Chuck Schumer Teaches Chuck Hagel The Evil of Jewish Slurs -- And Then Uses One Himself

Now that Chuck Hagel has received the official blessing of Chuck Schumer -- who has revealed the secret of Hagel's behind-the-scenes metamorphosis -- it is expected that there will be no further hurdles to Senate approval of Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

After all, Schumer sat down with him for 90 minutes, during which time Hagel not only allayed all of Schumer's initial misgivings -- he  also "almost had tears in his eyes" when it was explained to him how hurtful the term "Jewish Lobby" actually is.

Apparently Hagel doesn't read the papers much.

But getting back to Schumer, there were other aspects of his defense of Hagel that were just a bit over the top.

For one thing, Schumer claimed that when all was said and done, no major Jewish organizations were actually opposed to Hagel's nomination in the first place.

But is that really true?

Writing in The Jewish Press, Lori Lowenthal Marcus notes that in his defense of Hagel, Schumer Cites Hagel’s Tears, but Smears Jewish Conservatives -- and that Schumer's claim that there is no Jewish opposition to Hagel is simply not true:

The Zionist Organization of America and the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) have been on record opposing the nomination of Chuck Hagel since President Obama first named him as his choice for secretary of Defense.

The centrist American Jewish Committee has been at least softly opposed to Hagel’s nomination even before the nod was officially given by the president. Back in December, the AJC’s president, David Harris said, “what message would it send to have a Pentagon chief who has very different views on strategies for dealing with Iran, the central foreign policy challenge of our time, than the White House has had to date? Or questions the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group at the same time the Administration is urging the European Union to add the group to its terrorism list?”

And the politically centrist, Democratic Party-leaning Anti-Defamation League joined the AJC in strongly questioning the nomination after information about some of Hagel’s comments, in particular that he was recorded as saying that the “U.S. State Department is an adjunct of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,” at a speech at Rutgers University in 2007.

Then there is another thing: despite his lecture to Hagel on the evils of using anti-Jewish language, Schumer seems to ignore this lesson when it suits him:

"The main fight on Hagel is coming from the neocons," said Schumer, who answered questions after an appearance at an Association for a Better New York breakfast in lower Manhattan.

"And they resent Hagel's apostasy on Iraq. You may remember - the neocons helped push Iraq - and Hagel was one of the first Republicans to say Iraq wasn't working,” Schumer said. “And he was right. But that's where it's coming from.”

Writes Marcus:

Ah, yes, the evil neocons. Isn’t that a derogatory code word for a particular religious minority group?

Read the whole thing.

Think about it.

Considering the charges made by the likes of Mearsheimer and Stephens -- and those that follow in their footsteps -- that the Israel Lobby pushed the US into the Iraq War, for Schumer to then turn around and use the kind of charged language he claims to have disabused Hagel of, makes one wonder whether maybe it is the other 'Chuck' who actually needs a good talking to.

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