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Jews Veto Hagel

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Chuck Hagel may be off of Obama’s shortlist to head DOD, by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, 19 Dec 2012:

Hagel immediately drew a frosty reception from observers who criticized him for advocating in favor of direct unconditional talks with Iran and for backing sizable cuts to the defense budget.

Those who have worked with Hagel and have an intimate knowledge of his managerial style also expressed concerns about his possible appointment.

Sources on Capitol Hill told the Free Beacon that opposition to Hagel reaches all the way to the Embassy of Israel, which is said to have quietly expressed concern about the former senator.

“Our office has talked with the Israel embassy who says their policy is to support whatever the president wants in his cabinet and would not provide further comment,” one Senate aide told the Free Beacon. “With a little prodding, our contact at the embassy did allude to their concern for Hagel’s nomination.”

An Israeli embassy spokesman declined comment.

Hagel has drawn additional heat from insiders who claim he lacks the credentials needed to manage a department as large and essential as the Pentagon.

“Yes, Hagel has crazy positions on several key issues. Yes, Hagel has said things that are borderline anti-Semitism. Yes, Hagel wants to gut the Pentagon’s budget. But above all, he’s not a nice person and he’s bad to his staff,” said a senior Republican Senate aide who has close ties to former Hagel staffers.

“Chuck Hagel may have been collegial to his Senate colleagues but he was the Cornhusker wears Prada to his staff, some of whom describe their former boss as perhaps the most paranoid and abusive in the Senate, one who would rifle through staffers desks and berate them for imagined disloyalty,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq. “He might get away with that when it comes to staffers in their 20s, but that sort of personality is going to go over like a ton of bricks at the Pentagon.”

“Chances are he’ll view any legitimate effort to talk about military options with Iran as some plot by the ‘Israel Lobby’ to box him in,” the source said.

Reviewing the objections to Hagel, aside from the inconsequential nonsense, it’s plain that the that Israel-firsters, AKA the Israel Lobby, AKA jews, effectively vetoed his nomination. They did so in the characteristically dishonest way jews usually go about exercising their power – a gaggle of jews furiously, publicly debating in markedly jewish terms, with the final verdict being Hagel has magically disqualified himself, because jews don’t actually have any power.

In this absurd debate, represented in part by Doug Bandow’s Neocons Against Chuck Hagel: The Independent Senator Who Wouldn’t Genuflect, we hear what are considered examples of Hagel’s “anti-semitism”: “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.” Even more scandalous, “The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”

The political reality is that USGOV officials, even at the very top, cannot say they would put US interests above Israel’s, much less actually do so. Beside that, the mythical divide between “liberal” and “neocon” is once more revealed as a lie. In the wake of Obama’s re-election the “liberals” are supposedly in power. The “neocons” should be licking their wounds. The political reality is dominated by jews debating the best interests of jews. Whatever the outcome, jews win.

There are copious examples of this farce. Beyond the two articles already cited I’ll call attention to two more.

In Nebraska Jews Recall Senator Chuck Hagel as “Unfriendly” and “Unmovable” on Israel, “Didn’t Give a Damn About the Jewish Community”, published by Algemeiner.com, 21 Dec 2012, we read:

Former editor of the Omaha Jewish Press, Carol Katzman, who was in that role while Hagel was in office, related her experiences with him in an interview with The Algemeiner.

“He was not the most responsive politician in Nebraska to me personally at the Jewish Press and to the Jewish community as a whole,” she said.

“Every other senator, Nelson, Mike Johanns, (congressman) Lee Terry and (congressman) Peter Hoagland they were all very responsive,” she explained, “it didn’t really matter what their party affiliation was, if we were soliciting them for an interview or a greeting ad for Rosh Hashonah or Passover.” However Katzman says that “Hagel’s office never even responded,” adding, “we would make repeated calls, (and received) no response it was pretty obvious that he and his staff were dismissive.”

To be fair, articles like this weren’t part of the debate, which is already over. It does however contain an essential element of the debate, whereby jews lamely try to rationalize their distaste for Hagel and stick him with the blame for it.

