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Today’s edition of Hillary News & Views begins with Clinton's speech to AIPAC, which assailed Donald Trump with an intensity his GOP opponents have failed to do.
The Daily Beast reports:
Until now, Trump has succeeded in knocking out almost all his Republican opponents by deriding them as weak and ineffectual. But unlike that hapless bunch, Clinton is coming out swinging.
As a pure performance, she hit all the right notes, her voice dropping when she recalled holding the hands of men and women in Israeli hospital wards whose lives were torn apart by terrorism, then rising with indignation that anyone could advocate neutrality. She didn’t name Trump of course, but anyone with even a passing interest in the region took note of his comments earlier this month that he believes in being “somewhat neutral” in his approach towards the decades-old conflict in the Middle East.
“Israel’s security is not negotiable, and anybody who doesn’t understand that has no business being our president,” Clinton thundered.
She conjured up the perils awaiting the next president, the unprecedented chaos and conflict in the Middle East, the ongoing terrorist attacks in Israel, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. “We have to get this right,” she said to robust and sustained applause. Outsourcing to dictators, a reference to Trump’s praise for Russian involvement in Syria, or thinking America no longer has vital interests in the region now that energy independence is on the horizon is “dangerously wrong,” Clinton said.
“We need steady hands, not a President who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything’s negotiable. Well my friends, Israel’s security is non-negotiable,” she declared.
For those who have been following the machinations of peacemaking in the Middle East, the Holy Grail for some time has been the two-state solution. It was only toward the end of her speech that Clinton returned to what remains official U.S. policy. Despite many setbacks, she said, she remains convinced that a negotiated two-state agreement is the only way to achieve a democratic Jewish state and a homeland for the Palestinian people to govern themselves.
“Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements,” Clinton said, a gentle reference to a major irritant between successive U.S. administrations and Israeli governments.
Clinton was not there to open old wounds but to fortify herself with old friends and allies against a likely general election campaign against Trump. In a democracy, differences are aired, she said.
“But what Americans are hearing on the campaign trail this year is something else entirely. Encouraging violence. Playing coy with white supremacists. Calling for 12 million immigrants to be rounded up and deported. Demanding we turn away refugees because of their religion and proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the United States.”
“Now, we’ve had dark chapters in our history before,” she continued, recalling nearly 1,000 Jews aboard the St. Louis who were turned away in 1939 and sent back to Europe. “America should be better than this,” she said. “If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him.”
In her otherwise sober remarks, Clinton allowed herself one light moment, recalling how “some of us remember a woman, Golda Meir, who led the Israeli government decades ago and wonder what’s taking us so long here in America,” Clinton said with a smile.
The Huffington Post reports:
“Candidates for president who think the United States can outsource Middle East security to dictators, or that America no longer has vital national interests at stake in this region are dangerously wrong,” Clinton said, likely referencing Trump’s description of Russian military involvement in Syria as a positive move that minimizes the need for U.S. action there.
In a clear effort to differentiate herself from her real estate magnate opponent, Clinton’s speech was sprinkled with anecdotes from her time as first lady in the Bill Clinton administration, and then as the leading U.S. diplomat.
“I don’t think Yitzhak Rabin ever forgave me for banishing him to the White House balcony when he wanted to smoke,” she joked, reminding the audience that she met personally with the revered former Israeli prime minister.
“I know how hard all of this is,” she later empathized on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “I remember what it took just to convene Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas for the three sessions of direct face-to-face talks in 2010 that I presided over.”
On Iran, Clinton faced an inherent disadvantage with this audience compared to her Republican opponents. Last year, AIPAC spent millions of dollars trying to convince a supermajority of Congress to kill the nuclear accord. Clinton is the only candidate speaking at AIPAC this year who supported Obama’s effort to reach the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Cognizant of that friction, she prepared the audience to hear “a lot of rhetoric from the other candidates about Iran.” But she assured them that she is the only candidate who could convince the international community to re-apply sanctions on the country if it violates the nuclear agreement, pointing to her past efforts to cobble together an international sanctions coalition against Iran as proof.
