Hillary Clinton’s press agent deserves a raise for ensuring that the only friend quoted in a 3000-word, front-page profile in the New York Times today is Elie Wiesel– who, if you didn’t know it, is on the far right in terms of his support for Israel. NYT:
The enormously disciplined Mrs. Clinton has stuck to the same story in public and private: She’s not running. That is what she told Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and an old friend, when she and her family dined with him recently, according to Mr. Wiesel. Others close to her emphasize that no one knows otherwise, not even Mrs. Clinton herself.
The piece by Jodi Kantor relies on “nearly two dozen current and former aides, friends and donors.” Others quoted by name are aides. (Thanks to Scott McConnell for wisecrack at start of this post.)
General David Petraeus in email to Max Boot:
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2010/07/petraeus-fed-his-pro-israel-bona-fides-to-a-neocon-writer-including-pathetic-recitation-of-meeting-wiesel.html/comment-page-1#comment-210656
Know folks out here all ready working to make sure Hillary Clinton is never President. Her yes vote on the Iraq war resolution. Her right wing stances on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Her warmongering against Iran. etc etc etc. Hillary would be worse than Bush 43 on the middle east. Well as bad
Elie Wiesel is best known as an author and Holocaust survivor. It’s not as well known that in the 1940’s he was a member of the Irgun, Menachem Begin’s group of terrorists. Their most infamous massacre was at Yassin Deir, which played an important role in spreading panic and flight among the Palestinians. Wiesel didn’t personally shoot anybody (as far as I know), but was a journalist instead. As a journalist he was an Israeli propagandist, and he still is an Israeli propagandist today.
Wiesel claims to speak in opposition to suffering and massacres, but in fact he supports anything Israel does, including wars of aggression and massacres. He is eloquent, and crafty, so his hypocritical honey-coated words go down well with the general public.
In the early 1980’s, a book was published, authored by Joan Peters, entitled From Time Immemorial. As Mondoweiss readers already know, this propagandistic book “proved” that Palestinians only arrived recently in Israel/Palestine. It drew hundreds of favorable reviews and no unfavorable ones. (Book reviews were carefully steered to friendly reviewers, while real middle east experts were avoided). Then a graduate student, Norman Finkelstein, blew the whistle on the book, and called it a hoax. The book was a last-ditch attempt to rehabilitate the old Israeli slogan, “a land without people, for a people without a land”. Finkelstein first gained notice as the man who refuted Joan Peters.
What was the role of Elie Wiesel? Supposedly he is a passionate advocate of “memory” about suffering.
Wiesel wrote a blurb praising the Peters book !!
After the book was exposed as a fraudulent piece of pseudo-scholarship, Wiesel declined to discuss his role in promoting the book. And this from a man who drones on and on about the importance of history and memory and justice etc etc.
Wiesel has not been called to account for his behavior, and his career certainly hasn’t suffered. Hillary Clinton sees a dinner with Wiesel, respected moralist, as a political advantage for her.
From reports I’ve read Hillary is going to turn her sights on NeoLiberal economic leveling of the world’s countries.
She now has a vision of how all countries of the world can be made to be economically and wealth equal by establishing a kind “Economic UN” to oversee everyone’s business and of course thru the US doing ‘economic’ nation building.
I had an article( lost link) on her State Department “Marshall Plan” for revitalizing Iraq – Afghan …forgot exactly how many US billions a year for how long the State Dept asked for to do that.
Some examples of her “thinking”:
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/21/hillary-clinton-economic-aid/
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/clintons-dubious-plan-to-save-afghanistan-with-a-new-silk-road/247760/
The Atlantic one is really good…we’re gonna rebuild the old “Silk Road” of yore, over the mountains and thru the valleys of Afghan….even though sea shipping for trade is what they do now and much cheaper…AND..we would of course have to alter the old Silk Road slightly so it won’t benefit any ‘bad’ countries like Iran or Syria.
Hummm…this is what happens to your brain when you fall for all the flattery about how smart you are…you start to believe you have a magical brain.
Maybe she’s been sharpening up her zionist bona fides with Saban and others, not because she’s running for prez, but because she thinks they have people who will help implement/force ? her vision into being.
Elie Wiesel is that most disgusting of all specimens – the pious bigot.