Hagel in 2010: Israel on its way to apartheid

Conservative newspaper Washington Free Beacon has revealed another negative statement made by US Secretary of Defense-designate Chuck Hagel against Israel during an appearance at Rutgers University in 2010.

Last week, the Free Beacon reported on a contemporaneous account of a speech then-Senator Hagel gave at Rutgers in 2007, which claimed that he had described the US Department of State as an extension of the Israeli government.

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On Tuesday, the newspaper published another statement made by Hagel, that Israel was on its way to becoming an apartheid state.

According to the report, Hagel also accused Israel of violating UN resolutions, called for US-designated terrorist organization Hamas to be included in any peace negotiations, and described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “radical."

Law student Kenneth Wagner, who attended the 2010 speech, provided the Washington Free Beacon with an email he sent during the event to a contact at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“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 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.

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