When Advisers Hate Israel - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

The dark narrative in Hillary's emails.

Hillary Clinton has tried to portray herself as a steadfast friend of Israel. “I have stood with Israel my entire career,” she wrote in an article appearing last November in The Forward. “As president, I will continue this fight.” She promised that she would “invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.”

Hillary Clinton’s steadfast support for the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran calls into question her stated “personal commitment” to “fighting for Israel.” Peace and security in the region are not enhanced by a loophole ridden deal with a fanatical Islamist regime sworn to Israel’s destruction and to exporting its self-described “Islamic revolution” around the world.

Perhaps even more disturbing is what we have learned so far from the disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail system, which she recklessly used while serving as Secretary of State. Certain e-mails from her closest advisers that have been made public reveal the barrage of anti-Israel counsel she was receiving.

“These emails seem to demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs,” the Jerusalem Post concluded after reviewing the e-mails.

Moreover, Hillary was not just a passive recipient. In some cases, she indicated an interest in pursuing further the ideas she was receiving.

For example, Anne Marie Slaughter, Hillary Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009 to 2011, wrote the following to Hillary:

“This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we launched a ‘Pledge for Palestine’ campaign... Such a campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state...There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Why didn’t Hillary Clinton, who professes a lifelong “personal commitment” to “fighting for Israel,” firmly reject such an absurd idea out of hand or simply ignore it? Instead, Clinton actually welcomed the suggestion, writing back to Ms. Slaughter: ““I am very interested- pls flesh out. Thx.”

Thomas Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel during the Reagan administration and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs during President Bill Clinton’s second term, also provided some peculiar e-mail advice to Hillary Clinton regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. He would later chair the State Department’s official Benghazi inquiry, which he said had concluded that Clinton performed “responsibly and well.”

In an e-mail dated December 18, 2011, Pickering asked Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills to forward on to Hillary his bizarre suggestion to encourage behind the scenes Palestinian “peaceful” demonstrations against Israeli “occupation.” The demonstrations should be led by women, he advised.

Citing the protests at Tahrir Square as a model, Pickering suggested “peaceful demonstrations against all aspects of the occupation on the Palestinian sides — roadblocks, land confiscations, new settlement activity, around military government installations and perhaps in Area C which they do not control.”

Pickering further advised against any public role for the United States.  “Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated, encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone,” he warned.

Hillary was interested enough in Pickering’s proposal that she instructed her aide Monica Hanley to “Pls. Print.”

Hillary Clinton’s informal adviser Sidney Blumenthal send her a stream of e-mails offering his anti-Israeli viewpoint. In one memo he sent Clinton, for example, he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “stage managing US Jewish organizations (and neocons, and the religious right, and whomever else he can muster) against the administration.” Clinton had asked Blumenthal for his advice on her upcoming speech to AIPAC.

Blumenthal sent another e-mail to Clinton on May 31, 2010 regarding Israel’s military boarding of one of the Gaza flotilla ships on the way to break Israel’s self-defense blockade. Blumenthal wrote that the Israeli action would have negative consequences for U.S. foreign policy and security as well as causing “the death of the peace process.” Hillary Clinton forwarded Blumenthal’s message to Jake Sullivan, her deputy chief of staff at the State Department, with her note “FYI and itys” (Internet slang for I told you so).

These are just a few samplings of anti-Israel advice that Hillary Clinton was receiving from her trusted advisers while she was Secretary of State. However, still shrouded in secrecy is advice that Muslim Brotherhood-linked Huma Abedin, a key part of Hillary’s inner circle of advisers, both at the State Department and now in her presidential campaign, was communicating to Hillary. She was directly connected with Hillary’s private e-mail system.

Only by having public access to all of Huma Abedin’s e-mail exchanges with her boss can we understand the extent to which Abedin influenced Clinton’s positive attitude towards the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.  We already know that Huma Abedin’s mother, with whom Huma worked for years at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs as assistant editor of its journal before joining the Department of State, served together with Morsi’s wife on the Guidance Bureau of the Muslim Sisterhood.

In her 2014 book Hard Choices, Hillary singled out Morsi for praise. “Morsi helped me negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that holds to this day,” Clinton wrote in a caption under a picture of Clinton and Morsi looking into each other’s eyes during their get together in Cairo. She was referring to ceasefire negotiations that Morsi brokered on behalf of his Hamas buddies in November 2012. All that Hillary’s negotiating partner really accomplished was to give Hamas breathing room to stockpile more sophisticated rockets and build terror tunnels in a lead up to the war that broke out just a month or so after Hillary’s book was published.

Either Hillary Clinton did not do her homework on Morsi before she partnered with him or she simply did not care. Morsi’s hatred for Israel was there for all to see.

For example, Morsi said back in 2010, before becoming Egypt’s president, that the Palestinian Authority was a creation of "the Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people.”  He rejected negotiations as "a waste of time and opportunities" and called instead for “military resistance.” He referred to Israelis as "descendants of apes and pigs."  And, just like Hamas, Morsi rejected Israel’s right to exist:  "The Zionists have no right to the land of Palestine,” Morsi said. “What they took before 1947-8 constitutes plundering, and what they are doing now is a continuation of this plundering. By no means do we recognize their Green Line. The land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not to the Zionists."

Hillary Clinton must be judged as a candidate for president of the United States by her actions and by the circle of close advisers she has relied upon, not by her promises made during the campaign. By this standard, Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted to stand by Israel against the mortal enemies surrounding the Jewish state.


Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261728/when-advisers-hate-israel-joseph-klein

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