Who’s afraid of ‘the Israel Lobby’?

‘The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”

Those were the words of U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, as quoted by Middle East expert Aaron David Miller in a 2008 book.

“Up here” was Capitol Hill, of course. Five years later, Chuck Hagel has returned to the Senate, this time as Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. At a confirmation hearing on Thursday, Hagel was asked about his dark reference to the “Jewish lobby.” Hagel said he regretted the phrase, and then added — just to remove any lingering doubts — “I think it’s the only time on the record I’ve ever said that.”

The theory here seems to be that to mutter about the jews off the record would be perfectly fine. Everybody does that end. It’s only when you go “on the record” that anti-Jewish muttering becomes problematic, at least in the mind of Chuck Hagel. And he only did that once! (At least as far as he can recall.) So what’s the big deal?

Unfortunately for Hagel, the exchange got worse from there. Hagel was pressed by Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina to cite some real-world examples of “intimidation” by the “Jewish lobby.” Hagel admitted he couldn’t think of any. Hagel had elsewhere referred to “dumb things” into which the United States had been pushed by the “Jewish lobby.” Could he be specific? No, again, he could not.

So it went. Rarely has a cabinet nominee for so high an office delivered such an awkward appearance before a Senate confirmation panel.

True, Hagel’s performance will not much matter. The Democrats have the votes to confirm Hagel, including those of the Democrats most associated with pro-Israel politics, such as New York’s Chuck Schumer. It would be unprecedented for the minority party to filibuster a cabinet appointee. American politics has a strong presumption that a president is entitled to be served by the people he wants. So Secretary Hagel it will likely be.

Not satisfied with this likely win on the main issue, though, some of Hagel’s supporters are complaining that he walked back too far with his apologies and regrets. Here’s my Daily Beast colleague Peter Beinart:
“Instead of speaking from the gut, [Hagel] said what he thought other politicians wanted to hear. That strategy failed because right-wingers like [John] McCain, [Lindsey] Graham, and [Ted] Cruz saw Hagel’s ideological incoherence and smelled his political fear.”

Steven Walt, co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a 2007 book that more than any other made respectable the paranoid view of Jewish political influence, lamented on Friday:

“I am sometimes asked if I have any regrets about publishing our book. As of today, my only regret is that it isn’t being published now. After the humiliations that Obama has endured at the hands of the lobby, and now the Hagel circus, we’d sell even more copies and we wouldn’t face nearly as much ill-informed criticism.”
From the point of view of Hagel’s most ardent supporters, these hearings must present a terrible irony. From their point of view, the point of nominating Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense was to send a message: a re-elected president Obama had broken away from the Jewi … er, from the Israel lobby. What one especially vehement Israel critic calls the “religion” of capitol hill would at last be overthrown.

Only, the U.S.-Israel relationship hasn’t been overthrown, not nearly.

President Obama was reelected for many reasons, but skepticism/hostility to Israel was not one of them. To the extent that the Hagel nomination expressed the president’s exasperation with Benjamin Netanyahu or a determination to downgrade the long and close U.S.-Israel relationship — well, to that extent the nomination was a peevish mistake. Hagel right now is paying the price of that mistake by his disavowal of, and apology for, a decade of poorly considered remarks.

Perhaps Hagel and Obama imagine that they can engage in payback once Hagel is confirmed. They can try: A Secretary of Defense has a lot of power. But the try will be expensive. The Senate and the Congress aren’t going anywhere. They have made it clear these past few days that the kind of “Israel Lobby” talk you hear in some Washington think tanks is not acceptable to the American electorate.

Hagel inserted himself into a small bubble of people who have talked themselves into an ever more radical critique of Israel and American Jewry. Isolated inside that bubble, he lost sight of the real state of American politics. The “Israel Lobby” is powerful in U.S. politics for exactly the same reason that Mothers Against Drunk Driving is powerful: because the American majority supports motherhood and disapproves of drunk driving.

Hagel’s distorted perception has led him into embarrassment, self-correction and apology. It’s highly worrying to think where that distorted perception may lead the president who nominated Hagel in the first place.

 http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/02/david-frum-whos-afraid-of-the-israel-lobby/