In the hearings Cruz aired a clip from Al Jazeera where Hagel appeared to agree with a caller who accused Israel of atrocities. Cruz said: “The caller suggests that the nation of Israel has committed war crimes, and your response to that was not to dispute that characterization.” Cruz then asked Hagel directly whether he thinks Israel was guilty of war crimes, saying the suggestion was “particularly offensive given that the Jewish people suffered under the most horrific war crimes in the Holocaust… I would also suggest that for … a prospective secretary of Defense not to take issue with that claim is highly troubling.”
And what should Senator Jim Inhofe be thinking? Of Hagel’s views on America’s relationship with Iran and Israel, he said, “Too often it seems he’s willing to subscribe to a worldwide view that is predicated on appeasing our adversaries while shunning our friends.” Should Inhofe be protecting Israel more than AIPAC?
Then there is Senator Lindsay Graham who defended the pro-Israel lobby by pressuring a cowering Hagel to admit he could not name a single lawmaker who had ever been intimidated by those scary Jews. Graham predicted that Hagel would be “the most antagonistic Secretary of Defense toward the State of Israel in our nation’s history.”
Perhaps the pro-Israel lobby as a whole can learn how to stand up for itself from its LGBT counterpart. In 1998 Hagel’s homophobia once more manifest itself in his opposition to President Clinton’s appointing Jim Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg, stating that he was “openly, aggressively gay.” The Human Rights campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights advocacy group, recently demanded that Hagel apologize for the disgusting remark. Sure enough, Hagel apologized which just goes to show you that not everyone is afraid of alienating a potentially powerful member of the Cabinet.
How ironic that pro-Israel groups have themselves proven the falsity of Hagel’s defamatory claims of intimidation. It turns out that even when it comes to nominees with deeply troubling records on Israel, they have little bark and still lesser bite.