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No “Jewish Leaders” Headlines?
The Israel Lobby and the neocons are trying to make a case against Chuck Hagel as next U.S. Secretary of Defense. The case is bogus but it reveals some of the smear tactics behind such campaigns.
The New York Times has a piece about the non-controversy currently headlined Comments on Israel by Top Contender for Defense Secretary Are Scrutinized.
But that is not the original headline. The much more fitting first one is readable in the URL of the piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/politics/chuck-hagel-candidate-for-defense-post-criticized-by-jewish-leaders.html
Indeed the voices against Hagel in that piece are from Jewish lobbying groups. Mentioned as critical of Hagel as being a not-Israel firster are “Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization” and “Josh Block, the chief executive of the Israel Project, a pro-Israel educational group”.
As the piece fits well with the initial headline visible in the URL, one wonders why the editors felt a need to change it. Is it not allowed to expose “Jewish leaders” when they are trying to dictate U.S. policies?
Politicians can’t have a spine, otherwise they won’t be able to bend backward.
The crippled piston ponies run the anti-semitism express through town [again]. These dual clowns need to move to the promised land or be parachuted behind Iranian lines themselves:
“Hagel certainly does have anti-Israel, pro-appeasement-of-Iran bona fides,” wrote William Kristol, editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard, in the magazine’s lead editorial this week.
“While still a senator, Hagel said that ‘a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option’,” noted Kristol, a co-founder of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which played a key role in beating the drums for war against Iraq one decade ago, and, more recently, the controversial Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI).
He was joined on Tuesday by two other prominent neo-conservatives known for their strong support of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party – Elliott Abrams, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as George W Bush’s top Middle East aide, and Bret Stephens, who writes the “Global View” column in the Wall Street Journal.
Noting that Hagel had once explained to a friendly interviewer that “the Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people up here [in congress],” Stephens suggested that the use of that expression smelled of anti-Semitism, particularly in light of his criticisms of Israel during the second Palestinian intifada and its 2006 war in Lebanon, and his opposition to various sanctions imposed on Iran.
“…Mr Hagel’s Jewish lobby remark was well in keeping with the broader pattern of his thinking,” wrote Stephens, who went on to quote from an interview Hagel conducted with a retired US Mideast diplomat in 2006 as alleged evidence of the former senator’s anti-Semitism or hostility to Israel.
“I’m a United States senator, not an Israeli senator,” Hagel told Aaron David Miller. “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.”
While such a statement would appear uncontroversial on its face, Stephens’ charges were nonetheless echoed by Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pillar of the more-conventional Israel lobby.
“Chuck Hagel would not be the first, second, or third choice for the American Jewish community’s friends in Israel,” Foxman told neo-conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin.
“His record relating to Israel and the US-Israel relationship is, at best, disturbing, and, at worst, very troubling,” said Foxman, who added that Hagel’s sentiments about the Jewish lobby border on anti-Semitism.
Asia Times n line
Posted by: Daniel Rich | Dec 20 2012 5:47 utc | 13
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