Published on February 4th, 2013 | by Marsha B. Cohen

AIPAC, NORPAC and Hagel

by Marsha B. Cohen

http://www.lobelog.com/aipac-norpac-and-hagel/

The hearings to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense seem to have been obsessively focused on Israel, and on the threat Iran poses to Israel, with little interest on the part of most senators on Hagel’s views of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea. Several senators seemed clueless that many of the candidate’s views, expressed in speeches, votes, etc. were the purview of the Secretary of State, not the Secretary of Defense.
Why the obsession with Israel? The quick and easy answer  is AIPAC, which claims the title of “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” on every page of its website
and in all of its publicity. But there’s more to pro-Israel lobbying than AIPAC. Unless you live in New Jersey or Rockland County, New York, and read the New Jersey Jewish Standard – or are a member of the House or Senate — you’ve probably never even heard of NORPAC. NORPAC is a proudly bipartisan, relatively small and somewhat obscure Political Action Committee (PAC) which has been supporting pro-Israel congressional candidates from both parties for nearly two decades that has joined ranks with right-wing, rabidly partisan Republican neoconservative groups such as the Emergency Committee for Israel in opposition to Hagel’s nomination.
But there’s something truly, totally and uniquely bizarre about NORPAC’s anti-Hagel stance. In order to fully appreciate its monumental cognitive dissonance, it’s necessary to know a bit more about NORPAC, AIPAC and the internal politics of the “pro-Israel community.”