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Chuck Hagel's Jewish Problem
(Wall Street Journal) Bret Stephens - Chuck Hagel, the former GOP senator from Nebraska who is now a front-runner to be the next Secretary of Defense, carried on about how "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." The word "intimidates" ascribes to the so-called Jewish lobby powers that are at once vast, invisible and malevolent; and suggests that legislators who adopt positions friendly to that lobby are doing so not from political conviction but out of personal fear. In 2002, a year in which 457 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks (a figure proportionately equivalent to more than 20,000 fatalities in the U.S., or seven 9/11s), Hagel weighed in with the advice that "Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace." In 2006, Hagel described Israel's war against Hizbullah as "the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon." He later refused to sign a letter calling on the EU to designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. In 2007, he voted against designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.