News

Hoenlein says Obama will pick Hagel for ‘Ministry’ of Defense — whoops, make that Defense Department

Politico reports that Obama hints that Chuck Hagel is in the running for Secretary of Defense, in speaking to David Gregory on Meet the Press today:

President Barack Obama says he hasn’t decided on a nominee for defense secretary, but suggested former Sen. Chuck Hagel is still in the running.

Asked by NBC’s David Gregory if anything disqualified the Nebraska Republican from the post, Obama said “Not that I see.”

“I’ve served with Chuck Hagel. I know him. He is a patriot,” Obama said during an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.” ”He is somebody who has done extraordinary work both in the United States Senate, somebody who served this country with valor in Vietnam – and is somebody who’s currently serving on my intelligence advisory board and doing an outstanding job.”

People are buzzing about Malcolm Hoenlein’s statement last night during a radio interview that Hagel will be nominated for Secretary of Defense by Obama on Monday. Buzzfeed’s Rosie Gray tweeted last night: “couple sources indicate that Malcolm Hoenlein told this Hagel thing to attendees of the Agudah convention tonight in Jersey.”

Below is a partial transcript of the interview of Malcolm Hoenlein, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, by Zev Brenner, a Jewish talk show host.

Notice that Hoenlein refers frankly to the “Jewish lobby,” a term that Hagel has been lacerated for using, and says that the Jewish lobby took no official position visavis Hagel. Hoenlein identifies the Defense Department as the Ministry of Defense before correcting himself. The Ministry of Defense is in the Israeli government. 

Also notice that in the latter part of the interview (which I only began to transcribe below), Hoenlein’s entire focus is Iran and the changes in the Middle East, and how these matters affect Israel.

Also notice that he believes Tom Friedman has alienated himself from the community, meaning the Jewish community, through his criticism of the Israel lobby. But that Friedman maintains establishment credibility. 

The interview:

Hoenlein: It’s not a scoop, I’m saying that it’s most likely on Monday they will announce that Hagel will be the choice…. It’s something that raised a lot of concern.  [because Defense is independent.]  I think it is something that you know we’ll live with and we’ll work with, whoever is in office. The concern is…. not just Jewish issues, but American issues…

Brenner: Tom Friedman said it’s the pro-Israel lobby that opposes Hagel.

Hoenlein: I think Tom Friedman has gone off the cliff… the political cliff. I think his columns have increasingly become hostile and frankly unjustifiable. You can differ with a view on Israel. But his position– it was not the Jewish lobby– unfortunately one of the early articles in a major publication spoke about this as the Jewish problem, when many other groups and many people because of [Hagel’s] positions on the military… raised many more concerns than this…

There’s no reason why Jews as Americans can’t express their views. But it was never a Jewish campaign, it was never intended to be. And the lobby actually I think was pretty silent, the quote official lobby was silent on this. It was an unfortunate characterization.

[But in wake of Friedman column] At that point I understood that Hagel would get the job.

It comes from Friedman so they think it has credibility, even though I think his credibility in the community has diminished a great deal.

It’s very important who gets the Ministry of… the Defense Secretary’s position. The Department of Defense is critical on a lot of issues, and with the challneges we’re likely to face in the next year.. it makes it all the more important. Obviously I’m referring to Iran, and decisions on Iran, where in the past, he [Hgael] has not been let us say in line with a lot of positions of other members of the Senate, and people I think who have taken the right positions. There will be other decisions vis a vis what’s happening in the Middle East. The changes in the Middle East, the new technologies, the relationship with Israel. I think ultimately the relationship with Israel will maintain. I think that as Secretary of Defense he will see the realities of the importance of Israel to the United States, the commonality of interests that they have.

But individuals do make a difference, in terms of the tone and the attitudes that they take.

Meantime, Glenn Greenwald has a post up at the Guardian saying that the full-page ad against the Hagel possibility signed by the Log Cabin Republicans was funded by outside donors. Greenwald hints that these are pro-Israel donors surreptitiously using the gay issue against Hagel–Hagel’s 1998 anti-gay slur, for which he has lately apologized.

As a result, I posed several questions to LCR about the funding and motive behind this ad. In response, the group’s Executive Director, R. Clark Cooper, confirmed that LCR did not pay for the ad out of its existing funds. Rather, he said, the ad campaign “is being funded by a number of donors”. But he not only refused to identify any of those donors, but also has thus far refused to say whether those “donors” are from the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel” community and/or are first-time donors to LCR: in other words, whether these donors are simply exploiting gay issues and the LCR to advance an entirely unrelated agenda as a means of attacking Hagel.

