In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last Thursday, Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel was forced to eat his words, describing Palestinians as caged animals:
Sen. [Mike] LEE [Republican of Utah]: OK, Senator, my time’s expired. I need to ask you one more question. I understand that you have made a statement indicating that there is no justification for Palestinian suicide bombers but that there is also no justification for Israel to, quote, “keep Palestinians caged up like animals,” close quote. Did you say that, and if so, do you stand by that statement today?
Mr. HAGEL: Well, I said it. And I don’t remember the context or when I said it. But if I —
Sen. LEE: Do you believe today that Israel keeps Palestinians caged up like animals?
Mr. HAGEL: No, if I had an opportunity to edit that, like many things I’ve said, I would — I would like to go back and change the words and the meaning. No, it was, I think, in a larger context. I’ve said many, many things over many years. It was a larger context of the frustration in what’s happening, which is not in Israel’s interest, to find ways that we can help bring peace and security to Israel. If I — if I had a chance to go back and edit it, I would. I regret that I used those words.
Sen. LEE: Thank you.
Mr. HAGEL: Thank you.
Max Blumenthal directs me to Yoav Shamir’s film “Checkpoint,” and a laughing Israeli soldier in the clip, above, at 5:00:
Animals. Animals. Like the Discovery Channel. All of Ramallah is a jungle. There are monkeys, dogs, gorillas. The problem is that the animals are locked, they can’t come out. We’re humans, they’re animals. They aren’t humans, we are… [on being told by fellow soldier that he is being filmed] I don’t care what people think. The chief of staff can see it for all I care.
So we don’t have anything like a free discourse in this country.
A bit hard on Hagel, but GREAT that his “caged like animals” comment got “out there” and was repeated (by way of seeking disavowal) by these CHAMPIONS OF ISRAEL.
I assume that no-one tortured Hagel to force him to say “caged like animals” in the first place, but it was a little strained getting him to recant. See end of my recent comment on torture https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2013/02/liberal-publicity-thirty.html/comment-page-1#comment-536354
I have come to view the Hagel hearing not as an actual hearing – I believe it was actually a fundraiser.
When Tom Friedman worte about Congress continous applause of Bibi and how every single applause had been “bought and paid for” by the Israel lobby, a firestorm ensued. Yet, as we now know, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was leading the charge, giving hand signals to her caucus when to rise and clap.
A few days later, Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most esteemed journalists, wrote in Yehidoth, defending Friedman, and then said that he was there at the time and he saw Jewish-Zionist right-wing donors looking down from the balcony. He never specified which or who they were, but he made clear that they were there for surveillance. Is “my” Congressman/woman doing what I paid them to do? I doubt that the Congressmen/women weren’t aware of the fact that their right-wing donors were watching them, seeing how they behave.
What I wondered back then was; were the Congressmen and women aware of this?
They must have been! Their donors were looking and they required a show.
What makes you think this wasn’t the case with the Hagel hearing? I think a lot of those senators knew their donors, or their donors’ representatives and aides, were watching. That’s why it was all about Israel.
The facade had been shattered. Gone were the liberal smokescreens about gay, women or abortion. Now, the only concern that was ever really at play came to fore: will Hagel commit to the Apartheid state? He even gritted through his teeth “Israel is our closest ally”.
This was quite a show for the lobby. Hagel knows that in foreign policy, he doesn’t answer to Congress, which has indeed been bought by the Israel lobby as Friedman explained in the Times. But even so, an opportunity was missed, as Beinart later said, when he failed to draw a contrast in a sufficient manner. Beinart thought it was his aides, who had briefed him and went with the ‘safe route’. That was disappointing.
Nonetheless, I gather that Lindsay Graham and other whores of the lobby pleased their masters quite well. They knew it was a fundraising effort. And they did what they were great at.
Politics as it is, not as we believe it to be, was at display that day. It was sickening to watch. But at the same time, it was relieving to finally see the mask shattered. No more illusions. It was all about Israel now. As it had been from the beginning. And the hypocrisy was vanished and the venality was at full display.
In American politics, you have to be sell out to make it as high as Hagel has.
What a horrible video. It can not be real. Jews would never talk like that. It must have been made in Pallywood, by pallymonsters, trying to make the friendly occupation look like something out of a film about Nazis…
Nice try, you evil, nefarious, malicious and malevolent anti-Semites!
We Zionists are on to you!
And if the video is not a fake?
Then it is VERY anti-semitic to film people who talk about how they are “protecting” the only Jewish-military-democracy in the ME.
So we don’t have anything like a free discourse in this country.”>>>>
Not in politics obviously, or most of msm journalism, press and media…and they wish they could totally control academica too, but that censorship looks to be slowly failing.
300 + or – million other Americans not in politics, journalism or media do have free discourse. And there’s nothing congress or zionist or Israel can do about it.
Wonder if the zionist think the Hagel inquistion will make average people censor themselves on the Lobby or Israel.
From what I’ve heard off net and seen on net it’s had the opposite effect on the public.