Hillary Clinton Vows to Stand With Israel, If Elected President

Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State and leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has vowed to “reaffirm” the role of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “rebuild” America’s ties with the Jewish state should she become President.

“I have stood with Israel my entire career,” Clinton wrote in an opinion article for The Forward, the online descendant of what was once America’s largest Jewish newspaper. “As secretary of state, I requested more assistance for Israel every year, and supported the lifesaving Iron Dome rocket defense system. I defended Israel from isolation and attacks at the United Nations and other international settings, including opposing the biased Goldstone report.”

Clinton, a former United States Senator from New York whose husband, President Bill Clinton, served from 1993 to 2000, has touted her record of support for Israel at her campaign website. There, supporters boast of Clinton’s “unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and the importance of America’s bond with Israel. She is one of Israel’s most effective and energetic defenders on the world stage.”

There are those who’ve questioned Clinton’s commitment, however. Writing in in 2014 at The Washington Post’s website, blogger Jennifer Rubin asked a number of questions about the former secretary of state’s positions, including, “If [Clinton] was such a good friend to Israel why did she continually berate the Jewish state for building in its capital while ignoring the exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George W. Bush setting out the parameters of acceptable building?”

This year, the Post’s Anne Gearan, a national politics reporter, spelled out the contentiousness of Clinton’s relationship with Netanyahu. In a 45-minute phone call where Netanyahu listened to Clinton for 43 minutes, Gearan wrote, “the U.S. secretary of state lectured the Israeli leader, accusing him of trying to do an end run around American opposition to settlement-building and embarrassing Vice President Biden during a visit to Israel, according to interviews with people present during the 2010 call or who were briefed on it afterward. She read from a script for part of the lecture, so as not to miss any key points.”

Gearan quoted Clinton as conceding, “I was often the designated yeller” in dealing with the Israeli leader.

Now, Clinton promises a new level of support for Israel should she be elected President. On taking office, she wrote, she would immediately send “a delegation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to meet with senior Israeli commanders. I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.”

No mention was made of a similar invitation for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, although she did recall “convening” Netanyahu and Abbas for a meeting at President Barack Obama’s request, “the last time that’s ever happened.”

The question of Iran — which has vowed to destroy “the Zionist entity” of Israel — gaining a nuclear weapon also figured in Clinton’s plea to the Forward’s readers.

“We must remain committed to preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon, and to vigorously enforcing the new nuclear agreement. I would move to step up our partnership to confront Iran and its proxies across the region,” she wrote.

But Clinton was an architect of the initially secret talks that led to the Iran agreement blasted by Netanyahu before Congress this year, Breitbart News noted, while simultaneously chastising Israel.

“At the same time she was facilitating secret high level talks with the world’s leading terror sponsoring state in 2012, Mrs. Clinton publicly accused Israelis of ‘lacking empathy for ‘oppressed Palestinians.’ ‘There is more that the Israelis need to do to,’ the then-Secretary of State told the Saban Forum, ‘to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds,'” the news service reported.

How this will play in Clinton’s candidacy has yet to be determined, but her use of the Forward — founded as an immigrant-focused publication that at one time was America’s largest Jewish publication — might indicate concern that one of her most important constituencies isn’t as fully “Ready for Hillary,” as her campaign slogan declares.