Clinton emails show visceral hatred for Michael Oren
I've been arguing on social media for the last few days that we ought to be focusing on the contents of both Hillary Clinton's and the Democratic National Committee's emails, and not on how they came to light. At the end of the day, what's in the emails is far more important than Donald Trump trolling the Russians to release them (and he may well be correct that the Russians already have them).
In that light, I'd like to discuss some of what's come to light about Hillary Clinton's relationship with Israel as Secretary of State, and particularly about her relationship with Michael Oren, who was the Israeli ambassador to the United States during her tenure at the State Department.
In his book, Ally, Oren writes that during his first six months in Washington, he could not get a meeting with Clinton. It's perhaps indicative of that relationship that when I tried Googling "Clinton Oren" and "Hillary Clinton Michael Oren" in Google Images, the picture above was the only one I found that had the two of them in it together. There were several pictures of Oren with Barack Obama and of Prime Minister Netanyahu with Clinton, but only one of Oren and Clinton together.
This was not Oren's imagination, as Haaretz reported about a year ago from an earlier release of Clinton emails:
On December 10, 2009, about six months after Oren took up his position in Washington, Brian Greenspun sent an email to the private account of then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asking her to check why her staff was not allowing the Israeli ambassador to meet her. It’s isn’t clear whether Oren was the one who asked Greenspun to intervene.
Greenspun is publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and was Bill Clinton’s old college roommate. He even raised money for him in Nevada when Clinton was president. According to various reports, in January 2001, a few weeks before the end of the president’s term, Greenspun also asked Clinton to grant a pardon to the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries, Al Schwimmer, for his role in smuggling U.S. planes to Israel in 1950.
“Hi Hillary,” writes Greenspun in the short message, parts of which were redacted before it was released for publication. Greenspun writes that rumor has it that the Israeli ambassador was unsuccessfully trying to arrange a meeting with the secretary of state.
He says he can’t imagine why her staff would keep Oren away from her and offered his help if there was any problem.
Why did Hillary keep Oren away? Rabbi Shmuely Boteach connects it to Oren's refusal to speak at the first J Street conference in 2009.
Furthermore, a flurry of email communications from July 2012 surrounded
Hannah Rosenthal, who served from 2009 to 2012 as special envoy to
monitor and combat anti-Semitism for the Obama administration. After
three years in this position, news broke that Rosenthal had accepted a
position as president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. However, she
faced harsh criticism from sectors of the Jewish community for her past
views toward Israel. The exchange in these released emails from Hilary’s
server showed that the administration was very concerned about this
opposition and planned on how best to counteract it, with long-time aide
Huma Abedin keeping Clinton apprised.
Rosenthal had previously
served on the board of directors of the anti-Israel J Street. She was
also on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now – an
organization that advocates for a total BDS-style boycott of Judea and
Samaria and its settlements. Yes, this was the person hand-picked by the
White House with Clinton’s blessing to fight anti-Semitism.
The
protests of Rosenthal’s appointment to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation
post stemmed in part from her associations with these anti-Israel
groups.
We know that Rosenthal has been a major supporter of
Hillary Clinton for the past 20 years and was appointed and served under
the Bill Clinton administration in a top-level position in the
Department of Health and Human Services.
In a speech of July 13,
2010, Hillary Clinton praised Rosenthal’s appointment to combat
anti-Semitism, saying, “I have known Hannah for more than 20 years and
we have worked over those 20 years on issues that are near and dear to
both of us.” She went on to say, “We know we have a big challenge ahead
of us, but I was thrilled when Hannah agreed to take this position...”
Yet
just a few months earlier, Rosenthal’s first denunciation in her new
role was not against anti-Semitism but shockingly against ambassador
Michael Oren.
Oren had recently turned down the offer to be the
keynote speaker at J Street’s inaugural conference in December 2009,
saying that the policies and approaches of J Street toward Israel were
“fooling around with the lives of 7 million people.”
Rosenthal,
no doubt offended at the refusal, broke protocol in an uncharacteristic
attack on Oren, condemning his comments, and calling his approach to J
Street “most unfortunate,” saying that he “would have learned a lot” if
he had attended the conference.
Supporting J Street, boycotting Judea and Samaria, and condemning
Michael Oren. Was this the basis of Hillary’s support for Rosenthal?
Rosenthal faced criticism from a number of Jewish groups for her words.
Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations, summed up the unusual and inappropriate nature of
Rosenthal’s comments. “As an official of the United States government,
it is inappropriate for the anti-Semitism envoy to be expressing her
personal views on the positions ambassador Oren has taken, as well as on
the subject of who needs to be heard from in the Jewish community.”
The Israeli government released a statement that said in part, “We received Ms. Rosenthal’s statements as reported in Haaretz with astonishment and surprise.”
The Obama administration tried to reassure Israel that these comments did not represent State Department policy.
Unfortunately,
the truth is that based on everything we have seen in these email
dumps, this is precisely what the State Department’s policy was.
Drawing on Clinton's emails, Boteach describes some of the paranoia in the State Department's treatment of Oren.
In one email, [Sidney] Blumenthal sent an article from the notoriously
anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, which has long trolled me on the
Internet, and which duplicitously implied with empty insinuations that
Oren had planted a false story about a joint US-Israel Iran strike in a
plot to manipulate US policy.
On another occasion, Blumenthal sent two articles written by his
anti-Semitic son, the notorious Israel-hater Max Blumenthal, which
implied Oren was conspiring with Benjamin Netanyahu to derail the peace
process.
Sidney Blumenthal derisively emailed Hillary about
Oren’s untrustworthiness writing, “[T]he New Republic is a preferred
outlet for the highest level Likud/neocon propaganda. Michael Oren, a
channel for Israeli intel, was a frequent contributor in the past.”
He
also sent an email describing rumors from his journalist son Paul, who
claimed to have heard that “Oren raced around the West Wing searching
for Barack [Obama], opening doors and looking in rooms.
[Then-US national security adviser Thomas] Donilon heard about
Oren’s frantic snooping and raced after him, catching him, and escorted
him out. Apocryphal? True?” Hillary responds to the email, “Doubt that
it happened, but, these days, who knows???”
In the entire forced dump of her emails, you will be hard-pressed to
find a single note that is sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any
of the people she trusted. The negative, poisonous approach Ms. Clinton
established demonstrates that a huge segment of her close advisers and
confidants were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Netanyahu,
and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria
at all costs.
This was occurring in the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza
withdrawal, which led to the takeover of the Strip by Hamas. There is
almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in
withdrawing, as Ms. Clinton and the Obama Administration did everything
they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.
Read some of the emails cited by Boteach in that article. Appalling.
One doesn't need much imagination to conclude that a Clinton administration's relationship with Israel would be no better than the Obama administration's relationship with Israel over the last eight years, especially so long as Binyamin Netanyahu is Prime Minister.
That's one lesson we should all be learning from the Clinton emails.
President Hussein Obama and his State Department have made a big deal out of Prime Minister Netanyahu's election campaign statement - since walked back - that there would be no 'Palestinian state' on his watch. The Obami have claimed that 'words matter' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
"We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn't happen during his
prime ministership, and so that's why we've got to evaluate what other
options are available to make sure that we don't see a chaotic situation
in the region," the president said in an interview with The Huffington
Post on Friday.
Citing a similar statement by White House spokesman Josh Earnest, Rabbi Shmuely Boteach points out that the Obama administration doesn't treat all words equally.
So let’s get this straight. When foreign
leaders speak, it matters. What they say is consequential. Bibi’s going
to have to pay for his remarks.
But I have one question. Why doesn’t any of this apply to Iran? Why, on Saturday Ayatollah Ali Khameini uttered the words “Death to America” even as John Kerry was expressing optimism the very same day that the United States would come to a nuclear accord with Iran!
Suddenly, Iran’s words don’t matter?
Boteach goes on to speculate why Netanyahu's words matter while Khameni's words can be swept aside.
My own belief is this. President Obama is
desperate for some foreign policy victories. There’s a year-and-a-half
left to his Presidency and the world is on fire. From Iran to Boko Haram
to ISIS to Putin to Hezbollah to Al Qaida and Hamas, bad guys are
running amok under this president. American Foreign policy is a
shambles.
The only ally President Obama can truly expert
pressure on for a deal that would give him the lasting foreign policy
legacy he needs and craves is Israel. And in the past Israeli Prime
Ministers have proven so utterly malleable. American Presidents have
squeezed them like lemons.
But Bibi refuses to be squeezed. He won’t play
ball. He won’t withdraw from Judea and Samaria and allow “Hamastan” on
his eastern border the way it is in Gaza. He won’t shut up about
America’s capitulation to the Iranian mullahs that would leave them with
a military-grade nuclear program. He won’t go quietly into the nuclear
night while America appeases one of the most violent and vile regimes on
earth.
