T. Belman. The Democratic platform presented at the 2012 convention of the Party also heraled the demise.
By Jonathan S Tobin, COMMENTARY
The latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails to be released is being scoured for classified information today. While the Clinton camp is taking solace in the fact that there was no “Top Secret” data in these communications, the large number of emails with classified information is just drawing more attention to the former secretary of state’s allergy to transparency and doing her presidential candidacy no end of harm. But there is more to be learned here than a reaffirmation of what we already knew about the Clintons’ passion for secrecy.
The treasure trove of information about her work at the state department also gives us an inside view of her close relationship with Sidney Blumenthal. We already knew that Blumenthal’s role in Hillary’s life illustrated the conflicts of interest created by the Clinton Family Foundation since he was, at one and the same time, a paid consultant by the so-called charity, seeking business opportunities in Libya while also operating as an adviser to the secretary about topics in which he had a vested interest.
But what wasn’t clear until today was the extent to which the person whom she has publicly described as a close personal friend was counseling her to distance herself from pro-Israel groups and filling up her email account with anti-Zionist and other left-wing screeds by his son Max that she had printed out for further reading. The Blumenthal-Clinton correspondence is notable for many reasons but principally because it gives us a window into the sorts of conversations that would go on inside a Hillary Clinton White House.
As Politico reports, the Blumenthal missives are numerous and wide-ranging in terms of the topics covered. Blumenthal’s pose as a Libya expert was risible as he knew nothing about the country other than the tidbits he gleaned as he attempt to profit from his connections there in the wake of the fall of the Qaddafi regime. But the Clinton White House political hit man had plenty to say about just about every foreign policy issue and the former first lady was eager to hear all of it.
Yet the topic about which Blumenthal seemed to have the most passion was his attempt to steer Clinton away from the sort of pro-Israel stands that she had established while in the Senate. Blumenthal urged her to give “tough love” to Israel. That’s a nice way of saying that he wanted her to lecture and threaten it to bow to Obama administration dictates even if they undermined the alliance between the two countries and Israel’s security.
As he said in one email about a speech she was scheduled to give to an AIPAC conference, he wanted her to: “remind it in as subtle but also direct a way as you can that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion.”
Just as telling is the way he plied her with his son Max’s articles. Max Blumenthal is a radical left wing writer and the author of Goliath, a vicious anti-Zionist polemic that attacks Israel’s right to exist and urges its isolation and ultimate dissolution. As the Daily Caller notes, Sidney sent Clinton some of Max’s pieces supporting the so-called Gaza flotilla and attacking Israel’s attempt to enforce the blockade of the Hamas state in the strip. Other Max Blumenthal pieces passed along by his dad spread libels about Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Still more sought to highlight “Islamophobia” on the right.
The point here is that Sidney Blumenthal is not just one among many voices whispering in Hillary Clinton’s ears. He is a close friend and, as the emails attest, a valued adviser. Indeed, Clinton kept him close to her despite the fact that the Obama White House wouldn’t let her hire him and sought to keep him away from all policy discussions and decisions.
Despite what Clinton may tell her many pro-Israel donors, keeping a man like Blumenthal in her inner circle is a telling indication of her true feelings about a lot of issues, but especially that of the state of Israel. If she were to become president, Sidney’s voice would continue to have great weight in her counsels. Just as dangerous, it would help legitimize Max Blumenthal’s views.
During the course of the debate about the Iran nuclear deal, we have already witnessed the collapse of the pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party. Faced with pressure by President Obama, most liberal Democrats, even many with strong pro-Israel records, caved into administration pressure and backed the agreement despite the fact that it fell far short of Obama’s own criteria for success when the negotiations started.
Despite the rearguard efforts of some figures in the party to keep it at a distance from Obama’s antagonism to the Jewish state, Democrats are largely abandoning Israel on Iran. The Blumenthal emails make it clear this won’t be a passing fancy if Hillary becomes president.
The assumption has been that if Clinton were elected, the damage done to the U.S.-Israel alliance by Obama would begin to be undone. Clinton was, we were told, the adult in the room. Her backers assure us that she has a tougher-minded foreign policy approach than that of a president who is clearly committed to prioritizing détente with the Islamist regime in Tehran over strengthening the alliance with Israel. But so long as Sidney Blumenthal, and by extension his son Max, are going to be treated as valued voices within the Clinton camp, Hillary’s pose as a defender of Israel is no longer credible. She may not go as far as they like in distancing herself from the pro-Israel community. But the notion that she will restore the closeness Obama wrecked is obviously untrue. With Sidney whispering in her ear, there will be plenty more of the dangerous “daylight” that Obama has done so much to create between the two nations.
