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Billionaire mathematician Bill Benter and wife Vivian

It shouldn’t come to any of us as a surprise that, like any political campaign, getting yourself confirmed as Secretary of Defense takes big bucks for advertising, lobbying, PR, etc.

So who is funding the ‘campaign’ of Chuck Hagel, whom Jennifer Rubin called “the most anti-Israel nominee in recent memory (in either party)?”

Josh Rogin tells us:

…without White House assistance before Monday’s official nomination and without a staff of his own, Hagel was ill-equipped to fight the onslaught of negative publicity coming from his many critics, and his critics were able to set the initial frame and tone of the coming confirmation debate.

But over the last two weeks, Hagel’s friends in the Democratic political world have come to his aid, principally by rounding up senior former officials to write supportive op-eds and funding an advertising effort to spread the world that Hagel does in fact have bipartisan support.

The Cable has learned that a large chunk of that pro-Hagel money is coming from one Democratic donor, gambling legend Bill Benter, who is working with the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm, to support pro-Hagel advertising.

Benter is the shadowy mathematician with CIA and Arab connections who figured out how to beat the odds at Hong Kong’s Happy Valley race track, and funneled more than $800,000 through an ‘associate’, the even shadowier Connie Esdicul, into the up-and coming J Street organization in 2010.

J Street, if you have forgotten, is the fake “pro-Israel” lobbying group which has consistently worked against Israel’s interests in Washington — also with Arab connections — all the while claiming that they are doing it for Israel’s own good.

Just like, er, Chuck Hagel. In fact J Street supports Hagel, and its positions on Iranian sanctions, Hamas, etc., almost precisely agree with his. Which, surprisingly enough, are the same as those of George Soros, another big J Street funder, and of President Barack Obama.

This is one of those times that I wish the antisemites were right, and that there was actually a semi-covert, powerful and well-funded Jewish lobby forcing the captive US (“Zionist-occupied”) government to do its bidding.

Instead, there is a Jewish community sharply divided on many political issues — and a large part of that community has decided that if it comes down to a choice between Israel and what it calls ‘progressive values’, they’ll choose the latter.

And this is alongside a semi-covert, powerful and well-funded anti-Israel lobby, which is not at all divided about what it wants.

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel, Bill Benter, J Street, Israel

It’s now almost certain that the president is going to nominate Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. An announcement is expected tomorrow or Tuesday.

Just like when the plan was to appoint Arabist Chas Freeman to a sensitive intelligence post, the strategy has been to leak the planned appointment, then respond to opposition by ‘Israelifying’ the objections, and ‘Jewifying’ the opponents.

In other words, administration surrogates are doing their best to make the public think that objections to Hagel are all related to his anti-Israel politics (don’t just ask me — ask Iranian Press TV), and that opponents to his nomination are doing the bidding of the ‘Jewish Lobby’ (as Hagel himself called it).

Freeman’s Saudi and Chinese connections did him in. He wasn’t a member of the Senate who could expect to receive many votes out of collegial courtesy. The administration saw the handwriting on the wall and didn’t push it.

But this time the calculations are that Hagel can make it. This is despite the fact that many Senators will vote against him because his positions on issues of national security and foreign policy are far to the left of the mainstream for that body. What can you say about someone who opposed economic sanctions on Iran and a resolution calling Hizballah a “terrorist organization,” and suggested that the US president negotiate with Hamas?

It’s not as though there aren’t other good candidates, including some who are much more experienced in the details of running the complicated defense establishment, such as the highly competent Michelle Flournoy.

Unfortunately, the administration has succeeded in making the issue of Hagel all about Israel and Jews, rather than about a potential Secretary of Defense with little practical experience who seems to think that a nuclear Iran is acceptable. One wonders if the president himself views it this way, and sees the nomination as a way to punish and humiliate Israel (and perhaps the “Jewish Lobby”).

That would be really, really stupid, a classic case of allowing the anti-Israeli tail to wag the dog of real American interests.

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel

5 minutes and 48 seconds on the bigotry of low expectations:

Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel, Islam, racism, Pat Condell

A state, especially one that is trying to be a nation-state, a national homeland for a people, needs an organizing principle, a set of ideals, an ideology, a purpose — whatever you think it is, some kind of philosophical reason for being. Otherwise there is no reason to live there if you can go somewhere else. And in the developed world, going somewhere else is more of an option than ever before.

Israel’s worst enemies have powerful ideologies — Islamism and Palestinian nationalism/irredentism.

Even the US, a secular state with a very diverse population has such principles, embodied in its Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They are one reason that the nation survived, in united form, its terrible Civil War, and why — one hopes — it will survive the forces trying to pull it apart today.

Despite being the nation-state of the Jewish people, the state of Israel does not have a set of basic unifying principles. There isn’t a single Zionism, and for some Israelis, any form of Zionism at all is looked at as a combination of ignorance and gullibility.

The early struggle to define the state was won by the secular left-wing Zionists of whom Ben-Gurion was an example. Unfortunately that segment was seduced by and ultimately subsumed in the peace movement, a movement based on a pathologically false view of reality, and encouraged by the worst enemies of the Jewish people. Its collision with the bitter truths of the real Middle East has left in their camp only those who have rejected Zionism, the academics and Ha’aretz columnists who are simply anti-state.

The remnants of political vitality are found today on the Right, especially the nationalistic-religious segment. For example, here is how Naftali Bennett explained it, in a fascinating interview with Ari Shavit of Ha’aretz:

Zionism arose thanks to secularism … The dogmatic religious establishment in the Diaspora was not capable of initiating Zionism without [Theodor] Herzl’s secular involvement. But secular Zionism was an existential Zionism that saw the state of the Jews as a refuge state.

A state that is 64 years old cannot continue to exist on the ethos of a refuge state, on security alone. After all, if this were the reason for our existence, there are many places that are safer for Jews – like Melbourne, Australia, or New Jersey. They don’t send children to the army there, and missiles aren’t flying there. Therefore, the time has come to move from the existential Zionism that you come from to a Jewish Zionism. It is necessary to base our national life on a Jewish basis, and it is necessary to give the state a Jewish coloration.

I don’t support religious coercion, but I do believe that Judaism is our ‘why’: Judaism is the reason for our existence and the justification for our existence, and the meaning of our existence.

This isn’t an easy sell to secular Israelis. For many of them, ‘Judaism’ is a corrupt functionary that tells them that they aren’t Jewish enough to get married in a Jewish state, or a haredi who maintains a large family on welfare, doesn’t do army service and spits at secular women.

The ideal is a tolerant Jewish state which is nevertheless fully Jewish. This will have to come from those, like Bennett, who see themselves as observant, and not from the liberal side of Judaism, which has embraced pluralism to the point of accepting a universalist ideology that does not “distinguish between Israel and the Nations.”

Is it possible? I am not sure, but I think it’s essential to our survival.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Zionism, Naftali Bennett