This darned Bibi guy just won’t bend.
And our President finds the intransigence so utterly frustrating.
I don't believe things would be any better if (God Forbid) the Left had won the election. At the end of the day, even Herzog and Livni could not have concluded a deal that gave the 'Palestinians' everything they want, both because the 'Palestinians' would never agree to any deal and because the Left would never succeed in getting such a deal through the Knesset. Look what happened to Ehud Olmert in 2008.
And the Clinton's hatred for Netanyahu also might have something to do with Obama's attitude. After all, Hillary was Secretary of State.
But in the meantime, the hypocrisy is flaming. Will anyone in the media call Obama on it? Calling @APDiplowriter....
Rabbi Shmuely Boteach held a panel in a Senate office building on Monday, which featured Ted Cruz and Elie Wiesel. The panel addressed Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and was intended to be bipartisan. Unfortunately, the Democrat who was supposed to be on the panel didn't show up.
The Cruz-Wiesel event was intended as a bipartisan dialogue. But Rep.
Brad Sherman, D-Calif., pulled out after the host, Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach, ran a full-page ad in The New York Times accusing White House
national security adviser Susan Rice of turning a blind eye to genocide.
The ad featured a photo of Rice looking away from a stack of human
skulls. Sherman called it vulgar, and Boteach opened the event by
apologizing, insisting his disagreements with Rice are strictly over
policy.
Because after all, what's more important: Stopping an Iranian nuclear weapon or defending what's left of Susan Rice's honor?
Where's Hillary? Netanyahu doesn't want you to ask
After the Sabbath started on Friday, the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is based in the United States, circulated this advertisement asking where Hillary Clinton is in the current controversy over a deal with Iran. If you watch the political talk shows on Sunday morning in the US, you are likely to see it.
Let's go to the videotape.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu's office condemned the ad, along with a full-page ad against Susan Rice that was placed in Saturday's New York Times by Rabbi Shmuely Boteach (ad below followed by story).
"We condemn these ads and oppose personal attacks of every kind,"
Netanyahu's office said, shortly before the prime minister's scheduled
flight to Washington where he was to address Congress this week. "We
have no connection to these ads and we believe that the discourse on the
Iranian issue must remain to the point."
Netanyahu is really trying to walk a tightrope here....
The ad was rejected by The Times, which claimed by way of
explanation "that the opinion being expressed is too strong and too
forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers'."
The advert has already run in a number of major US publications, including The Times' sister publication, the Wall Street Journal, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
But the decision to run it in the Guardian - which is
well-known for its hostile editorial line towards Israel - will come as
particularly surprising, and raises further questions about The Times' decision not to run it.
Condemning the decision by The Times to reject the ad, Rabbi Boteach accused the paper of "catering to bigotry."
The Guardian and the Independent are the last two British papers I would have expected to run that ad.
A full-page advertisement from Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Shmuly Boteach, which calls on Hamas to reject child sacrifice, and which has run in several newspapers in the United States, has been rejected by the Times of London, which claimed that the ad was 'too strong and forceful.'
The ad sponsored by The Values Network, which was founded by Rabbi
Shmuley Boteach, has run in The New York Times, Washington Post and
The Wall Street Journal, among other U.S. newspapers. The rejection was
first reported by the New York Observer.
The London Times refused the ad because “the opinion being expressed
is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a
significant number of Times readers,” according to a statement from a representative of the newspaper, the Observer reported.
...
Headlined “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s
Hamas turn,” the ad began running last week. It reads, in part: “In my
own lifetime, I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I
have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by
worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the
Molochites.
“What we are suffering through today is not a battle of Jew versus
Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian. Rather, it is a battle between those
who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of
civilization versus barbarism.”
Countering the London Times statement, Boteach said in his own, “Elie
Wiesel is one of the most respected human beings alive, a Nobel Peace
Laureate, and is the living face of the Holocaust. No greater expert on
genocide exists in the whole world. His call for the end of child
sacrifice by Hamas, who use children as human shields, and a stop to
their genocidal charter, which calls for the murder of Jews everywhere,
could only offend the sensibilities of the most die-hard anti-Israel
haters and anti-Semites.”
I can't envision a single newspaper in the the UK (other than the local Jewish newspaper) running an ad like this. Maybe the Telegraph or the Mail, but I doubt they would run it either. Who says there's media bias out there?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