In Gil Troy’s Hagel: Not An Anti-Semite, Just A Slob, published in the Open Zion section of The Daily Beast on 19 Dec 2012, there is more of the same:

Without rehashing the entire debate, as senator, Hagel was more of an Israel skeptic than an enthusiastic Israel friend, no Ted Kennedy, or John McCain, or Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton was he. And for that reason, snarky comments about the “Jewish lobby” and about being a “United States Senator” and “not an Israeli Senator” rankle. Prejudice has a pedigree. Just as we winced when Biden as a candidate called Obama “articulate”—because of the twisted history that had many people questioning black people’s brains and eloquence, respectful American leaders should not stir the hornet’s nest around the Israel lobby question.

Here is another characteristic strand of jewish argument, with Troy arrogantly lecturing “leaders” to respect jewish power by pretending it does not exist. He then recounts a lesson about that power from 20 years ago:

I learned from Malcolm Hoenlein that Shoshana Cardin, the President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, confronted President George H.W. Bush after his dramatic September 1991 press conference, claiming he was “one lonely little guy” facing “powerful political forces,” after 1,200 Israel activists lobbied Congress seeking loan guarantees to help Israel resettle emigrating Soviet Jews. In a private meeting, Cardin explained that talk of Jewish lobbyists out-muscling the president echoed traditionally bigoted exaggerations about Jewish power. Bush pointed out that he “didn’t use the word ‘Jews.’ ” Cardin explained he did not have to. “Everyone understood that the people you were referring to were Jewish. That’s why the White House switchboard lit up with so many messages of support from anti-Semites.”

“I never intended to hurt anyone,” Bush said, teary-eyed, “Or give encouragement to anti-Semitism.” He then apologized to the American Jewish leaders gathered to meet him.

Even US presidents fear jewish power. One way to reconcile the jewish view of this as a “bigoted exaggeration” is to understand that, at least in the minds of hyper-jew-centric jews, US presidents can and should be doing even more for jews. For another example of this, read this bitter jew-centric assessment of Richard Nixon, another president whose failure to openly identify his and his country’s enemies hasn’t made those enemies hate him any less.

The take-away, once again, is that jewish rhetoric about “anti-semitism” is a simple and effective inversion and projection of their own obsessions and aggression. White political leaders should naturally seek to serve the interests and favor of fellow Whites. But none actually do. Instead what we have is a political reality in which jews relentlessly pathologize and demonize Whites for illusory “White privilege” and ineffective political “dog whistling”. Meanwhile jews make ever more blatant and outrageous demands of a regime which already serves their interests first and foremost. Both are sure signs that jewish power not only exists, but is increasing. It will continue to increase until it is faced with real opposition.

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Saban: Obama is Best for Israel

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The Truth About Obama and Israel, by Haim Saban, NYTimes.com:

AS an Israeli-American who cares deeply about the survival of Israel and the future of the Jewish people, I will be voting for President Obama in November. Here’s why.

Blah, blah, Israeli-firster rationale omitted.

When I enter the voting booth, I’m going to ask myself, what do I prefer for Israel and its relationship with the United States: meaningful action or empty rhetoric? To me the answer is clear: I’ll take another four years of Mr. Obama’s steadfast support over Mr. Romney’s sweet nothings.

Haim Saban is a private equity investor, the chairman of the Spanish-language media company Univision and a founder of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

What’s best for America and Americans? “Israeli-American” Haim Saban and the New York Times don’t even pretend to care.

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Dan Senor: Romney’s Jewish “Connector”

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Romney’s Jewish Connector:

How Dan Senor became the GOP candidate’s key emissary to Israel’s intelligentsia and the Washington policy scene

Tablet Magazine is a jewish organ, and their article is a vetting of sorts, which in this context means a review of Senor’s history of working with other jews in pursuit of the best interests of jews. For the rest of us the article serves as a window into the workings of the jewish/judaized ruling class, both in Israel and the United States.

To some, Senor remains best known as the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, a role that made him a regular television fixture in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion. In the years since, he’s reinvented himself as a cable news commentator and Israel advocate and has simultaneously amassed his own fortune working on Wall Street. He is, even among people who vehemently disagree with his politics, a popular guy who moves with equal ease in New York and Washington. He arrived in the governor’s camp with his own celebrity, and, in a sense, he offers the socially awkward candidate the thing his campaign most craves: an easy ability to make people like him. More importantly, Senor has been a vital emissary over the past six years for Romney not just to the Israelis and the American Jewish community, but to a Republican foreign-policy establishment that, even today, remains somewhat alien territory.

