting men to take one. After a rather a long and apparently uncomfortable moment, Levin moved on but with his head still uncovered. What more is there to say about his level of Jewishness?
Now go after that lunatic Brennan.
That Brennan is one vile Islamophilic nutcase. "AL Quds" , my f—in a–!
There's a rumor he converted to Islam while serving in the KSA. n nI wonder. Al Quds my ass, too.
I'll raise you another ass
I call!
Hey Dumbinsky, stupidity and vile immorality REALLY are not virtues, but you behave as if they were.
The State Department is unduly deferential to Israel. Of course, you're not allowed to say that. The (nonexistent) Israel Lobby will do its best to destroy you if you do. Tobin asks "Where are the Jewish organizations?" but to say the Lobby exists is anti-semitic. n nZionists, like other ethnic foreign policy lobbies (Cubans, Greeks, Armenians, East Indians), have a First Amendment right to organize and advocate their views. Others have a right to say their positions are a bunch of hooey.
Piss off. No one cares what you think, Jew hater.
lol…you always make me laugh
The twerp isn't even smart enough to get a fake Jewish screen name, like Idumbinsky or HillelA.
Well, he can't be held accountable . He's mildly retarded with an IQ topping out at about 60.
Dubinsky is a Jewish name???? n nI would think it to be more likely to belong to Catholics and certainly didn't choose it to connote religious affiliation.
Well, it ain't Episcopalian. On the other hand, neither is Sulzberger.
Poylish
Dubinsky claims to be Jewish and to have a rabbi. Especially in the US and Europe, a lot of Jews have surnames that sound slavic or German.
dubinsky is an alias and everything claimed is true. n nthe rabbi is a childhood friend of the wife from Laurelton, Queens where both wife and future rabbi attended the Laurelton Jewish Center where Meier ("call me Mickey") Kahane was then employed.
Again, anti-Semites end up with the same conspiracies they start with. Garbage in and out. n nThat Lindsay and McCain etc. opposed Hagel doesn't make them part of a mythical conspiracy of "the Lobby"–Zionist, Israel, Jewish or otherwise. They oppose a man who is not only on record of including Congress as under the thumb of ZOG but also stated that the State Department was not deferential of but actually run out of the hip pocket of the Israeli Foreign Office.Which is balmy. That America was a world bully. And whom, were he handed a card in the middle of Q&A that his honorarium was being paid not by the ADC but by Al Qaeda would turn Truther on a dime. That Americans oppose anti-Semites spouting conspiracies does not mean that the conspiracies are real or that the fantasies of anti-Semites are out to destory them. n nMeanwhile the ethnic lobby of bitter white Christians regularly joins the ethnic lobby of Arabs and Mulsims out to demonize Jews, daintily counting themselves and their Iranian, Saudi, ADC money bags out of lists of ethnic lobbies. n nAnd the flesh and blood Jewish affiliated organizations (as opposed to the Mel Gibson-GOM Hagel-Weisenheimer "Lobby" conspiracy) sat this one out.