Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s increasingly notorious confidante and top aide, urged Bill Clinton to reject an invitation to speak before the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC). In an email, she wrote: “u really want to consider sending him into that crowd?” (Emphasis added)
From her use of the phrase “that crowd,” you might think that AIPAC is a radical organization that advocates ethnic cleansing or some other draconian “solution” to the problems of the Middle East. In reality, of course, AIPAC, is as mainstream a Jewish political organization as exists.
“That crowd” consists of American Jews of all political persuasions. “That crowd” routinely gives standing ovations to speakers from the Obama administrations, whose prescriptions for the Middle East, formulated by President Obama and Clinton herself, hardly tilt against the Palestinians.
To refer to attendees of AIPAC meeting as “that crowd” confirms the depth of Abedin’s anti-Israeli bias.
That bias has long been suspected. Abedin was raised in Saudi Arabia by a family with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. As Richard Pollock reminds us, her parents ran the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
Mr. Abdein’s benefactor was Abdullah Omar Naseef, secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL). The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Rabita Trust, a subsidiary of the MWL, as a terrorist entity. Osama bin Laden credited MWL as a funding source after the 9/11 attacks.
When Abedin was at the State Department, I tended not to view her potential to influence U.S. policy towards Israel with as much alarm as some did. Given what I’ve since learned about Abedin’s extraordinary relationship with Hillary Clinton and what we now know about her contempt for AIPAC, I tend to view her potential to influence U.S. policy towards Israel in a Clinton administration with panic.
I wonder, though, how much influencing would be required of Abedin. Hillary Clinton is no friend of Israel, in my view.
Arguably, U.S. policy has never been more hostile towards Israel than during President Obama’s first term, when Clinton was Secretary of State. And I’ve never been able to forget Hillary’s get together with Suha Arafat in the late 1990s. It included a shopping trip, a kiss, and the refusal of Clinton to counter Mrs. Arafat’s claim, made in Hillary’s presence, that Israel was using poison gas to pollute the West Bank’s water and land.
Hillary kissing Suha Arafat, who accused Israel of genocide in her presence, and chewing out Bibi Netanyahu for 45 minutes would be cause for concern even if Huma Abedin had never met Mrs. Clinton. But with Abedin at her side, the concern must be all the more pronounced.
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