It was unbelievable, if not sickening, to watch how Republican congressmen shamelessly drilled respected former senator Chuck Hagel, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as his secretary of defence during his second term.

It virtually amounted to a circus-like hearing as Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one after another, primarily questioned the Vietnam War hero about his support for Israel, rather than his stance on US defence policy.

Shockingly, Hagel was asked only two questions about military suicides — locally, a hot subject — among US forces who served overseas. The figures released last week by the Department of Veterans Affairs show that more veterans are killing themselves than previously thought, with 22 deaths a day, or one every 65 minutes, on average.

At the just-concluded hearing, Israel was mentioned 178 times and Iran 171.

The all-day hearing was disappointing to Hagel’s supporters as he, some believe, prostrated himself before the pro-Israel lobby and their Republican supporters, including Senator John McCain, a onetime presidential nominee, and Senator Lindsey Graham.

Philip Weiss, founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss.net, a “progressive Jewish” website, wrote that “this hearing [was] a wonderful event because it demonstrate[d] the naked influence of the Israel lobby in our political life”.

He added: “Zionism has so influenced the American political culture, via political money and think tanks and columnists and editors, that it has folded Israel’s war against Hizbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians and Iran into our outlook on the Middle East. The conflation of American and Israel interests has become an article of faith in the [US] establishment.”

Other commentators believed Hagel’s Obama administration handlers “urged him to be something he’s not”. It is common practice in the US that all nominees for senior government positions are usually warned not to allow their hearings to turn combative, although one commentator described Hagel as “quite compelling when he’s mad”.

Editorially, The New York Times had this to say on the subject, probably much to the surprise of many congressmen: “The sad truth is that there is more honest discussion about American-Israeli policy in Israel than in this country. Too often in the United States, supporting Israel has come to mean meeting narrow ideological litmus tests. J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that was formed as a counterpoint to conservative groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has argued for vibrant debate and said ‘criticism of Israeli policy does not threaten the health of the state of Israel’. In fact, it is essential.”

Despite the Republican diatribe against Hagel, who appeared to have caved in to some of the criticism, it is not likely that the former senator will be denied the coveted Cabinet position, especially that the Democrats hold the majority on the Senate committee.

Moreover, the announcement that Obama is planning a visit to Israel, Palestine and Jordan next month, energised Hagel’s bid to assume the top position at the Pentagon.

Although Obama’s trip would be generally welcomed in the region, there are many pitfalls ahead. For one, there is the diminished status of the Premier-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, who has lost many of his supporters in the new Knesset after the recent Israeli elections.

Netanyahu has been tasked by President Shimon Peres to form a new government that will be committed to peace. Yet, this is no guarantee that the thuggish Israeli prime minister will do so. He did not seem concerned about the issue since he never mentioned the word “peace” in the election campaign.

More importantly, he will have to abandon his expansionist plans in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a delay in transferring Palestinian tax revenues from Israel, as happened recently.

Adding oil to the fire has been Israel’s launching of two air strikes against Syria last week, a step undertaken, shockingly, with prior American knowledge. Israel has not officially acknowledged this serious unlawful event, just as it did in 2007, when it bombarded an alleged Syrian nuclear site.

This will certainly come up for discussion with the new US secretary of state, John Kerry, who also revealed that he would be visiting Israel, Palestine and Jordan in March.

There is hopefulness that these visits, like the one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Cairo recently, will once again revive the significance of the Arab world, which is churning in the wake of the Arab Spring that has sowed the seeds of democracy in the region.