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(19. Februar 2013) Charles Häberl, a Rutgers University professor at the Center for Middle East Studies which hosted the event, says he is “certain” Hagel did not make the comment attributed to him.
“I did attend the event, and even though the event was nearly six years ago I’m certain that he did not make the remark attributed to him. The one blogger who related this remark, George Ajjan, has also claimed that the event was ‘closed to the press,’ which is demonstrably false, as the document you referenced indicates,” Häberl wrote in an email to BuzzFeed.

(17. Februar 2013) The Washington Free Beacon reported Jan. 14, in a posting just hours before the failed bid in the Senate to advance Hagel’s nomination, a contemporaneous account of a Hagel speech delivered in 2007 at Rutgers University.

George Ajjan, a blogger sympathetic to Hagel’s foreign policy views, quoted him as saying “The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office.”

The Israeli intelligence services are currently working on intensifying their monitoring of social network sites used by Palestinians, especially the youth living in occupied Jerusalem. This is an effort to identify those who are willing and preparing to carry out individual resistance operations. According to Israel‘s Yedioth Ahranoth newspaper, this task has fallen to the Shin Bet internal security agency.

If you compare the declarations made in recent days by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers to the assessments of the heads of the security services, you might get the impression that each group is operating in its own alternative reality, one totally divorced from that the of other group.

Changes to the US immigration policy announced by President Obama will have far-reaching effects on Israelis wishing to work or move to the US.

‚They have no future in the land of Israel,‘ says the rabbi of a major modern Orthodox synagogue in New Hersey calling for Israel to collectively punish Arab Israelis.

(16.02.2013) Republican Senators have blocked the vote to confirm Chuck Hagel as U.S. Secretary of Defence, he is the first such Presidential nominee for Pentagon chief this has happened to. Paul Craig Roberts, a Reagan administration official, joins RT studio from Florida to discuss the confirmation hearings.

Decision comes just hours after Livni dared PM to break up government over law she says defies democracy in Israel

Zeitung verweist auf Entschlossenheit, möglichen Bau von Atomwaffen auch mit Gewalt zu stoppen

Der dazugehörige Anhang mit sämtlichen Detailregelungen soll demnach voraussichtlich bis zum 1. Juli 2015…

(22. Oktober) At a conference earlier this week, Rivlin, Israel’s president, said “It’s time to admit honestly that Israeli society is sick.” He went on to suggest that his country’s Jewish citizens have “forgotten how to be decent human beings.”

(18. Dezember 2012) The current secretary, Leon Panetta, has said the defense “sequester” cuts that Congress mandated to take effect Jan. 1 would have dire consequences for U.S. security. Mr. Hagel took a very different position when asked about Mr. Panetta’s comment during a September 2011 interview with the Financial Times. “The Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated,” he responded. “So I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down.”

(14. Januar 2013) Even before his nomination, many on both sides of the aisle warned President Obama that a Hagel nomination would face severe opposition. The Washington Post’s editorial board recently put it succinctly; “Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary.”

Among the reasons to opposed Hagel’s nomination, including his desire for “huge cuts” in defense spending that could leave America vulnerable abroad, two stand particularly disturbing to evangelicals and many Americans: Israel and Iran.

(19. Dezember 2012) What is the evidence that Chuck Hagel is anti-Semitic, or at least borderline anti-Semitic? Apparently he once said, „The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here [on Capitol Hill].“ The Weekly Standard‘s anonymous „top Republican Senate aide“ is quoted as calling this „the worst kind of anti-Semitism“ because it means Hagel „believes in the existence of a nefarious Jewish lobby that secretly controls U.S. foreign policy.“

Actually, it doesn‘t mean that. It means what it says: Hagel believes that AIPAC, like the NRA, is powerful enough to sometimes intimidate legislators.

(7. Januar 2013) Miller said Hagel was only saying what many members of Congress think but do not voice. „Hagel talked about the issue of domestic political pressure. Most sitting senators and congressmen don‘t. But it‘s a fact: the pro-Israeli community or lobby has a powerful voice. It does not have a veto over American policy but it has a powerful voice. To deny that is simply to be completely out of touch with reality,“ he said.

That has not stopped a barrage of accusations against Hagel. William Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative and editor of the Weekly Standard, accused him of harbouring an „unpleasant distaste for Israel and Jews“.

