Monday, April 4, 2016

The Company Hillary Keeps

File this under “The Company She Keeps: HRC.”

We all know that Sidney Blumenthal has long been an important advisor to both Clintons. We know that Sidney Blumenthal was advising then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about conditions in Libya. We know that the Clintons have praised Sid Blumenthal and hold his counsel dear.

It is less well known that Blumenthal has a son named Max who is an anti-Israeli activist. Presumably Jewish, Max Blumenthal has praised Hamas terrorism and has called for Israeli Jews either to become like the Arabs or to go back to Europe.

It isn’t too much of stretch to call this anti-Semitism.

So said Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Observer:

Max Blumenthal, who was revealed by the Hillary Clinton forced email dump as one of her secret sources and advisers on Israel and Middle East affairs, is one of the great Israel haters in America today.

A writer should avoid hyperbole. But when it comes to Max Blumenthal, son of longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, it’s hard to avoid superlatives. Max is quite simply one of the most biased, anti-Semitic, terrorist-defending, Israel-has-no-right-to-exist haters out there.

Max, who spends most of his professional life being ignored because of his extreme, hate-filled drivel, recently became the focus of scrutiny when it was revealed that his father, Sid Blumenthal, promoted Max’s anti-Semitic writings to Ms. Clinton when she was Secretary of State of the United States. More explosive are Ms. Clinton’s emails praising Max’s work.

Boteach also outlined his case in The Huffington Post and was naturally threatened with lawsuits.

The London Telegraph just published an account of a recent speech given by Max Blumenthal. I report; you decide:

Another meeting, in the London School of Economics on March 5, was addressed by Max Blumenthal, a writer who is also the son of Sidney Blumenthal, a past adviser to former President Bill Clinton and now likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Describing the Palestinian enclave of Gaza as a penitentiary, Mr Blumenthal said: “There’s often prison revolts which take place everywhere, because people are normal. People are normal in the Gaza Strip, and so they take up arms.” 

He praised a 2014 massacre carried out by “commandos” of Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, against Nahal Oz, a kibbutz and army base near the Gaza border, saying it was a way for Palestinians to “recover their dignity” and “pop Israel’s security bubble”. 

“With GoPro cameras attached to their helmets, [they] burst into the Israeli base and kill every soldier they encounter in hand-to-hand combat,” said Mr Blumenthal.

“The message it sent to young Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and abroad, was incredible… You see your people in commando uniforms, bursting into a military base and showing up the occupier.” In fact Nahal Oz is within Israel proper and is not occupied territory.

He also claimed that the creation of the Palestinian Authority was “the greatest achievement of the Israeli occupation”, since it had created an “apartheid fantasy” of a subjugated Palestinian state that even the South African government could never achieve.

And, of course, after the Benghazi attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya and three others, Max Blumenthal took to the pages of the Guardian to denounce the filmmaker who contributed to the attack. While the Obama administration was blaming it all on the video, Max Blumenthal was more subtle:

Did an inflammatory anti-Muslim film trailer that appeared spontaneously on YouTube prompt the attack that left four US diplomats dead, including US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens? American officials have suggested that the assault was pre-planned, allegedly by of one of the Jihadist groups that emerged since the Nato-led overthrow of Libya's Gaddafi regime. So even though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video, the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film's backers.

Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: "We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen."

He continues:

With another US election approaching, and the Egyptian government suddenly under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, Klein and Sadek joined Nakoula in preparing what would be their greatest propaganda stunt to date: the Innocence of Muslims. As soon as the film appeared on YouTube, Sadek promoted it on his website, transforming the obscure clip into a viral source of outrage in the Middle East. And like clockwork, on September 11, crowds of Muslim protesters stormed the walls of the US embassy in Cairo, demanding retribution for the insult to the prophet Muhammad. The demonstrations ricocheted into Libya, where the deadly attack that may have been only peripherally related to the film occurred.

