By Rania Khalek
A batch of internal Clinton
campaign emails published by Wikileaks in recent days reveals the extent to
which campaign donors drive Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric and policy positions on
Israel and the broader Middle East.
Last year, Hillary Clinton
wrote a letter to
billionaire media mogul Haim Saban on her campaign stationery vowing “to make
countering BDS a priority” if she wins the presidency.
Saban has donated at least $7
million to getting Clinton elected president and openly confesses that
his number one priority is influencing US
policy in Israel’s favor.
According to the emails
between Clinton’s senior campaign aides, the letter to Saban was deliberately
leaked to friendly media to attract pro-Israel donors concerned about the rise
of the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement.
The way the campaign aides
discuss the issue is completely devoid of emotion or ideology. It’s all about
the donors.
Opposing BDS to please donors
In a 3 July 2015 email to
campaign staffers, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook wrote, “I was just
thinking: has she made a clear statement on Israel yet? I get this question
from donors all the time. Does she need to state her principles on Israel
before Iran? Or do both at the same time?”
“That’s basically the goal of
the BDS letter,” responded Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin.
“We could either get a donor
to leak it or just give it to a reporter if we want to get it out there. I’m
semi-surprised it’s not out yet,” replied deputy communications director
Christina Reynolds.
Clinton’s voice is nowhere to
be seen in the correspondence. “We have a two pager I’m getting clearance from
her on. That is what we have to ship around,” Jake Sullivan, a senior foreign
policy adviser to Clinton, wrote.
“Let’s def give it to someone.
I see zero downside to a story. Then we can circulate around right away
(hopefully) in advance of Iran,” reasoned Mook.
“If Haim’s going to give it to
the Jewish media, I think that solves our problem. Once they write, we can make
sure it gets picked up by some of our beat guys,” Christina Reynolds responded.
Three days later, Politico reported on
and published the letter.
The emails show Saban
coordinating directly with the Clinton campaign, offering positive reinforcement for
Clinton’s pro-Israel messaging and strategizing with
Clinton aides against BDS.
Israel’s liaison
The emails show that Stuart
Eizenstat, a former US ambassador to the EU under President Bill Clinton, acted
as a liaison between the Israeli government and the Hillary Clinton campaign,
counseling senior staffers on how to adjust their messaging to the liking of
the Israeli leadership.
Eizenstat wrote lengthy and
detailed emails to campaign aides summarizing his meetings with Israeli
government officials and recommending talking points for Clinton to adopt.
The Clinton campaign
frequently thanked Eizenstat for his counsel, regularly implemented his
suggestions and often sought his approval on speeches related to Israel.
“I took some of your concepts
but left out the specifics,” foreign policy adviser Sullivan wrote in a July
2015 email to
Eizenstat.
Sullivan was seeking pointers
for Clinton’s statement in response to the passage of the Iran nuclear
deal.
A month earlier, Sullivan messaged Eizenstat
for advice on BDS: “I was talking to HRC [Hillary Clinton] today about the idea
of having her meet with some Jewish leaders later this week about
BDS/delegitimization efforts. She and the leaders could go out and make a
statement following the meeting.”
Sullivan sought Eizenstat’s
opinion on who Clinton should include in such an initiative.
Netanyahu is ready for Hillary
In December 2015, Eizenstat
reported on his “meeting with a senior [Israeli] official who is very close to
the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu], and knows his thinking.”
“The prime minister always had
a ‘surprising good relationship’ with Hillary; she is ‘easy to work with,’ and
that she is more instinctively sympathetic to Israel than the White House,”
Eizenstat wrote.
The official also told
Eizenstat that “Israel [sic] Arabs are a ‘real problem.’ The government had to
dismantle the northern branch of the Islamic Association because they were
radicalizing the Israeli Arabs, who are 20 percent of the population.”
Eizenstat was referring to
Israel’s ban on
the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, a political party with a large
following among Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Eizenstat’s emails also
reflect the Israeli leadership’s intense hostility toward President Barack
Obama.
