Hillary’s ‘Conversion’ on Jerusalem Does Not Reflect Her Husband’s Policy — or Her Own, Long-held Views

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, First Lady/proto-Senate Candidate Hillary Clinton
demonstrated anew the behavior that prompted Bill Safire to describe her as a
“pathological liar.” In a transparent bid for Jewish votes in her newly adopted state of
New
York, Mrs. Clinton released a 2 July letter to the respected Orthodox Union
professing her
commitment to Jerusalem as the “eternal and indivisible capital of Israel” and her belief that the
U.S. embassy in the Jewish State should be located in its capital, Jerusalem, rather than in its
present, “politically correct” location of Tel Aviv.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton Administration immediately sought to distance itself from Mrs.
Clinton’s remarks. National Security Council spokesman David Leavy declared that “The views
expressed by the First Lady are her personal ones and she has an obligation to share those with
the people of New York. In terms of the President’s views or the Administration’s, ours haven’t
changed on Jerusalem.” Translation: Hillary can pander to Jews in New York and elsewhere —
as Bill Clinton and Al Gore have done before her — by promising to support the relocation of the
embassy. But it won’t have any more effect on U.S. policy than did those earlier
promises
or, for that matter, than did President Clinton’s signature of legislation direction such a move
enacted with near-unanimous bipartisan support five years ago. ¹

With Friends Like Hillary, Israel Needs No Enemies

What is astounding, however, is the idea that a woman with Mrs. Clinton’s track record could
say with a straight face that she will “be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure
Israel.” Consider just a few items from a bill of particulars helpfully compiled by another
important Zionist organization, Americans for a Safe Israel, that suggests
the opposite will be
true in the future, as it has been in the past:

• During the 1980’s, Mrs. Clinton served on the board of the New World Foundation
  whose
  largesse went, in part, to the Palestine Liberation Organization — an entity that was at
  the
  time indisputably a terrorist operation, explicitly dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish
  State and responsible for the murder of American citizens. (There is substantial evidence that
  Yasser Arafat and the PLO remain, despite their political make-over made possible in no
  small measure by the efforts of the Clinton Administration, committed to the ultimate
  liberation of all of “Palestine.”²)

• In February 1996, Mrs. Clinton hosted a reception at the White House for leaders
  of
  organizations with known ties to and/or who have acted as apologists for Hamas
  terrorists.

• As Stephen Emerson, one of the Nation’s foremost experts on terrorism, has documented,
  such is the case with the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Council on
  American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Notably, Mr and Mrs. Clinton have both
  embraced the AMC’s
  executive director, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who Mr. Emerson has established
  champions
  Abu Marzook — the person responsible for creating Hamas’ death squads. (For
  his troubles,
  Mr. Emerson has been subjected to a campaign of vilification and intimidation by several of
  these organizations.)

• On 29 January 1998, Mrs. Clinton hosted another reception to mark Eid
  al-Fitr, the
  Muslim day when the Ramadan fast is broken. Among the outside organizers of this event
  was Salam al-Marayati, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
  (MPAC). In a
  Summer 1998 article in the Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International
  entitled,
  “The Muslim Public Affairs Council — A Case Study in Deception,” Mr. Emerson revealed
  the role that MPAC has played, in its own right and as a member (together with CAIR, the
  AMC and the American Muslim Alliance) in the American Muslim Political Coordinating
  Council, in defending militant Islamic fundamentalism, supporting groups operating under its
  banner and issuing statements hostile to the United States, as well as Israel. For example, in
  1997, al-Marayati called for the resumption of the Arab world’s anti-Israel boycott.

As it happens, according to a front-page, above-the-fold article in today’s New
York
Times, al-Marayati’s background has proven to be sufficiently problematic that
House
Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO) has just withdrawn his
appointment of the MPAC director to a congressinally mandated
counterterrorism commission.

• In May 1998, Mrs. Clinton used a television interview broadcast by the Voice of
  America
  to declare her support for the creation of a Palestinian state that is “on the same footing
  as
  other states.” Such a state would, presumably, enjoy full sovereignty, the right to maintain
  standing armed forces, exclusive control over its borders and foreign and military relations —
  in short, a mortal threat to Israel. ³ Even though the
  Clinton Administration also went
  through the motions of disassociating itself from this stunning, clearly deliberate and probably
  presidentially approved statement on Middle East policy, its Casablanca-esque disavowals
  rang hollow.

• On 1 July, President Clinton himself broke still more new ground in the First
  Couple’s
  agenda of pandering to the Arabs at Israeli expense: In a press conference with
  Egyptian
  President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Clinton endorsed the Palestinians’ “right of return,”
  saying
  that they should be able to ” live wherever they like, wherever they want to live.” Mrs.
  Clinton has yet to be asked about her views on this matter and, under present circumstances,
  she may be unwilling to acknowledge them. It is hard to believe, however, given the
  solidarity she has long expressed with the Palestinian people — whom she and her husband
  appear to see through the same prism as the American civil rights movement looked at
  downtrodden blacks, with the Israeli Jews cast in the role of the racist Ku Klux Klan and their
  political sympathizers — that she would deny the Palestinians the right of return.

The Bottom Line

Hillary Clinton’s record is not that of an individual committed to a “strong and
secure
Israel.” She is no more convincing in her pledge to support Jerusalem’s unity under
Israel’s
permanent control and to make that support tangible by ensuring that the U.S. embassy is moved
to the Jewish State’s capital.

In a way, given this reality, even more appalling than Mrs. Clinton’s disingenuous
pandering to the Jewish vote is the pandering of some in the American Jewish community
to her. A case in point is the decision of the Jewish women’s organization,
Hadassah, to give
Hillary Clinton their 1999 Zionist Award, the first time it has violated its own
guidelines —
which “prohibit the extension of any award or honor to a candidate for elective office” — and,
presumably, the first time it has besmirched this award by giving it to someone who is, if
anything, a well-known anti-Zionist.

¹See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled See
‘Happy Birthday, Jerusalem’: Congress
Affirms You Are the Unified Capital Exclusively of Israel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_81″>No. 95-D 81, 25 October 1995) and
Blessed Be the Peacemakers, for They Shall Move the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem (No. 95-D
78, 19 October 1995).

² See The Map Is On The Wall: Arafat Wants No
Part Of ‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ With
Israel, Must Get No More U.S. Aid Until He Does ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_93″>No. 97-D 93, 8 July 1997) and Clinton
Legacy Watch # 24: An Odious Ultimatum To Israel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_78″>No. 98-D 78, 6 May 1998).

³ See Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians to
Acquire a Real — and Threatening — State or
Just a ‘State of Mind’ (No. 98-D 126, 9
July 1998) and Honor King Hussein: Thwart
Palestinian Statehood (No. 99-D 19, 8 February 1999).