The Mideastwire Blog

The NYT’s Roger Cohen has an incredible piece here that reverses – or rather erases – RECENT history so broadly and with such blindness that it is hard to take him seriously on much of what else he has to say in the piece (what about elsewhere?).

As he puts it, HRC was ONCE a firm supporter of Israel, trusted TOTALLY by the Israeli establishment, but then had an epiphany of late and is coming around to being a balanced partner etc…: “The Clinton of today is not the Clinton of a decade ago. Compare that sharp criticism of Israel’s East Jerusalem building with her 1999 position that Jerusalem is “the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel.” Somewhere in the past decade her conviction hardened that the state of Palestine is achievable, inevitable and compatible with Israeli security.

“…Clinton has been a darling of Israelis since she her early days as a senator for New York. That distinguishes her from Obama, who is mistrusted in Israel, and it gives her leverage. Her Palestinian convictions are more recent but intense. She gets how negotiations must move in tandem with Palestinian change on the ground.

“If anyone can persuade Israel that its self-interest involves self-criticism, that occupation is corrosive, that its long-term security demands compromise, and that a new Palestine is emerging, it’s Clinton. If anyone can persuade Palestinians that self-pitying unilateralism (“Help us! Recognize an occupied state!”) is the way of the past and a road to nowhere, it’s Clinton…”

– Of course Cohen leaves out the most important part of this story – why, only god knows – which is that HRC was actually one of the least trusted Clinton “officials” by the Israeli establishment when she was first lady… remember she was the “first” one to call for a Palestinian state and was “overly” sympathetic to the plight of Palestinian refugees. This was a MAJOR problem when she decided to run for NY senator in…1999.

–As one of her opposition researchers at the time, I personally watched her deathbed conversion in a 24 hour period – after the so called “kiss of death.”

This is a fascinating story and instructive, yet again, of how US policy towards Israel (for better or worse) will NOT change. In the early days of the campaign, HRC traveled to Israel and, among many visits, sat through a press conference where Suha Arafat accused Israel, in arabic, of using poison gas on Palestinian children. HRC nodded through the translation, then went and kissed Suha. Within one hour of leaving the press conference, all hell broke loose.

We on the campaign immediately knew what was at stake: if HRC wanted to become Senator from NY she would have to tack, IMMEDIATELY, hard right on all issues touching Israel. The NY Post, indeed all the NY papers were having a field day with the Kiss of Death…. HRC decided that day that she wanted to win. So she “did what she had to do”- which brings us to Cohen’s “beginning.”

– How does Cohen leave this part of the story out? Does it really matter anymore that he forgets? I think sadly that these coming months – for worse – will show that these self-involved questions don’t matter much. Some of the people of the Middle East – including Israelis – some governments, some parties, some movements etc. are going to sweep aside these “hard” questions with their own logic of force…. and we will see whats left, who is left standing.

FROM ARUTZ SHEVA, just before the Nov. 2000 elections!:

HILLARY RUSHED TO SUPPORT PALESTINIAN STATE
And Hillary Rodham-Clinton? Well, in May 1998, she told a youth conference on Middle East peace in Villars, Switzerland, that she supports the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. Her spokesperson, Marsha Berry told reporters: “”These remarks are her own personal view.” Then, in November 1999, while on a purported State visit to the Middle East, she publicly appeared with Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha. With Hillary at her side, Suha Arafat made the deliberately false allegation that “Our [Palestinian] people have been submitted to the daily and intensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.” Mrs. Arafat also accused Israel of contaminating much of the water sources used by Palestinians with “chemical materials” and poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.

Instead of reacting with outrage, Hillary Clinton sat by silently – and gave her a hug and a kiss when she finished speaking. Later, many hours after the event, and only after a media furor put her on the spot for what many view as a bit more than a mere political “faux pas”, Mrs. Clinton called on “all sides” to refrain from “inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations” – including Israel, whose leaders made no such accusations. Glossing over this remarkably repugnant affair, Mrs. Clinton has yet to specifically contradict and denounce the monstrous lies uttered by Yasser Arafat’s wife in her presence.

MONEY FROM THE AMERICAN MUSLIM ALLIANCE
Hence, it is no wonder that the American Muslim Alliance chapter in Massachusetts held what it called a “successful fundraiser” for First Lady Hillary Clinton at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston on June 13, 2000. AMA Massachusetts Chair Tahir Ali said afterwards, “We are attempting to send an important message to all AMA chapters: we must support all who have [Muslim] interests at heart, regardless of what part of the country they are running in.”

EMERSON’S TESTIMONY
According to Steve Emerson, a well-known investigative journalist specializing in militant Islamic organizations, the AMA’s leaders “have sanctioned terrorism, published anti-Semitic statements, and repeatedly hosted conferences that were forums for denunciations of Jews and exhortations to wage jihad.” Faced with pressure on the matter, Mrs. Clinton announced on Oct. 25th that she was returning the $50,000 in campaign contributions raised for her by the AMA. She failed to give a credible explanation as to why it took her more than four months ­ from June 13th until October 25th ­ until she saw it necessary to return the money.

Mr. Emerson, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, noted: “As first lady, Mrs. Clinton began in 1996 an outreach program to Muslim leaders in the U.S. With America’s Muslim population at some six million and growing, an effort to include the community’s leaders in the mainstream of American politics is unquestionably a worthy undertaking. But curiously, nearly all of the leaders with whom Mrs. Clinton elected to meet came from Islamic fundamentalist organizations. A review of the statements, publications and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy as “mainstream” and “moderate”.”

But this should not be unexpected, considering Mrs. Clinton’s past radical affiliations. During the 1980′s, ultra-liberal lawyer Hillary Rodham-Clinton served on the board of the New World Foundation, which funneled money to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Similarly, in February 1996, Hillary hosted a reception at the White House for leaders of Hamas-supporting groups such as the American Muslim Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. And in January, 1998, Hillary hosted another White House reception honoring Muslim leaders and the Muslim Public Affairs Council who defended militant Islamic fundamentalism and also supported radical Islamic groups.

THE REAL HILLARY
This, then, is the real Hillary Rodham-Clinton. An ambitious woman willing to utter any banal cliche on behalf of “Israel’s security” to placate unaware New York Jewish voters, but one whose pre-Senate race record on Israel is appalling. It’s a record of supporting the terrorist PLO, even before the 1993 signing of the first Oslo Agreement on the White House lawn, of ignoring blatant calumny heaped on Israel by Suha Arafat, of supporting the creation of a Palestinian PLO State, of hosting and legitimizing extremist Islamic groups in the United States. Most recently, it included taking campaign contributions from these very same evil, anti-Semitic organizations – until being caught with her hand in the extremist Islamic cookie jar. This is the very same Hillary Rodham-Clinton who now claims to be Israel’s friend.