In an email to Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal heaped inordinate praise on his son. He labeled Mitt Romney "contemptible" and his son "fearless." To which Hillary Clinton responded that Max was a “mitzvah.”

Considering that Hillary Clinton is joined at the hip with a daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood, one Huma Abedin, one has reason to doubt her support for Israel and her willingness to fight Islamist terrorism. One remarks, yet again, that when Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt, the first foreign leader to show up to legitimate his election was Hilary Clinton.

As shown by her actions and the company she keeps Hillary was fully on board with the Obama administration Middle East policy.

4 comments:

  1. Stuart: Considering that Hillary Clinton is joined at the hip with a daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood, one Huma Abedin, one has reason to doubt her support for Israel and her willingness to fight Islamist terrorism. One remarks, yet again, that when Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt, the first foreign leader to show up to legitimate his election was Hilary Clinton.

    Myself, I'll file this under "reason to doubt Stuart's support of President Hillary."

    It definintely helps for dismissing anything that follows with biases expressed so forthrightly, like Rabbi Shmuley Boteach "Max is quite simply one of the most biased, anti-Semitic, terrorist-defending, Israel-has-no-right-to-exist haters out there."

    Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has my pity, if that's what he wants from his readers.

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  2. Being curious about Max Blumenthal, whom I previously couldn't have told you anything about him, I found this interview from a year ago:
    https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/journalist-max-blumenthal-on-the-perils-of-critiquing-the-state-of-israel-456
    -----
    One side of the conflict sees the Palestinians as being governed by extremist groups who want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth; the other side views Israel as an apartheid state where Palestinians are brutalized and treated like animals. Journalist Max Blumenthal sits firmly in the latter camp.

    Max: There's a flurry of articles painting me as an anti-Semite because I've been published in the New York Times. It makes the assailants who represent the right wing of the Israeli lobby feel like their attacks have failed because The Times is taking me seriously, so all they have left is this allegation of anti-Semitism. They don't care whether I keep kosher or not, whether I go to synagogues. All they care about is my relationship to Israel, and my opposition to a religiously and ethnically exclusive state. I went to Germany to speak recently, a country where there really isn't any distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Germany has kind of absolved itself of its Holocaust guilt through its support of Israel. So I was targeted there.
    ...
    Why would Republicans be more inclined to support Israel?
    Max: It's often about eschatology, about Israel being the future landing pad of the Messiah. But it's also about Israel being the only country in the West that has a clear ethnic and religious criteria for who can be a citizen. So, for those who think America should be a white, Christian nation, Israel provides a great model. Israel is what they see as the Fort Apache on the front lines in the clash of civilization.
    -------

    I see, in Evangelical Christianity eschatology, is related to Dispensationalism as my Presbyterian minister mentioned.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism

    Politics is always interesting, and religion is interesting squared, while politics based on religion is interesting to the nth degree, or terrifying as the case may be.

    I wouldn't call Max Blumenthal anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, I think he's anti-crazy-making which is where Israel is, and where Israel wants America to go, and for the sake of the 2000 year mythical last days of Christianity, the crazy-making has unlimited potential.

    I'm sure Israel is a great place stil, with lots of great people, but it makes sense that it'll eventually drive all the rational moderates out until stupid finally wins out. How could we imagine otherwise?

    Let's hope America keeps its sense away from all this insanity. Still I won't bother hoping Hillary will do it. I'd say she's doing her best to look like Israel's BFF, even if paranoid minds would see otherwise.

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  3. I would call him those, Ares; that's what I'm seeing.

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  4. Quite frankly I am more interested in whether Hillary and/or the Clinton Foundation have anything to do with Mossack Fonseca? Given that there appears to be a Washington establishment with the democrat and republican establishments being full members it would not surprise me if there was a larger group of people made up of the world leaders, et al.
    It could be why outsiders in both parties are so hated. Obama may be right when he states that foreign leaders don't like Trump, Cruz et al, but not for the reasons postulated. Rather interesting considering.

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