While Clinton has more to fear from the email issue than fallout about Blumenthal, the Hillary-Sidney emails show just that the pro-Israel community will be on thin ice if she recovers and wins in November 2016.
@ ArnoldHarris:
I agree commpletely. When one gets rid of the nice liberal idea that “it’s important for everyone to love us,” it’s amazing how liberated one feels.
If they want to hate us, fine. If they want to love us, fine. If they want to just stand there and observe, fine. So long as we do away with our enemies, and ultimately the enemies of mankind, we will be doing the correct moral thing, and there’s nothing wrong with that, no matter what the “progressives” shriek at us.
We’ve been soft for far too long.
Keelie, I think and write from the standpoint of a long-range future. Assuming Israel can help engineer a successful coup against the ayatollist regime in Iran, the Jewish state and Jewish nation shall indeed have a long future. Because all the surrounding and nearby Arab states and even Turkey are managed by blatherskite regimes that rule either by force, fraud, or organized fecklessness. But when they are aroused, which is easily and very often, they are as warlike as swarms of wasps. Which means that they can be counted upon to provide Israel with as many as six or seven causi belli per year.
And on our Jewish side of the international fences or whatever passes for boundaries in that part of the world, the Jewish population, backed by one of the most modern and inventive economies of the world, shall continue to grow, both by in-migration and its relatively high natural growth rate.
All of which means that various Arab leaderships shall indefinitely be answering the call of their umma to beat the Jews, etc, etc. Which means lots of new wars. And each such war, if handled correctly by the Jewish state and Zahal, will have an outcome akin to armies of trained and expert hunter-killers scattering and killing mobs of angry chimpanzees. Does the thought of that bother me? Not at all. I look forward to it, comfortable that long after my death, the Jewish state and nation will be expanding, carefully and in carefully planned and prepared stages, at the expense of enemies who would in any case treat any Jews they could catch with no mercy whatsoever.
Life is quite simple from the standards I have chosen. Just assume that everybody either wants to kill the Jews or is willing to standby with folded arms as spectators when someone else is doing it. But then assume that the Jewish nation, perhaps in long and painful stages of experience, will harden itself like the fabled Spanish steel with which the Roman legions were armed.
Then, for a change, the rest of those bastards will be our victims. Do that a few times, and large number of them will wish to be us, the winners.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
If I was American, I would vote for Bernie Sanders. His policies are good for the working American, and also for Israel. With Bernie, we have brains, not a mouth.
I love where I live, I have all the benefits that Americans need — No guns, –One payer health care with no ceiling on coverage, –virtually free undergraduate and postgraduate education, –subsidized daycare at under $7.50 / day.
What is Trump and the Republicans offering you? Is it to start another war and have American soldiers returning in body bags, or without arms or legs?
Please, be honest, tell me again, what are the Republicans offering, after they repeal the one medicare system where insurers are making more money than before, and where you can’t be refused because of pre-existing conditions. Are they going to raise the minimum wage so that the poor can live without welfare? Where a waitress can, with some tips, save for her retirement?
Again, tell me what Trump is going to do that will be good for you personally?
And if I were American I would zoom down to the voting booths and vote for him too. I guess I’m just not a “nuanced” kind of guy…
And as for conquering the entire Middle East. I’m all for that, as long as it doesn’t dilute Israel’s overall military effeciveness. In other words, as long as Israel doesn’t bite off more that it can swallow.
I never have been either a Democrat nor even democratic in politics or societal instinct. Believe me when I say that most Israelis, including you people, would be uncomfortable if I were to to show up in Israel and start spouting the opinions that are closest to my political beliefs. Because what I want for our Jewish nation goes far beyond anything that the great Rav Meir Kahane, who was one of my teachers of authentic Judaism and Zionism, ever spoke or wrote about. Because I want nothing less than ultimate and outright Jewish conquest in permanency of much more of the Middle East than a mere 10,000 square miles of land. Nor do I offer any apologies for any such national aspirations, and nor do I have any concern whatsoever for displaced enemy Arabs. Let them go off and conquer France and Sweden. Or let them die the deaths of neglected refugees.
Donald Trump is an American nationalist, and it is solely on that basis that I respect him and will vote for him, both in our state presidential primary election and in the general election, assuming he is nominated by the Republican Party — which I think shall happen.