As for why LCR would suddenly object to the anti-gay record of Hagel despite a history of supporting more virulently anti-gay Republicans, Cooper claimed that “LCR is particularly concerned about Chuck Hagel as a potential Defense Secretary because of the role he would play in continuing to oversee the implementation of open service of the military.” But he did not respond to my follow-up inquiry about why, then, LCR endorsed Mitt Romney – who has long supported Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and other anti-gay measures – as President.

23 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I am glad to hear Mr Hoenleins prediction that Chuck Hagel will be the nominee, I want the American establishment to have at least one victory over this zionist lobby. Mr Hoenlein has his finger on the pulse and has for many years now, he has known that the tide started to turn a few years back and this is just another brick in the wall of resistance against the non existent lobby’s power.

this excerpt below is from the jewishforward going back about five years or so.

“Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called „the poisoning of America,” Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.

Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.

Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the Israel Lobby by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter‚s best-selling book, „Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that „New York money people” were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran.

„In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the neocons‚ as a code word,” Hoenlein said. „Now we see that code words are no longer necessary.” He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread.

„This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down,” he said. „It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society.”

According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to „intimidate American Jews not to speak out.” He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.

Answering Malcolm Hoenlein:

I think Tom Friedman has gone off the cliff… the political cliff.

Hoenlein has this completely backwards: it is Hoenlein and the lobby he leads and represents (the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations) that has gone off the cliff by siding with an increasingly extreme Israeli government against the best interests of the United States as defined by the American government.

It comes from Friedman so they think it has credibility, even though I think his credibility in the community has diminished a great deal.

Hoenlein may come to realize that he belongs to a shrinking community that has been abandoned by many Jews — especially bright young Jews whose minds haven’t been completely captured by narrow ethno-religious nationalism. They have bigger fish to fry. They define Jewish values and the Jewish interest in more expansive terms than does Hoenlein’s aging clique.

Regarding the Log Cabin Republicans ad: my first thought was that the Israel lobby was probably behind it. I would bet the bank that this is the case while awaiting more news on the subject.

Most gays I know wouldn’t have expressed this kind of mean and ignorant vindictiveness towards Hagel, given the full set of facts about the situation. The views of Steve Clemons and Andrew Sullivan are more in line with the open-minded temperament of that cultural bloc.

The simplest explanation for LCR is that a part of the gay community is masochistic-submissive. They have a solid list of two (yes, two! more precisely, three, but Sen. Collins will be gone soon) Congressional supporters, one of them is Ros-Lehtinen, and they clearly they have to show concern for gay issues at least sometimes.

LCR have little visibility and renting their name for an ad is a good opportunity.

There is now a furious effort on part of the lobby and the neocons to sink this. It is mixed with a dose of fatalism. Dan Senor is working overtime to get negative quotes on Hagel by as many Republicans as possible in as short of time as possible.

Also, why is Matt Brooks leaking this openly on Twitter? He is spreading rumors that Jewish organizations have been getting systematically called by the WH and being told that Hagel is a ‘done deal’, yet when reporters call the mainstream organizations, many of them said no. Even Hoenlien was called up by Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed and denied being called(of course he could have lied). There’s a tremendous amount of internal confusion with the lobby right now.

My guess is that Hagel will still be dropped, but if he is nominated, the lobby will work overtime to make sure he is destroyed quicker than Susan Rice.

If Hagel does get nominated then the lobby isn’t merely fightning for Israel(as it ususally does), then it fights for its own credibility, its own reputation to being able to smear and destroy people it does not like. Because if he would not only get the nod, but go through the nomination process, the lobby would look very weak.

In such a scenario, the nomination fight takes on an existential glimmer for the lobby.

Jewish Lobby has some problems now. The lobby logic pushes it toward maximal goals and eternal struggle, the lobby lives of donations which have to be “needed now more than ever”. And the problem it has is that was only too successful over the years. The myths grown to the degree that are defying common sense of relatively uninformed people and even more for those who are informed.

One of the tactics of the lobby is to pick a loosing fight to document dire needs for more activity (and funding, remember the funding), and on its website AJC cites the opposition to the sales of advanced aircraft to the Saudis as such example (which pitted them against the military-industrial complex, clearly unwinnable, but profitable for the lobby). But I do not think that this is the case here. Clearly, no intellectuals will rebel in the defense of the right of the Kingdom to throw money away at military boondogles. But now we have a new meme, “extremists in the charge of the Lobby”. This angle has to be maintained, and salt rubbed into the wound.

One aspect that is confusing to the outsiders is this: why now? Opposition to Obama’s call to conduct negotiations while maintaing settlement freeze was at least as extremist as the opposition to Chuck Hagel, and yet it was totally successful. It seems that the position of extremist is eroding, and we see some cumulative effects on the level of Washington establishment. This is a good subject for an essay, perhaps after Hagel is nominated, and we will need more salt for the Lobby wound.