title: Hillary Clinton’s Anti-Israel E-mails Raise Questions About Influence On Foreign Policy
text: Hillary Clinton s new e-mail release exposes her relationship to some very anti-Israel people. Sydney Blumenthal is a very close friend of the Clintons and exchanges quite a few e-mails with Clinton that are disturbing. Did he have much influence of foreign policy and the inner workings of the State Department. While Clinton claims Blumenthal was a minor character, the e-mails reveal a different story entirely:As Hillary Clinton s email scandals goes  nuclear  with more and more classified material coming to light (including some described as  explosive ), one disturbing trend is coming to light: Hillary s deep contempt for the state of Israel in general, and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular.When the State Department released more than 5000 pages of Clinton s emails from her private server on New Year s Eve, it included correspondence with her one-time advisor Sidney Blumenthal. The communications revealed an exchange regarding Israel, and Blumenthal cited the work of his son, journalist Max Blumenthal, a self-described  anti-Zionist  known for his radical anti-Israel views.According to the Times of Israel,  In March 2010, Blumenthal plugged his son s work   this time, playing up links between evangelical Pastor John Hagee and Netanyahu   in the context of an article (written by a different writer) discussing a controversial Pentagon briefing on U.S. relations with Israel and the Arab world.   The briefing had dealt with the lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and American concerns over a growing perception among Arab leaders that the US was incapable of standing up to Israel. The senior Blumenthal sent several articles written by his son and referenced the younger man s plans to move to Israel for several months to write a book.  He tracks a lot of things that do not appear in the mainstream press,  he wrote to Hillary.Just in time for the 2016 election, hear Hillary Clinton say she would NOT run for president, in  Hillary Unhinged  by Thomas KuiperHillary then took the articles in question and instructed a staffer to print five copies  without the heading from Sid.  She noted the articles came from Max Blumenthal s book  Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,  a widely criticized and rabidly anti-Semitic volume that castigated Israeli policies. The Nation s media editor Eric Alterman referred to it as the  I Hate Israel handbook  and wrote Blumenthal s  case against the Jewish state is so carelessly constructed, it will likely alienate anyone but the most fanatical anti-Zionist extremists, and hence do nothing to advance the interests of the occupation s victims. According to the Times of Israel,  Blumenthal also sent Clinton a piece by leftist Israeli Uri Avnery, who also analyzed the Pentagon briefing by leveling a damning critique against Netanyahu. Clinton asked Blumenthal, in response, how she should use this material in an upcoming talk she was supposed to have with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Blumenthal speculated on Netanyahu s psychological makeup by suggesting his actions were motivated by a desperate attempt to live up to his father s expectations.In an email sent immediately after the May 2010 Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Maramara in which nine activists were killed, Blumenthal referred to the operation as  Bibi s Entebbe in reverse.  Noting that Netanyahu s brother Yoni was  heroically killed  in the 1976 hostage rescue mission, he said the brothers  father Benzion  adored  Yoni, while the younger Benjamin has always lived in his brother s shadow.  Bibi desperately seeks his father s approbation and can never equal his dead brother (he) has never measured up,  Blumenthal suggested.The senior Blumenthal continued to push his son s anti-Israel views on Hillary. As noted by the Times of Israel,  In 2012, Blumenthal sent his son s article in al-Akhbar,  The Bibi Connection,  to Clinton, who then relayed it onward. The article emphasized Netanyahu s intent to campaign against Obama s reelection in 2012, arguing that  Netanyahu s shadow campaign is intended to be a factor in defeating Obama and electing a Republican in his place.    The article reflected upon Netanyahu s ties to prominent Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, as well as the prime minister s right-wing pedigree. It noted that when his father, Benzion Netanyahu,  returned to Israel to launch a political career, the elder Netanyahu was rejected by Menachem Begin, the (then-)Likud Party leader, who, as right wing as he was, considered him dangerously extreme. Hillary offered a  terse  response on some of Sidney Blumenthal s policy suggestions regarding Israel, upon which he backed off. However,  Blumenthal could not keep Netanyahu out of his semi-retraction, hinting at missed peace opportunities by the Israeli leader:  Of course, if Bibi were to have engaged Syria in negotiations taking its previous gestures seriously   he wrote, before changing the subject without concluding the hypothetical. The email dump revealed Blumenthal was not the only one commenting on Middle East policy. Foreign-policy analyst Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly the State Department s director of policy planning, wrote to Clinton the  time was right  for the U.S. to recognize Palestine during the emerging of the Arab Spring. It would allow you and POTUS to have accomplished the goal POTUS laid out at UNGA last year and would make it much harder for Syrians, Iranians, even Saudis to use this issue to divert domestic opposition, strengthening the seismic shift across the region to create fault-lines around reform/no reform instead of Arabs/US-Israel,  wrote Slaughter.The Times of Israel notes,  The emails also indicate the existence of a lengthy correspondence over attempts to reconcile Israel and Turkey following the events of the 2010 Gaza flotilla, but the emails are so heavily redacted as to expunge any clue as to what was actually discussed.   Another series details attempts in 2010 to broker direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with significant input from the parties involved in the Arab Peace Initiative. Learn more about the Hillary Clinton Investigative Justice Project, conceived by two veteran investigative journalists who plan to take their findings to state attorneys general in jurisdictions in which the nonprofit, tax-exempt Clinton Family Foundation does businessClinton s hostility toward Israel is well documented.Read more: wnd