BuzzFeed Joins MSM in Abandoning Israel for Hagel

For the most complete demonstration of just how far the MSM is willing to go in its attempt to use the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense as a cudgel to put Israel on trial and endanger the Jewish state, look no farther than BuzzFeed, one of the mouth organs of the Obama Administration.

BuzzFeed offers tidbits such as this:

President Barack Obama’s decision to nominate former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense Monday will shatter a fake consensus on American policy toward Iran and challenge what have increasingly become limits of Washington conversation about Israel.

Fake consensus on Iran? The only consensus is the Republicans’ true belief that Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped and Democrats’ public posturing that they believe that, too. Is BuzzFeed intimating that Democrats are fine leaving Iran to its own “devices”?

The truth is that the Obama Administration probably is fine with that scenario, and now they are nominating someone who’s fine with that, too.

Limits of conversation about Israel? Are they kidding? How many organizations routinely lambast Israel for defending itself or merely existing?

BuzzFeed may not know how many, but they quote enough of them:

“The Hagel confirmation battle will show whether the AIPAC crowd has cried wolf too many times and the system is now becoming numb,” said Steve Clemons, a central figure in what he calls “progressive realist” foreign policy and Washington editor at large for The Atlantic. The fight “will also out the fact that the real issue here is not US-Israel relations but rather how fearful defense contractors which suck up a huge amount of defense spending are pulling a lot of these levers,” he said.

“The controversy leading up to the Hagel nomination has tested just how much space there is in Washington for rational and independent thinking on American policy in the Middle East,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of the left-leaning Israel advocacy group J Street, which was formed in part to make domestic politcal space for Obama to exert pressure on Israel. “It’s good to see the nomination moving forward because it means there’s more bark than bite to the intimidation some right-wing groups have tried to exert over those who disagree with them.”

Peter Beinart, the former New Republic editor who’s now a leading voice well to that magazine’s left made a similar case column to be published on Monday on his Open Zion blog at The Daily Beast that “At the heart of the opposition to Hagel is the fear that he will do what Republicans have thus far largely prevented: bring America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan into the Iran debate …I’ve also heard many government officials, some of them Jewish, say things similar to what Hagel is now being flayed for having [said],” Beinart wrote. “The difference is that those other officials first confirmed that they were speaking off the record. One even lowered his voice and closed the door.”

And BuzzFeed does its own spear-carrying for Hagel, with one article touting his Vietnam experience as evidence of his expertise in military matters and reluctance to involve our soldiers in war; one defending his use of the term “Jewish Lobby” by citing a manual published for American soldiers in Saudi Arabia when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary that also used the term (of course, ignoring the fact that the manual was obviously speaking of Saudi Arabs who might use the term), a third piece defending Hagel’s refusal to sign a 1999 letter condemning Russian anti-Semitism (signed by the other 99 senators) by echoing Hagel’s weak excuse of sending a letter to Bill Clinton, and a fourth piece that vainly tries to excuse Hagel for saying this:

Our relationship with Israel is a special and historic one, but it need not, and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice.

Hagel himself puts Israel at risk with that last statement, which is flagrantly false. If defending one of our closest allies cannot be prioritized over other countries that routinely disparage us, or harbor terrorists to kill 3000 of us, then we have lost the moral standing making us the most-longed for haven in the world.

But Buzzfeed isn’t interested. Obama says jump, and BuzzFeed says “how high?” Obama says abandon Israel, and BuzzFeed says “how soon?”