Hillary Clinton Goes Full Republican For AIPAC, Creating More Distance From Sanders’ Supporters
The conditions created between Hillary Clinton supporters and Bernie Sanders’, is one of confusion for those who might not see the party lines, perhaps believing that both candidates would benefit from each other by being on the same side.
But there has been tension between those supporters, causing a divide and more distance when it comes to the issues and with the recent AIPAC convention; Hillary Clinton’s views on Israel have only increased the gap.
Salon published an op-ed on this view, where they point out just how pro-Israel she came across at the event, saying that she was pandering to the aggressively pro-Israel crowd for their votes, going as far as to slam an activist Palestinian group, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) group, which recently claimed victory and took credit for shutting down a company that creates technology that they feel oppresses Palestinians.
Responding to those criticisms, Klein says that she understands the reluctance to support a cultural boycott, but says “it’s worth remembering that… the cultural boycott was incredibly important when it came to South Africa.”
It should also be noted that physicist Stephen Hawking supports the BDS movement.
For a while now, it’s been reported that the relationship between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Obama has been, to say the least, tense.
Frontline‘s special, Netanyahu At War, attempts to document Netanyahu’s friction with liberal administrations, both with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
It was 2014 when the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip had reached a fever pitch, which resulted in the one of the latest responses by the public and the United Nations, who have gone as far as declaring that Israel had committed war crimes, which only infuriated Netanyahu even more, along with the fact that Abbas sought help from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Israeli prime minister and when the United Nations voted to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state.
In the AIPAC convention, many of the candidates, including Donald Trump, said they would ignore the United Nations and not include them in talks between Palestinians and Israel.
Hillary Clinton was only one of the many who said they would continue talks with the two, but a few weeks ago, Thomas Friedman was on PBS NewsHour, where he talked about how the peace process is dead.
Friedman points out that the rhetoric from candidates, including Hillary Clinton, has nothing to do with reality.
If Hillary Clinton were to be elected, she has stated quite often that she would continue many of the Obama administration’s policies, but given the view presented by Friedman, there’s no telling if the tension would continue or if the administration would be as supportive as she claims.
In a recent Gallup poll published on the second of March, 45 percent of Americans appear to favor Netanyahu.
And while the article by Salon is an opinion piece, it still points out the most talked about issues reported through the mainstream media, mostly the violence between Palestinians and Israelis.
Hillary's foreign policy is indefensible. Her sickening AIPAC speech helps illustrate why https://t.co/jZdjIydncB
— Salon (@Salon) March 23, 2016
The article also points out that Hillary Clinton did not acknowledge the deaths of Palestinian civilians.
“She condemned ‘Hamas rockets’ in the summer 2014 war with Gaza, but glossed over the more than 2,250 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, roughly two-thirds of whom were civilians, including more than 550 children, according to the U.N. — not to mention the fact that leading human rights organizations including Amnesty International and independent investigations by experts accused the Israel Defense Forces of intentionally targeting civilians and committing war crimes.”
In contrast, Bernie Sanders has captured the attention of a further left wing ideology, which puts more focus on environmentalism but has also been known to pay more attention and side with the Palestinian cause.
Prior to doing so, it would be Bill Clinton who would draw attention to them first. An article by CNN provides those details.
The Independent and left wing media source Democracy Now! had a debate in its broadcast between Yousef Munayyer and Robert Freedman called “Is Clinton Moving To The Right Of Trump On Israel-Palestine?”
Munayyer attacked Hillary Clinton’s view as more of the same.
“As recently as last week, the Israelis continued again to expropriate land deep inside the West Bank, this time outside of Jericho in an area that’s nowhere near the Green Line, and the response from the State Department was simply, ‘Well, you know, we find this troubling, and it leads us to question the intentions of the Israelis and whether or not they’re committed.’ If all you can do over the course of five decades is respond to Israeli settlement expansion and colonialism with empty words, while continuing to fork over billions of dollars to ensure that the status quo continues, then you’re really only giving the green light to the Israelis that this is A-OK. And so, you know, for Clinton to make a comment like that, I think, is really just a reminder of the corruption of American policy on this issue, which, frankly, transcends the American political divide in the United States, as well.”
One significant detail is the fact that Bernie Sanders did not attend AIPAC so that he could focus on his campaign. However, it has been noted that his views on the conflict would only put him at odds with the pro-Israel event, even though he is Jewish.
CNN published an article on why Sanders skipped the event.
Bernie Sanders’ site published what he would have said at the AIPAC conference, which he also made into a speech while he was in Utah.
Time has published a transcript of Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech.
[Featured image by Andrew Harnik | AP Photo]
