Israel Matzav

Hillary Clinton's staffers listened and cheered while one of her deputies chewed out Ambassador Oren

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State in what claims to be the 'most pro-Israel administration evah' allowed her staffers to listen in from another room when her deputy, Jim Steinberg, 'privately' scolded Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over the announcement of construction in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood of more than 20,000 souls, while Joe Biden was in Israel in 2010. This is from the first link.

By the way, some of those apartments finally got their final approval to be built last month. Aren't you glad the 'Palestinians' decided to follow the Obama-Clinton-Biden lead and stay away from the 'peace talks'?

Oren recounted that when he landed back in Washington, D.C., following the trip, he landed “to learn that [then] Secretary of State Clinton has excoriated Netanyahu for 45 minutes over the phone, rebuking him for humiliating the president and undermining America’s ability to deal with pressing Middle East issues.”

Soon after that, Oren found out that he had been “summoned” to the State Department for an “immediate meeting,” according to the book.

Before attending the meeting, Oren huddled with his senior advisers and informed them, “while I would continue to adhere publicly to the ‘all’s well’ [between the United States and Israel] pose, behind the scenes I would forcibly resist this attempt to fabricate a crisis.”

Oren then traveled to the State Department for a tense meeting with then-Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg. Oren later found out the meeting was being listened to by State Department staffers, who “cheered” as Steinberg upbraided Oren.

“There, waiting in his not-nice American mode, was Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg, who proceeded to read me the text of Hillary’s conversation with Netanyahu,” Oren writes. “This contained a list of demands, including a total building freeze in East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank, most of which would be unacceptable to any Israeli prime minister, much less a [right-leaning] Likudnik.”

Steinberg went on to lecture Oren in a “furious” manner.

“Steinberg added his own furious comment—department staffers, I later heard, listened in on our conversation and cheered—about Israel’s insult to the president and the pride of the United States.”

Oren said he did not hold back in his response.

“Let me get this straight,” Oren recalls saying. “We inadvertently slight the vice president and apologize, and I become the first foreign ambassador summoned by this administration to the State Department.”

The Israeli people, Oren said, “will see this as nothing but a pretext to arm-twist us and beat up on us.”

A State Department official declined to comment on the issue.

That last line is an admission that the story is true. Don't misconceive that one. There's more.

One former high-ranking White House official said the Obama administration’s treatment of Oren is unusual.

“In eight years at State and eight at the [White House National Security Council], I never participated in a meeting with the secretary or deputy secretary of state that was piped elsewhere in the building through hidden microphones,” Elliott Abrams, a former deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

“There were always note takers present and everyone understood that each side could distribute its own notes, but foreign diplomats could rely on the U.S. not to tape the meeting or broadcast it to others outside the meeting room where it took place,” Abrams said. “If this really happened as Oren says, one has to ask whether this was a punishment devised especially for Israel, or whether there were hidden microphones recording lots of other Steinberg and Clinton meetings.”

And they talk about Richard Nixon.... Oh... wait... Hillary Clinton was kicked off the Watergate investigation committee staff back in the '70's for lying, unethical behavior, wasn't she? She knows all about hidden microphones and extra email accounts....

One senior official with a D.C.-based Jewish organization was not surprised to learn that State Department staffers were pleased when Oren was upbraided.

“The president stacked the State Department with opponents of Israel, then let them indulge themselves by picking new fights with Israel every few months,” the source said. “Of course they enjoyed it. This is who they are. This is what they do.”

Most pro-Israel administration evah? Until Hillary Clinton takes charge.... 

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Michael Oren, Ramat Shlomo, US presidential campaign 2016

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:34 AM