Contrary to claims made at the Chuck Hagel confirmation hearings, the Israel Lobby does indeed intimidate people in Washington D.C., and the Jewish Supremacist AIPAC organization has “a heck of a lot of power,” famous British journalist and author Rupert Cornwall has said.
Writing in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, Cornwall, more famous for his press awards covering the collapse of the Soviet Union, his work for the Financial Times and Reuters, Washington bureau editor and author of the 1983 book God’s Banker (about Roberto Calvi, the Italian banker found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge), said that as “public grovels go, this one was pretty spectacular. Former Senator Chuck Hagel, who may or may not become the next US Secretary of Defense, was back in his old haunts on Capitol Hill for his confirmation hearings, trying to explain a remark he made a few years back, that “the Jewish lobby intimidated Congress” and did some “dumb things”.
Noting that the focus of the hearing was on Hagel’s remarks on the power of the “Jewish lobby” to intimidate people in Washington D.C., Cornwell continued:
“But what lingered in the mind was not the set-to over Iraq, or the suggestions that Hagel was ‘soft’ on Iran (he once had the temerity to suggest direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran) but his exchanges with [Senator Lindsey] Graham over the ‘Jewish lobby’.
“And that is precisely what it is: one of the most potent advocacy groups in Washington DC, and not only here. Few of its spokesmen were more forceful than Ed Koch, the colourful former mayor of New York who died on Friday. Koch, child of Jewish immigrants from Poland, was a passionate Israel supporter, and accused Obama of ‘turning his back on Israel’ by naming Hagel to the Pentagon, which he called ‘a terrible appointment’.
“Power lies in the perception of power, and the Israel lobby, led by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is perceived to have a heck of a lot of it.
“Fall foul of the Israel lobby, with its financial muscle and ability to put the word out, and, it is said, your political career may be doomed. That, presumably, was what Hagel was getting at when he spoke of people in Congress being ‘intimidated’.
“Exhibit A in this argument is Chuck Percy, the three-term Republican Senator from Illinois said to have been defeated in 1984 as a result of an AIPAC-led campaign against him. Percy’s offence, according to a committee official at the time, was to have shown ‘insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’.
“Also mentioned is George Bush Snr’s failed 1992 re-election campaign, to which his short-lived block on loan guarantees to Israel while it continued to expand settlements may have contributed.
“But one thing is incontestable. Congress is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. Probably no more than a dozen of the 435 Representatives can remotely be described as “pro-Palestinian”, while the mood in the Senate may be divined from a 2000 resolution expressing support for Israel, signed by 96 of its members (Hagel was one of the four who did not).
“Not for nothing did Pat Buchanan once describe Congress as ‘Israeli-occupied territory’ – so much so that an Israeli prime minister at odds with the White House can bypass the President, making his case directly to an AIPAC conference or on Capitol Hill.
“Take Benjamin Netanyahu when he delivered an address to Congress in May 2011. I remember the assembled lawmakers jumping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes to give him 29 standing ovations. Whatever else, Bibi would never have received an acclamation like that in the Knesset.
“If Chuck Hagel doesn’t make it to the Pentagon, opposition to him from the Israel lobby won’t have been the only reason, or even the main reason. But one thing you can be sure of. A good few more on Capitol Hill will have been ‘intimidated’.”
