Back in 2010 Chuck Hagel gave a speech, hosted by Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics, and according to an attendee of the event Hagel referred to Netanyahu as a ‘radical’ and said Israel would risk becoming an apartheid state if it refused to allow Palestinians to form a state.
No wonder Obama picked him:
WFB – Kenneth Wagner, who attended the 2010 speech while a Rutgers University law student, provided the Washington Free Beacon with an email he sent during the event to a contact at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The email is time-stamped April 9, 2010, at 11:37 AM.
“I am sitting in a lecture by Chuck Hagel at Rutgers,” Wagner wrote in the email. “He basically said that Israel has violated every UN resolution since 1967, that Israel has violated its agreements with the quartet, that it was risking becoming an apartheid state if it didn’t allow the Palestinians to form a state. He said that the settlements were getting close to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state would be impossible.”
“He said that he [thought] that Netanyahu was a radical and that even [former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi] Livni, who was hard nosed thought he was too radical and so wouldn’t join in a coalition [government] with him. … He said that Hamas has to be brought in to any peace negotiation,” Wagner wrote.
AIPAC had no comment.
Wagner said the remarks were made during the Q&A session. The speech took place at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark.
Wagner, a pro-Israel activist, reiterated the account in an interview with the Free Beacon and called Hagel’s comments “pretty shocking.”
“I was very surprised at his attitude because I had been listening to politicians speak about the situation in the Middle East and the U.S. Israel relationship for about two decades,” Wagner told the Free Beacon. “And it was probably the most negative thing I’d ever heard anybody in elected office say.”
I’m sure this won’t matter though to McCain and Graham who say they are done holding up Hagel’s nomination. They’ll let him get elected and then complain about him later.