Pres Obama Welcomes Hagel's Confirmation.

 “I’m a United States senator,” Hagel declared in 2008. “I’m not an Israeli senator.”

Pres Obama Welcomes Hagel's Confirmation.HT: IsraelMatzav.(INN).

President Barack Obama welcomed on Tuesday the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, saying it allowed him to "have the defense secretary our nation needs and the leader our troops deserve.""I will be counting on Chuck's judgment and counsel as we end the war in Afghanistan, bring our troops home, stay ready to meet the threats of our time and keep our military the finest fighting force in the world," said Obama.

Chuck Hagel has been confirmed as Secretary of Defense 58-41 in a mostly party line vote. The previous record high for no votes on a confirmed Secretary of Defense was 11.
William Kristol of the Emergency Committee for Israel has issued the following statement. "We fought the good fight, and are proud to have done so. We salute all those -- Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews -- who joined with us in the effort to secure a better Secretary of Defense. We are heartened that the overwhelming majority of senators from one of the two major parties voted against confirming Mr. Hagel. We take some comfort in Mr. Hagel's confirmation conversions on the issues of Israel and Iran, and do believe that, as a result of this battle, Mr. Hagel will be less free to pursue dangerous policies at the Defense Department and less inclined to advocate them within the administration. And since hope is an American characteristic and a Jewish virtue, we will also say that we hope Mr. Hagel will rise to the occasion and successfully discharge his weighty duties. In this task we wish him well.
"This battle against Chuck Hagel is over. The fight for a principled, pro-Israel foreign policy goes on.
The campaign against Hagel's nomination failed precisely because no one -- none of the Jewish organizations that attacked him or his adversaries on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- had the moral courage to call Hagel what he is: a political anti-Semite. Lindsey Graham came closest, but was loath to pull the trigger."Hmmmm......It's a very sad day for Israel.Read the full story here.

Obama may not have given up his plan to nominate Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Obama may not have given up his plan to nominate Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.(Breitbart).By Joel. B. Pollak. Rumor has it that President Barack Obama may not have given up his plan to nominate former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of Defense after all, and that Hagel’s nomination may in fact be imminent. The fact that Hagel is even still under consideration is a signal that Obama is not worried about Hagel’s weakness on Israel, his reluctance to confront Iran, and his enthusiasm for a smaller military and weaker America.
The main reason that President Obama wants to choose Hagel for Defense is probably the same reason he nominated Ray LaHood to be Secretary of Transportation in his first term: it is politically clever to have a Republican in charge of a policy that Republicans dislike.
Yet Obama may also find Hagel to be an attractive choice because of his ideological beliefs. Hagel not only opposed President George W. Bush over the Iraq War (in its later stages), but also opposed fellow Republicans over Iran and over support for Israel. These are beliefs that Democrats who take national security seriously--even those who opposed the Iraq War, like Alan Dershowitz--also find troubling. Dershowitz writes:

Hagel’s appointment would send another disturbing message to the bigots of Tehran, who believe that the only people calling for military action against Iran are “the Jews.” Hagel speaks their language. He is the only mainstream American politician to talk openly about how “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people.”...Even if Hagel were to be nominated and then not confirmed by the Senate, the Iranians would get the wrong message.

Dershowitz does not say--but surely knows--that Hagel’s appointment would also tend to validate conservative criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy, in particular the notion that underneath the platitudes and routine security cooperation Obama harbors a skepticism about Israel and a desire to appease Iran. This might very well be what Obama meant when he promised Russia’s leaders more “flexibility” after he had won re-election.Hmmmm....."Staunchest Ally Of Israel" nominates only Anti Israel candidates.Read the full story here.

Israel's 'Staunchest Ally' the Obama admin to fund UNESCO?

Israel's 'Staunchest Ally' the Obama admin to fund UNESCO?HT: IsraelMatzav.

When 'Palestine' joined UNESCO, it cost the organization 22% of its funding, or $78 million annually. Claudia Rosett reports that the Obama administration has a plan to re-fund UNESCO.