What about Trump’s attitude regarding Israel? Chances are, he hasn’t focused on that yet. I suspect he truly wouldn’t give a damn if Israel were to annex all Shomron and Yehuda, booting out the PLO/Fatah gang, and negotiating autonomous rule for most of the Arab cities in Yesha, and populating all the land with continuous waves of Jewish settlement. But he’s also the kind of American leader who would lose all his respect for anyone who would approach him, hat in hand, begging for the right to take back their own ancient landed Jewish national birthright. Just remember that only a true American nationalist can even begin to understand the aspirations of true Jewish nationalists.
So stop trying to lick the asses of a world run by altruistic leaders who think they know what’s best for the Jewish nation, and who secretly or even openly despise us.
Do any of you understand what I think about these issues, and what they portend for the Jewish nation?
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
@ yamit82:
“Your destroyers will come from within your midst.” No, Iran’s mullahs are not the problem.
Its the Jews.
The war of the Socialist and the Islamists against Israel and the US goes unabated. The Republicans exhibited a great deal of Impotence, Ineptitude and Incompetence (the 3 Is).
Perhaps Yamit82 predicts the future well, but it seems more likely to me that Hilary will be wearing an orange jump suit for the next few years. Her behavior has been so egregious that the CIA will not allow her to enter the White House through the front door ever again. What happened to David Petraeus will not be forgiven by them so easily. I speculate without the benefit of expertise or special information that the CIA will get Obama one day, as well. By putting Hilary in jail, the CIA will have given Hilary the dedicated time to write her book about the Obama administration. That book will be her ticket to a reduced sentence and she will gobble the bait with great gluttony.
@ yamit82:
Good to see you around here again. We all miss your scholarship and sense of humor.
I also think Trump is the one. At least he does not hate Israel.
@ lsatenstein</a
Not a forgone conclusion and it will be Trump or no one because he could and will run as a third party candidate losing it for the Republicans. Trump or Hitlery get used to it.
@ babushka:
true, but that’s small comfort 😛
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
They don’t really care do they?
@ David Lloyd Klepper:No reply was received, simply because Hillury never read it. It was probably scanned by eye for like 1 to 2 seconds and trashed by a clerk, at best. Get real, these people are not interested in the opinions of regular people. Oh excuse me, you think your having served as cannon fodder in the armed forces makes you one of the family and an observant Jew, living in Israel in a Yeshiva, not a snowball’s chance, on the contrary., they have a dedicated round file for those key words. They do not care, never had, by the way.
THIS LETTER WAS CONFIDENTIAL, BUT IN LIGHT OF THE TAPE REVELATIONS, I HAVE NO PROBLEM IN MAKING IT PUBLIC, ESPECIALLY SINCE NO REPLY WAS EVER RECEIVED:
??? ???? ?? ???? ????? ????, ????? ??? ?????, ????? ?? ???? 1, ?? ??????, ??????? 97400
David Lloyd ben Yaacov Yehuda Klepper, Yeshivat Beit Orot, Shmuel ben Adiya 1, Mt. of Olives, Jerusalem 97400 ISRAEL
4 Av 5775, 20 July 2015 Email: daveklepper@yahoo.com 20.07.15, ?’ ?? ???”?
Presidential Candidate and Former First Lady Hillary Clinton
Ready PAC PO Box 7705
McLean, VA 22106, U. S. A.
Dear Mrs. Clinton,
This letter is confidential, intended for your eyes only, and if a staff member at the Campaign Headquarters opens it, he or she should seal it and insure its delivery to you. It is important that you read it and nobody else.
I hope you will study the Iranian agreement in detail. 1. There is no way to inspect secret preparations for an atomic bomb. 2. The Iranian government still teaches its children and states in the media that the USA is “The Great Satan” and remains Iran’s enemy.
You have stated that you mistrust the Iranian government. So how on earth can you support the “Agreement”?
Does not the average American demand a greater degree of consistency from a President?
This is intended to be a purely confidential letter. Best wishes and all possible respect,
David Lloyd (ben Yaacov Yehuda) Klepper, student of Yeshivat Beit Orot and USArmy Veteran
As the digging continues, we are going to find ourselves with a republican president, and yes, it will not be Donald Trump.
On a positive note, Democrats hate Israel less than they hate America.
Nor a moment too soon.
Regrettably the remaining Jews over there are zombied and unable to understand reality.