(18. Februar 2013) My grandparents emigrated from Russia to the U.S. before the revolution. They were the type that divided things, and people, into Good For The Jews or Bad For The Jews. They were wary people, who understood that a Jew always had to be careful, even in America. They could smell antisemitism, and they believed that a Jew could not count on the authorities, or on his non-Jewish neighbors if the worse happened. I was close to them, closer than to my Americanized parents, and I became this kind of Jew as well.

(7. Januar 2013) Critics have hammered Hagel for not joining most of his Senate colleagues in signing on to a number of policy pronouncements that sometimes were sought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobbying organization in Washington.

„How does that further the peace process in the Middle East?“ Hagel asked. „What‘s in Israel‘s interest is to help Israel and the Palestinians find some peaceful way to live together.“

(19. Dezember 2012) Joining other groups and individuals opposing Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, the generally liberal American Jewish Committee (among the older and better known Jewish organizations) has signaled it opposes the potential nomination. Executive director David Harris e-mails me the following:

(22. Februar 2013) Beneath his anti-Israelism is a broader anti-Jewish bias, often frankly expressed.

Der Republikaner Chuck Hagel hatte sich in der Vergangenheit immer kritisch über die kriegerische Außenpolitik der Regierung von George W. Bush geäußert.

Mr. Hagel struggled to fit in with Mr. Obama’s close circle and was viewed as never gaining traction in the administration after a bruising confirmation fight among his old Senate colleagues, during which he was criticized for seeming tentative in his responses to sharp questions.

He never really shed that pall after arriving at the Pentagon, and in the past few months he has largely ceded the stage to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who officials said initially won the confidence of Mr. Obama with his recommendation of military action against the Islamic State.

„We will meet again before the new year.“

(5. November) Second, I‘m going to begin engaging Congress over a new Authorization to Use Military Force against ISIL. The world needs to know we are united behind this effort, and the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support.

In 2001, I was the lone vote in Congress against the Authorization for Use of Military Force, because it was a blank check for endless war. Thirteen years later, it has been used more than 30 times to justify American military action, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

We need to repeal the 2001 authorization intended for Afghanistan and the 2002 Iraq authorization. We must debate and vote on any military action in Iraq and Syria, to re-establish the constitutional checks and balances laid out by our founders.

Failure to act is an endorsement for perpetual war.

(2. September 2014) Einen Tag nach der Bekanntmachung des Zusammenhangs zwischen militärischen Operationen von U.S.-Kräften im Irak (und entsprechend auch Syrien) und den Schattenarmeen unter den Labeln “Islamischer Staat”, “Isis” und “Isil” durch die Meldung der “New York Times” am 28. August, veröffentlichte U.S.-Außenminister John Kerry dann am 29. August in der “New York Times” einen blumigen, an das weltweite Boulevard-Publikum gerichteten Artikel, in dem er für eine “globale Koalition” gegen den “Islamischen Staat” warb.

Sämtliche nun in der Informationsindustrie über das Fantom “lslamischen Staat” lancierten Meldungen und Berichte über Gräuel, Massenmorde und Schwerverbrechen, die letztlich von diesen Schattenarmeen selbst stammen und eins zu eins von der etablierten Presse übernommen werden, sind in diesem Zusammenhang zu sehen.

Kern- und Knackpunkt ist dabei das nun seit bald 13 Jahren ausgerufene quasi-religiöse Dogma und Denkverbot, was gerade von allen ehemals oder vermeintlich progressiven, linken, sozialdemokratischen oder sozialistischen Gruppen und Organisationen am vehementesten verteidigt und hochgehalten wird:

Legenden der Geheimdienste dürfen nicht in Frage gestellt werden.

Dafür darf dann um so lauter an ihnen rumgejammert, ein bisschen rumgezupft und sich beklagt werden.

Some Democrats, including Senate leader Harry Reid, seem oddly passive, saying they are open to an authorization vote but doing little to advance it now. At the start of the campaign against ISIS in September, Mr. Obama insisted he had all the legal authority he needed to attack. After Election Day, he said he would ask Congress to authorize the military campaign specifically against ISIS.

Yet now it seems clear that he has no problem waiting until next year for Congress to act.

After more than a decade of open-ended war, I am deeply troubled to see the Administration expanding the role of U.S. servicemen and women in Afghanistan.

Many military and foreign policy experts agree that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. The future of Afghanistan is in the hands of the Afghan people.

Our brave servicemen and women have performed their mission with courage, valor and commitment in an impossible situation.

It is time to stop endless war and bring our servicemen and women home to their families.