by ROBERT FISK
Democratic Party presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Whilst Clinton has been decidedly pro-Israeli and anti-boycott throughout her campaign, Sanders has paid a price for saying that US policy in the Middle East should be even-handed
Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl contributed $3 million to the Hillary Clinton Super Political Action Committee
First to Israel, which – unlike the sea-to-shining-sea hinterland of the American media – really can be a “land of the free” for its journalists. Gideon Levy, the deeply inspiring, admired and much hated columnist on Haaretz newspaper, has written an outraged attack on the 83 US senators who urged Obama in this glorious election year to increase yet again Washington’s military aid to Israel – by more than the present $3bn a year. “Ignoramuses,” Levy calls them and adds that their letter to the American president is “a disgrace”.
And when you realise that Gideon Levy is verbally assaulted by the pro-Israel lobby in the US almost as much as he is threatened by Israelis themselves, you know you’re talking about a man whose words will be treated with as much scorn by the present Obama administration as they will be by the next Clinton administration. “Your money, senators, is largely being spent on maintaining a brutal, illegal occupation that your country claims to oppose – but finances,” Levy has told the most powerful forum on the globe. “What do you have over there in the world’s most important legislature? An automatic signing machine for letters supporting Israel? An ATM for the Jewish lobby’s every whim?”
You can almost hear Clinton’s cry of horror because, in just over a week’s time, her ‘Jewish Outreach Director’, Sarah Bard, who worked for Clinton during her unsuccessful attempt at the presidency in 2008, is going to hold a fundraiser in Tel Aviv (tickets start at $45 and run up to more than $2,000). Bard is going to hold a “discussion” which is “in support of Hillary for America”. Clinton, it will be remembered, opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign against Israel. No surprise there. But shortly after she asked the Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban to advise her on how “we can work together” against the boycott, Saban and his wife Cheryl contributed $3m to the Hillary Clinton Super Political Action Committee. The Sabans have already given more than $10m to the Clinton Foundation – purely a “philanthropic” institution, you understand, nothing to do with La Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Cheryl Saban is on the foundation’s board.
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