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Bill Clinton's Pre-Sept. 11 Mideast Mindset
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
July 17, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
When the late
Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat turned thumbs down to
former President Bill Clinton’s last-ditch efforts at Mideast peace July 25,
2000, another opportunity was lost.
Despite bending over backwards, dovish Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave
Arafat almost everything except Palestinians “right of return” to Israel’s
pre-1967 borders. Barak agreed in
principle to cede the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem to Palestinians
for in independent state. Back
then, Arafat relied heavily on his friend Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to
pressure Israel with waves of suicide bombings on civilian targets and
eventually rocket attacks from Gaza.
While Yassin was killed by an Israeli rocket March 22, 2004, a new
generation of Hamas leaders led by 54-year-old Khaled Meshaal continue the war
against what Hamas calls the “Zionist entity.”
Clinton found out the hard way that Arafat couldn’t be trusted to accept
a compromise peace deal built around U.N. Resoultion 242 where Israel was
required to give back spoils of the 1967 Six Day War in exchange for peace. Arafat founded the Palestine
Liberation Organization in 1964, working feverishly with Egypt’s Gen. Gamal
Abdel Nasser, planning the final destruction of Israel in 1967. Nasser and Arafat led the charge June 5, 1967, together with a multi-Arab-nation attempt
to destroy the Jewish State. When
the dust settled June 10, 1967, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq’s militaries were
destroyed with Israel annexing Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s
West Bank, Syria’s Golan Heights and Jordan-controlled East Jerusalem. Twenty-years later Yassin founded
Hamas on the principle of completing Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution,” to
exterminate what’s left of the Jewish population.
Clinton’s well-aware of Hamas’s charter quoting chapter-and-verse from
the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, one of the most disgraceful
anti-Semitic forgeries in Modern History.
Attributed to a Russian Bolshehvik, the book weaves the sinister
fairytale about an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world. Hamas’s scribes relied heavily on Hitler’s Mein Kamph, also quoting from the “Protocols,”
blaming Jews for every evil on the planet.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu could and should make a
comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians,” former President Bill
Clinton told NDTV. Clinton knows
that today’s 79-year-old PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently joined forces April
23 with Hamas, a State Department recognized terror group. When Clinton talks about a deal with
Palestinians, it now includes Hamas.
Hamas hasn’t changed its racist charter or, for that matter, its mission
of wiping Israel off the map. It’s
difficult to see Abbas as a peace partner when he’s joined forces with the group
currently firing missiles at Israel.
Clinton says he’s worried that Hamas’s rocket war hurts Israel’s
credibility by forcing Israel to respond causing more collateral damage in Gaza. Lecturing Netanyahu to make peace
with Israel when current Palestinian leadership has joined a State
Department-recognized terror organization makes no sense. Before Sept. 11 and after the 1967
War, State Department officials pressured Israel into making concessions to
appease Palestinian demands. After
Sept. 11, the U.S. could no longer do business with terror groups, no matter how
noble their cause. Clinton knows
that Netanyahu can’t make peace with a group that calls for Israel’s
destruction.
Clinton’s concern that Israel continues to isolate itself or hurt its PR
by causing collateral damage in crowded Gaza neighborhoods is valid but only to
the extent that Hama’s rulers are so callous, so heartless, so psychopathic that
they use civilians as human shield to fight its PR war against Israel. While it’s true that collateral
damage isolates Israel, it’s also true that Israel has a right to stop rocket
attacks into its sovereign territory. Since Sept. 11, U.S. national security
became seamlessly attached to Israel, prompting former President George W. Bush
to break off relations with Yasser Arafat.
Clinton continued former President Jimmy Carter’s old U.S. Mideast policy
of placating Arabs whether or not they practice terrorism. Yes, Hamas wants a war with Israel
to inflict maximum collateral damage on Gaza to sway world opinion against
Israel. But, no, that’s not reason
enough for peace deal.
Moving into ground operations in Gaza, Netanyahu responded to growing
collateral damage, where it’s next-to-impossible to fight Hamas’s crowded terror
operations from 30,000 feet.
Putting tanks on the ground in Gaza escalates the conflict but quiets down
critics of Israel’s air-strikes that carry high risks of collateral damage. “Over the long run, it is not good
for Israel to keep isolating itself from world opinion because of the absence of
a viable peace process,” said Clinton, implying strongly that the blame for the
peace talk’s failure was at
Israel’s feet. Clinton admitted
that Hamas has a plan for Israel to kill thousands of its citizens to win the PR
war, driving public opinion to Palestinians’ side. ‘In the short to medium term, Hamas
can inflict terrible public relations damage on Israel by forcing it to kill
Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas,” said Clinton, admitting Hamas wants the
collateral damage.
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