But Bokova, in her push for the resumption of U.S. funding, has had an improbable ally: the U.S. administration itself. In Paris, President Barack Obama’s ambassador to UNESCO is a former congressional staffer, David Killion, who played a part in bringing the U.S. back into UNESCO nine years ago. Following the UNESCO vote last year to admit the Palestinians, Killion came close to apologizing for the U.S. position. He pledged that the U.S. would keep trying to “find ways to support and strengthen the important work” of UNESCO.
In February, the U.S. State Department released a budget proposal that ignored the defunding of UNESCO required by U.S. law, and proposed $79 million for UNESCO in fiscal year 2013. A footnote, in fine print, informed readers that the State Department “intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO.”
Some members of Congress were outraged. Florida representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, released a statement saying she was “deeply disappointed that, rather than standing up for U.S. law and for our key ally, Israel, the Administration is seeking to remove this roadblock to the unilateral recognition of a ‘Palestinian state.’” Ros-Lehtinen added that any attempt to waive the law “will pave the way for the Palestinian leadership’s unilateral statehood scheme to drive on, and sends a disastrous message that the U.S. will fund U.N. bodies no matter what irresponsible decisions they make.”
Enough lawmakers shared her views that it seemed for a while that the administration would not get its wish to reopen the money spigot for UNESCO. Some deterrent is needed to Palestinian opportunism at the U.N., where Obama’s State Department failed last month to stop the General Assembly from voting to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s status to that of non-member observer state. Former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton notes that how the U.S. deals with UNESCO could set a vital precedent for how it would treat other U.N. agencies, such as the World Health Organization, were they to admit the Palestinian Authority. “If you waive the prohibition once,” Bolton says, “and waive it for a trivial little organization like UNESCO, the pressure to waive it everywhere else will be overwhelming.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, UNESCO has been busy in the back corridors. ...

All of which might be of no great interest were Papagiannis laboring in Washington to enhance literacy, or perhaps restore cultural artifacts. But there’s a lot of discussion going on among this crowd about how the funding law might be waived. On one of the blogs linked to on the Americans for UNESCO site, there’s a post dated December 1 with the caption “The Process to Change the Law.” It outlines exactly how that might be done — by way of an amendment to a big spending bill: “There will probably not be a specific vote of the Congress on the proposed amendment. Rather it will be included in a larger bill to appropriate funds, that will probably be approved before March, 2013. . . . Lacking strong opposition in the Congress, the waiver will probably be incorporated into the bill.”
Is this credible? I phoned the author of the post, the same John Daly. Daly is an ardent supporter of UNESCO, but unlike Papagiannis he answered my questions. He said he got this information from Peter Yeo, when Yeo spoke at a November 26 panel hosted by Americans for UNESCO at George Washington University. Yeo is a former congressional staffer who now serves as executive director of the Better World Campaign, which is an advocacy arm of Ted Turner’s well-heeled and well-connected U.N. Foundation. In a phone interview this week, Yeo repeated the view that a waiver for UNESCO is likely to go through in “a big omnibus spending bill,” because “this is a strategy that’s been outlined by the president.”
When Yeo shared these thoughts at last month’s Americans for UNESCO panel, he was speaking alongside Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer. Both of them were responding to a keynote speech by UNESCO’s George Papagiannis.Hmmmm......Obama: "But I’m also mindful of the proverb, “A man is judged by his deeds, not his words.” So if you want to know where my heart lies, look no further than what I have done — to stand up for Israel."Read the full story here.

Bad news for Israel: Obama wants Hagel at Defense

Bad news for Israel: Obama wants Hagel at Defense.HT: IsraelMatzav. Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is President Obama's leading candidate to become Secretary of Defense.
Like Obama, Hagel was a critic of the war in Iraq. He joined then-candidate Obama on an overseas trip that included stops in Iraq and Afghanistan in July 2008.
Obama in 2009 named Hagel as the co-chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, an independent, nonpartisan panel that makes recommendations on improving the performance of U.S. intelligence gathering. He’s also chairman of a separate oversight board that reviews U.S. intelligence compliance with laws and the Constitution.

This is not good news for Israel.

Here is what the Jewish Democrats said about Hagel in March 2007:

As Senator Hagel sits around for six more months and tries to decide whether to launch a futile bid for the White House, he has a lot of questions to answer about his commitment to Israel. Consider this:

# In August 2006, Hagel was one of only 12 Senators who refused to write the EU asking them to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

# In October 2000, Hagel was one of only 4 Senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.

# In November 2001, Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yassir Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.

# In December 2005, Hagel was one of only 27 who refused to sign a letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections.

# In June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran's nuclear program at the G-8 summit.

Here's what the National Review wrote about Hagel's stance on Israel in 2002:

"There's nothing Hagel likes less than talking about right and wrong in the context of foreign policy. Pro-Israeli groups view him almost uniformly as a problem. 'He doesn't always cast bad votes, but he always says the wrong thing,' comments an Israel supporter who watches Congress. An April speech is a case in point. 'We will need a wider lens to grasp the complex nature and consequences of terrorism,' said Hagel. He went on to cite a few examples of terrorism: FARC in Colombia, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and the Palestinian suicide bombers. Then he continued, 'Arabs and Palestinians view the civilian casualties resulting from Israeli military occupation as terrorism.' He didn't exactly say he shares this view - but he also failed to reject it."

And here's what the anti-Israel group, CAIR, wrote in praise of Hagel:

"Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel ?" [Council on American-Islamic Relations, 8/28/06] Hmmmm...."Staunchest ally of Israel"........You didn't think he would pick a pro-Israel candidate.......Did you?Read the full story here.