Hillary Clinton at an opulent dinner with Israeli billionaire Haim Saban (center) and Israeli politician Tzipi Livni (left) CREDIT: Reuters

by John Chuckman 2016-02-29

An almost perfect measure of the decay of democratic values in American politics is found in a letter from Hillary Clinton to Haim Saban, a wealthy American-Israeli and a major contributor to the Democrats. It is a letter whose only purpose is to elicit funds, ingratiating its author to the recipient by condemning the perfectly legitimate right of free people to choose boycotting Israel over its appalling behaviors.  The letter is disturbing in some of its views and characterizations, but it has been reviewed and remarked upon by many, as here.

We were not supposed to know this, but there are actually two letters. The first letter was released by its recipient, but the second letter was intended only for its recipient’s eyes. Somehow, it managed to be leaked to The Guardian, although in searching the Internet to discover just what happened it seems Google has done a pretty good job of sweeping over the trail.

It is the second letter, the one we were not supposed to see, which goes beyond being disturbing.

I am not exaggerating when I characterize it as something comparable to words which might have been written by… well, choose the name of any grisly dictator, but Adolph Hitler’s would have to be the one jumping to the minds of most people. This second letter’s words are absolutely chilling. If you think I’m exaggerating, here are Hillary’s words:

“Quite frankly, Israel didn’t teach Hamas a harsh enough lesson last year. True to form, Obama was too hard on our democratic ally, and too soft on our Islamofascist foe.

“As president, I will give the Jewish state all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to truly vanquish Hamas – and if that means killing 200,000 Gazans, then so be it.

“We realist Democrats understand that collateral damage is an unavoidable by-product of the War on Terror, and me being a mother, grandmother and tireless children’s rights advocate does not mean that I will flinch even one iota in allowing Israel to obliterate every last school-cum-rocket launching pad in Gaza. Those who allow their children to be used as human shields for terrorists deserve to see them buried under one-ton bombs.”

Let’s just analyze a few of the more unacceptable and repugnant statements in this letter.

“Israel didn’t teach Hamas a harsh enough lesson…”

In 2014, Israel killed over 500 children plus another 1,700 adults in Gaza, and that came after another invasion, 2008, and a series of operations beginning in 2006, which saw Israel kill more than another 1,500 Palestinians. It should be noted that the Palestinian population is a young one, so a disproportion of children is always at risk in any attack. We had reliable reports that Israeli soldiers grabbed Palestinian children to hold in front of them in a number of instances. We also had first-hand reports of families being targeted.

Over this period, Israel has maintained a brutal blockade of Gaza, which in its first inception included an actual calorie count for the amount of food which could just keep a person alive, an idea we might want to credit to Himmler. International pressure brought an end to that aspect of the blockade, but even today the Palestinians cannot get cement to repair their sanitation and homes. Israel also launched its infamous Gaza flotilla raid in 2010, seizing half a dozen ships attempting to bring aid to Gaza and killing 10 crew members, all of them unarmed.

I remind readers just what Gaza is. It is essentially a huge refugee camp, a place where Palestinians huddled for protection from Israel’s 1948 terror campaign against residents of ancient villages long since bulldozed out of existence. Today, surrounded by fences and guards and towers with automated, radar-operated machine-guns, Gaza resembles a vast outdoor prison, or, if you will, a Bantustan or concentration camp. Even its fishermen are allowed to go only a short distance into the sea before being attacked by Israeli gun boats. Periodically, Israel does dirty work like cut its power or foul its water. Recently, a huge swath of land around its perimeter was sprayed with herbicides, cutting food supplies and insuring future malformation of children, just as we see in Vietnam as a result of America’s use of Agent Orange.

“…our democratic ally…”

Israel is certainly one of the world’s strangest “democracies.” About half the people living under its rule do not want to live under its rule, have no votes, have absolutely no rights, and are treated in the most abusive manner. Even their homes are not their own with Israel periodically seizing them for its own purposes.

Then we have the fact that only Jews are supposed to live in “the Jewish state.” Only Jews are welcomed. Indeed only Jews are accepted. Other kinds of refugees are turned away. There is a government program underway right now to clean out the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, of its few Arab members. These are the representatives of Arabs trapped in what became Israel in 1948 and reluctantly granted citizenship, although in daily practice and in many laws, Arab citizens are not deemed as full citizens, identity papers are stamped and they are subjected to hearing regular demagogic demands that they all be pushed across the Jordan River and out of the country.

More here: http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2016/02/56998/