In a May 2015 email to the
Clinton campaign, Eizenstat noted that in his meeting with the Israelis, “The
level of vitriol against the president was striking, to such a degree that one
participant urged that he was being unfairly demonized.”
In June 2015, Eizenstat wrote, “I was
struck in my week in Israel, not only among Israeli officials, but among my
friends across the political spectrum (most are former officials) and
apolitical relatives, at the depth of antipathy and distrust of President
Obama, as ‘weak,’ ‘pro-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Israel.’”
“Attack, attack, attack”
In another June 2015 email, Eizenstat
provides details of a meeting with Netanyahu and his cabinet in which Netanyahu
urges attacking BDS and recruiting Latinos, Evangelical Christians and Asian
Americans to assist in the effort.
Summarizing Netanyahu’s views,
Eizenstat wrote: “On BDS, Israel should move from the defense to the offense.
It should be attacked on moral grounds. It is ‘unjust’ and ‘cruel.’ Israel must
attack its attackers. The best defense is a good offense: ‘attack, attack,
attack.’”
Smearing BDS
In an August 2015 email
labeled “NOT FOR CIRCULATION,” Eizenstat passed along advice to Hillary Clinton
from Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador in Washington.
A US-born right-winger who has
been called “Bibi’s
brain,” Dermer told Eizenstat that the Israeli government was plotting to
smear Palestine solidarity activism on college campuses as terrorism.
“They will shortly expose the
funding base for the main BDS group on campus, Students for Justice in
Palestine, which tie it with terrorist funding,” Eizenstat wrote. “The key is
to expose BDS as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.”
No-fly zone would “kill a lot
of Syrians”
During the Democratic Party
primary race, Bernie Sanders repeatedly called on Clinton to release the
transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks, but she refused.
One of the most damning
aspects of the latest Wikileaks dump is the excerpts of
Clinton’s paid speeches.
In a speech to Goldman Sachs
in 2013, Clinton confessed that a no-fly zone in Syria would “kill a lot of
Syrians.” This is because it would require bombing Syria’s air defenses, “many
of which are located in populated areas,” according to Clinton.
While making this assessment
in private, Clinton has continued to publicly advocate for a no-fly zone,
ostensibly to protect Syrian civilians.
Saudi support for ISIS
Clinton told the Jewish United
Fund of Metropolitan Chicago at a luncheon in 2013 that Israel and Jordan were
working in close partnership for the purpose of “shoring up King Abdullah.”
That same year she told
congregants at a synagogue, “One of the developments of the Arab Spring is that
you now have Israel and Saudi Arabia more closely aligned in their foreign
policy” in the region.
Publicly, Clinton frequently
casts Iran as the single greatest funder of terrorism in the world. But
privately she has repeatedly acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s contribution to
violent extremism.
At a Jewish United Fund dinner
in 2013, Clinton said she preferred “a more robust, covert action” to arm
Syrian rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
But she added that this was
complicated because, “the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of
weapons – and pretty indiscriminately – not at all targeted toward the people
that we think would be the more moderate.”
She also described Saudi
Arabia’s fierce opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood as “kind of ironic since
the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth
over the course of the last 30 years.”
In one of the leaked emails
Clinton accuses Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding
the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIS or ISIL.
Citing “Western intelligence,
US intelligence and sources in the region,” Clinton wrote,
“We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to
bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are
providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical
Sunni groups in the region.”
It’s all about the donors
The Clinton Foundation has
accepted millions of
dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
And while serving as secretary
of state, Clinton greenlighted enormous weapons deals
to those countries.
From Israel to Saudi Arabia,
it is clear that Clinton’s donors are in charge. They exert more influence over
her public positions and policy prescriptions than she does.
If Clinton were running
against Senators Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, these emails would be scandalous.
Instead, the leaks have been
completely overshadowed by the even more sensational and lurid October
surprise that befell Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Clinton is lucky her opponent
is more disliked and disingenuous than she is.
