Hillary has always been anti-Israel

A group of pro-Israel Jews have formed a 2016 campaign group called, “Jewish Americans Ready For Hillary!” On their website, “Jewish Americans Ready For Hillary!” claim, “Throughout her career, Hillary Clinton has fought for the issues that matter most to Jewish Americans.”

That claim is not true. Except for the time from her first campaign for New York’s Senate seat in 2000 to her resignation from the Senate to become Secretary of State in January 2009, Hillary Clinton has never been pro-Israel.

Even before her marriage to Bill, Hillary Clinton was opposing Israel and promoting the forces of terrorism. On page 49 of his book “American Evita,” Christopher Anderson writes:

“At a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was “sympathetic” to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant leader, Yasser Arafat. When Arafat made his famous appearance before the UN General Assembly in November 1974 wearing his revolutionary uniform and his holster on his hip, Bill “was outraged like everybody else,” said a Yale Law School classmate. But not Hillary, who tried to convince Bill that Arafat was a “freedom fighter” trying to free his people from their Israeli “oppressors.”

On page 50, the author relates an experience that Hillary and her future husband had during a trip to Arkansas in 1973.

“It was during this trip to his home state that Bill took Hillary to meet a politically well-connected friend. When they drove up to the house, Bill and Hillary noticed that a menorah (not to be confused with the more common and subtler mezuzah) had been affixed to the front door.

“To his astonishment, as soon as Hillary saw the menorah, she refused to get out of the car. … According to [a] friend and … eyewitness, Bill said, ‘I’m sorry, but Hillary’s really tight with the people in the PLO in New York. They’re friends of hers, and she just doesn’t feel right about the menorah.’”

When she was first lady in May 1998, Mrs. Clinton became the first member of any presidential administration ever to call for a Palestinian state (telling a youth conference on Middle East peace in Switzerland that she supported the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state).

Then there was the famous episode in November 1999, while on a State visit to the Middle East, when she publicly appeared with Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha, and listened to Mrs. Arafat make false charges against Israel (IDF using poison t0 contaminate the water). Mrs. Clinton sat by silently listening to a real-time translation, and gave the terrorist’s wife a hug and a kiss when she finished speaking.

Many hours after the event, and only after a media furor put her on the spot, Mrs. Clinton called on all sides to refrain from “inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations,” including Israel, whose leaders made no such accusations (but through today, Clinton never disputed Suha Arafat’s slander). Years later, Hillary made a feeble attempt at an excuse: the translator screwed up.

Before her tenure in the State Department, Bill and Hillary Clinton made mega dollars from their extensive involvement with Dubai. Besides being a leader in the movement to boycott Israel, Dubai is the “Hong Kong” of the Arab world, and a major commerce and shipping point for the “business-side” of terrorism. Bill and Hillary are major friends of Dubai, to the point where the Clinton Foundation has established Dubai study departments in universities in the U.S. and London. They worked hard at granting legitimacy to this Jew-hating, terrorist-supporting nation.

While Hillary was running for President in 2007, San Francisco Examiner columnist P.J. Corkery wrote that Clinton made $10 million a year from Yucaipa, a Dubai firm. Ron Berkle, the owner of Yucaipa companies, was a major fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary.

One of her first actions after leaving the Senate to become Secretary of State was to ignore a previous deal with Israel that said Israel could add housing units to existing houses and new “settlements” in Jerusalem. Instead, she called for a total “settlement” freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Barack Obama. What she perceived as a minor concession (no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. For all intents and purposes, Clinton was telling Israeli parents their married children could no longer live in their neighborhoods.

Mrs. Clinton said there was never an agreement between Israel and the U.S. about natural expansion of existing settlements; but Elliot Abrams, who negotiated the agreement for the United States, said Clinton’s contention is simply not true. The Palestinians quickly seized upon the Hillary-created settlement issue and used the administration’s demand for a “settlement” freeze a precondition to further talks.

In August 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced a ten-month “settlement” freeze. It was approved by the cabinet and implemented on Nov. 25 and was to run till Sept. 25, 2010. Despite pressure from the United States, the Palestinians refused to join any talks the first nine plus months of the freeze; they did not come to the negotiation table until three weeks before the freeze was scheduled to end.

As the end of the construction halt approached, the U.S. began to negotiate with Israel to extend the freeze. Based on its experience with Clinton denying the deal negotiated by Elliot Abrams during the Bush Administration, Israel demanded that any proposal be presented in writing.

The written offer never came; the Secretary of State wasn’t negotiating in good faith. Instead, Hillary played “Bait and Switch.”

As Israel waited for a letter clarifying America’s guarantees in exchange for a proposed building ban for Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, a diplomatic source finally came forward saying that no such letter was on its way.

Mrs. Clinton misled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a source, a senior diplomat with inside knowledge of Netanyahu meetings in Washington, Clinton made commitments when talking to Netanyahu, but later slipped out of them by claiming that she had not been speaking on behalf of President Obama who, she said in the end, did not give his approval.

In 2011, speaking at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the liberal Brookings Institute, Clinton expressed concern for Israel’s social climate in the wake of limitations regarding female singing in the IDF and gender segregation on public transportation. Both were accommodations made to the Orthodox communities in Israel.

She referred to the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing; she demonized Israel by saying it reminded her of the situation in Iran.

Now it seems Hillary Clinton is running for President. She will campaign on the basis that she is a friend of Israel, just as Barack Obama did in 2008.

The truth is, as Secretary of State, she was the architect of the policy of the most anti-Israel president since the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It was a policy that reflected the views she has held her entire life, with the exception of the nine-year period where she ran for and held the office of U.S. Senator from New York State.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com