Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s position on the Israeli occupation of
the West Bank does not bode well for her future foreign policy
By Stephen Zunes
On July 2, former secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential
nomination Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to Israeli-American billionaire Haim
Saban, a strong supporter of the right-wing Netanyahu government, denouncing
human rights activists who support boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) against
the Israeli occupation.
In the letter, made public a few days later, Clinton made a number of statements
which are not only demonstrably false but raise serious concerns regarding what
kind of policies she would pursue as president.
She claimed that the BDS movement was working to “malign and undermine
Israel and the Jewish people.” Though some BDS activists target Israel
as a whole, most efforts on college campuses and elsewhere focus solely on the
Israeli occupation, particularly companies that profit from that occupation
and support illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In any case, the BDS
campaign does not “malign and undermine” Jews. This cynical effort
to depict the movement as anti-Semitic could be an indication of the kind of
rhetoric she would use as president to discredit human rights activists who
challenge her policies elsewhere.
Clinton claims in the letter that initiatives through the United Nations critical
of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law are inherently “anti-Israel,”
thereby implying that those who raise concerns about a given country’s
human rights record do so not because of a desire to uphold universally recognized
ethical and legal principles, but because of an ideological bias against a particular
country. Although some UN agencies have disproportionately targeted Israel for
criticism, the vast majority of such reports and resolutions have been consistent
with findings and concerns raised by reputable international human rights organizations
(such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) and Israeli groups (such
as the B’tselem human rights group and the veterans’ organization
Breaking the Silence.)