Meanwhile, Kristol's ideological kin are getting into the spirit of things. The Washington Post's neocon blogger, Jennifer Rubin, quotes Abe Foxman saying Hagel's views "border on anti-Semitism."

In case you don't know who Abe Foxman is, he's the guy who believes that, though Jews can build synagogues wherever they want, and Christians can build churches wherever they want, Muslims shouldn't build mosques wherever they want. (This may sound like a bigoted position, but it's grounded in respect for relatives of 9/11 victims, whose anguish, says Foxman, "entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.")

The other thing you should know about Foxman is that he's head of the Anti-Defamation League. So far as I can tell, that means he's opposed to defamation unless the target is (1) a Muslim who aspires to build a mosque in the wrong place; or (2) someone whose views on Israel don't meet with his approval -- in which case he'll personally do the defaming.

What is the evidence that Chuck Hagel is anti-Semitic, or at least borderline anti-Semitic? Apparently he once said, "The political reality is that ... the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here [on Capitol Hill]." The Weekly Standard's anonymous "top Republican Senate aide" is quoted as calling this "the worst kind of anti-Semitism" because it means Hagel "believes in the existence of a nefarious Jewish lobby that secretly controls U.S. foreign policy."

Actually, it doesn't mean that. It means what it says: Hagel believes that AIPAC, like the NRA, is powerful enough to sometimes intimidate legislators. Now, it does follow that AIPAC and the NRA influence policy in their domains, but not that they "control" it. If this "top Republican Senate aide" doubts that AIPAC or the NRA influence policy via intimidation, that's just more reason to wonder whether such a person actually exists. I don't see how you could work in the Senate and be sentient and be oblivious to such facts.

The other complaint about Hagel's quote, expressed by neoconservative Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal, is that Hagel used the term "Jewish lobby" instead of "Israel lobby". This is actually a valid criticism, because the Israel lobby does in fact include lots of Christian Zionists, and for that matter doesn't include lots of Jews. On the other hand, "Jewish lobby" was once the standard term for what is now called the Israel lobby (especially back when the term was closer to being accurate, before Christian Zionism became a big political force). And it doesn't seem to me that it's an indictable offense for a guy Hagel's age to have on one occasion used this once-accepted term -- especially in light of the fact that he subsequently acknowledged it was the wrong term to use.

At any rate, this isolated Hagel quote certainly doesn't justify Stephens' clear insinuation that Hagel is anti-Semitic. ("Prejudice ... has an olfactory element," writes Stephens, and in Hagel's case "the odor is especially ripe.") Neither does any other "evidence" Stephens adduces -- such as the fact that not many Jews live in Nebraska, the state Hagel represented as a senator.