Senor arrived at his current role by way of an itinerant and mostly accidental career that has afforded him access to a wide range of very powerful, very famous, and very rich people. As an ambitious college intern on the Hill, he caught the attention of William Kristol, the editor-in-chief of the Weekly Standard, who gave him entree into the neoconservative circle surrounding George W. Bush. Senor eventually became the face of the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq, both during his time in Baghdad and later as a television pundit; while he was in Baghdad, he met his future wife, Campbell Brown, then a reporter for NBC. In between he went to Harvard Business School, worked for the Carlyle Group, and started a private-equity firm with his classmate and friend Chris Heinz, stepson of former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

But his greatest success came in 2009, with the publication of Start-Up Nation, a slim blue-and-white volume he wrote with his brother-in-law, the Israeli newspaper columnist Saul Singer. Since its release in 2009, at the depths of the financial crisis, the book has become required reading for the entire Israeli government and for much of the American Jewish community. (The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad also keeps a copy on his desk.) The title alone has become shorthand for the modern, techno-centric aspects of Israel, as distinct from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “It showed that every conversation about Israel doesn’t have to be about the settlements,” Senor told me when he and I met recently for dinner at Solo, a kosher restaurant in Manhattan.

In 2010, Senor was floated by Republicans, including Rudy Giuliani, as a possible Senate candidate in New York, but he decided not to enter the race, which would have pitted him against popular Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. He now works for Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who is among Romney’s most prominent Wall Street backers. (Singer is no relation to Senor’s brother-in-law.) Senor is also a regular on Morning Joe, where he has become the show’s go-to conservative guest. To critics on both the left and the right, he represents the worst of the Bush era—the prioritization of loyalty and ideology over experience and expertise. “He was on MSNBC pushing for more robust intervention in Syria, and he was going up against a general,” said one longtime Republican operative, who asked not to be identified. “I was saying to myself, This is a guy where, if you look at him, no one’s ever going to confuse him with anyone who ever put on a uniform.”

But Senor’s varied background makes him a perfect interlocutor for Romney in clubby think-tank and fundraising circles. “There are a lot of smart guys in Washington who do some policy, some politics, some fundraising,” Kristol said. “But he certainly knows more than a lot of those guys, or knows better how it works.” In September 2009, after Romney’s first run for the Republican nomination, he joined Senor onstage at a conference hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative, an organization Senor launched with Kristol and Robert Kagan. Romney made passing reference to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, prompting Senor to note it had been written by Bret Stephens, a columnist well known in conservative circles. “Brad Stephens’ piece?” Romney asked, blankly. “Bret Stephens,” Senor corrected. “Bret Stephens,” Romney repeated, and looked out at the audience. “Sorry, Bret.”

But, in a year when Israel has emerged as a central foreign-policy litmus test, Senor also brings an unusual advantage to the governor’s campaign: his close relationships with a small, influential group of American expats clustered in Jerusalem’s German Colony who operate at the highest levels of Israeli public life. Much has been made of Romney’s pre-political acquaintance with Netanyahu, dating to when they were both young men working for the Boston Consulting Group. But Senor, who travels to Israel several times a year, has ties to Jerusalem’s elite that are unusually personal and that are magnified by the uniquely Anglo-inflected nature of Netanyahu’s current government.

For Tablet’s jewish audience, the Republican foreign-policy establishment is “alien territory”, in contrast to Israel, which is more like home.

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Jew-Firsters vs Israel-Firsters

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In Why I am using ‘Israel firster’ again M.J. Rosenberg writes:

Short definition: you are an Israel Firster if you believe it is acceptable to criticize US Presidents (whether Obama, Bush or any other) but believe that you must stand behind any and all Israeli policies and prime ministers. Call it “my country, right or wrong” but with a significant twist.

The reason Israel Firster became so explosive in 2012 is because (1) this is the year the lobby wants the United States to either attack Iran or allow Israel to do it and (2) this is the year in which tens of millions of dollars of unregulated campaign contributions are flowing to the Republican candidate for president simply because the single-issue crowd believes that Mitt Romney is the candidate most likely to fit comfortably in Netanyahu’s pocket.

The lobby’s biggest fear is that the American people will figure this out and that the blow back will harm the US-Israel relationship.

Frankly, I share part of that worry. But my fear is that if the American people do figure out what AIPAC and its friends are up to, it could harm us here. After all, the lobby has done a great job convincing Congress and opinion leaders that they represent all Jews not just 4%.

I don’t want my kids or theirs tainted with any association with those who are pushing for war with Iran, as they did with Iraq, or who blackmail presidents into supporting policies that harm the United States.

How to prevent that?

Frankly, I think I’m more than entitled to call this spade a spade. I have supported Israel (not, however, its more horrific policies) my whole life. I believe that Israel should survive and live in security, in some kind of arrangement with the Palestinian people who deserve peace, security and sovereignty just as much as Israelis do. Also, I speak as someone whose own kids are first generation. Their mom, my wife, was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany to two Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.

I simply cannot be intimidated by those who business is intimidation. The way I see it, both my country, America, and a country I deeply care about, Israel,and the Jewish people are all being placed at risk by a small bunch of multi-millionaires and billionaires whose only interests are self-aggrandizement, hob-nobbing with those in power, and crushing anyone who gets in their way.

One day, everyone will understand that. It should be our mission to make sure that before they do, we break the back of an unrepresentative, dishonest and corrupt lobby that jeopardizes us all.

Rosenberg insinuates that he speaks for 96% of jews. According to him the problem with Israel-firsters is that what they’re doing isn’t good for the jews. What’s more, as an entitled, morally self-righteous, holocaust-invoking jew he won’t be intimidated into silence by the entitled, morally self-righteous, holocaust-invoking jews in the other 4%.

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president, is at this moment in Israel performing his humiliating donning-of-the-skullcap ceremony, pledging fealty and obeisance to the interests of an alien nation.

This bizarre pilgrimage and rite of misdirected loyalty has become de rigueur for all aspirants to political “leadership” today, no matter their religious, political or state affiliation. Obama too, First Jewish President, “leader” of the free world, has already performed, and today is blasted for not renewing his vows.

Such is the thoroughly judaized state of the current regime. After decades of purges the only open opponents to the Israel-firsters who remain are jew-firsters. Where the Israeli-firsters wear their loyalty more or less on their sleeves, their jew-firster critics, like Rosenberg, are just as corrupt and dishonest in that they misrepresent the nature of the whole dispute as political or economic when it is in fact purely jewish. The primary concern, on all sides, is what’s best for jews. They simply disagree about what’s best for which jews.

The image above comes from the jew-firsters at Breitbart, who cite and join a broad swath of organized jewry denouncing Rosenberg, explaining:

While the term [Israel-firster] might not immediately be considered derogatory, in context, it’s usually apparent that it’s not meant in a positive way.

It all depends on the point of view. Whites are regularly subjected to intentionally derogatory terms such as “racist”, “nazi”, and “White supremacist”. None of this is meant in a positive way either, except again in the sense that it comes from people whose main obsession is what’s best for the jews.

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Weaponizing the Jewish Narrative

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Charles Krauthammer on Fox News Channel, Krauthammer: Israel ‘will strike’ Iran to ‘prevent a second holocaust’:

Unless something intervenes,” Krauthammer replied. “I cannot imagine the Israelis are going to allow Iran to go nuclear and to hold the Damocles sword over 6 million Jews all over again. Israel was established to prevent a second Holocaust, not to invite one.

Elliott Abrams in The Weekly Standard, Blaming the Jews—Again:

If you were an anti-Semite dedicated to spreading your hatred of Jews, what charges exactly would you make in 21st century America?

You would avoid the blood libel—too medieval to write of sacrificing Christian children to make Passover matzo. That kind of stuff circulates in Arab lands or Pakistan, but won’t sell in suburban America. And the “Christ-killer” material is also dated, what with Vatican II, Evangelical support for Israel, and the like.

There are two charges you would make. First, the rich Jews control our government. Second, those Jews are trying to push America into war so your sons will have to fight for Israel.

Following a long-established pattern, Krauthammer agitates for “something” to intervene on behalf of “6 million jews” to prevent a “holocaust”, while Abrams aids the effort by projecting his own jew-specific hate onto anyone who objects, blaming them for objecting.

Krauthammer is arguing that Iranians have to die for Israel. Abrams is arguing that Americans have to die for Israel.