Hillary Clinton's advisor...Jews in particular should pay attention

WILL HILLARY CLINTON BANISH ANTI-ISRAEL SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL?

"It has to be painful for any Jew to see your own kid going around insisting that Israel be destroyed and its Jewish population kicked out.” 

November 10, 2013 

 

Daniel Greenfield

Sidney Blumenthal's son hates Israel. I mean really, really hates Israel. As in 'Hitler level hatred'. And no, this isn't an exaggeration. 

Lustick emotionally asks Blumenthal whether he believes... that there are enough “good people” in Israel to justify its continued existence — or whether he’s calling for a mass “exodus,” the title of his last chapter, and “the end of Jewish collective life in the land of Israel.”

Blumenthal gives a convoluted answer that comes down to this: “There should be a choice placed to the settler-colonial population” (meaning the entire Jewish population of Israel): “Become indigenized,” that is, “you have to be part of the Arab world.” Or else…? “The maintenance and engineering of a non-indigenous demographic majority is non-negotiable.”

Lustick appears stunned. And not only Lustick. Philip Weiss, founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss, who was in the audience, wrote afterwards, in a rare rebuke of his own writer, that he saw “some intolerance in that answer.”

We live in a “multicultural world,” Weiss wrote. There should be room for Israelis. “The issue in the end involves the choice between an Algerian and a South African outcome.” Mass expulsion versus coexistence. “I’m for the South African outcome.”

Blumenthal isn’t. It’s a chilling moment, even for the anti-Zionists among us.

That is an except from a J.J. Goldberg piece in the Forward, hardly a pro-Israel paper, and one that tends far to the left. Mondoweiss is a straight up hate site.

And Max Blumenthal is a bit much even for them. But not for his proud papa and Clintonite, Sidney Blumenthal, who's going after anyone who messes with sonny boy.

A veteran confidant of Hillary Clinton has waded into a bitter argument over the explosive topic of Israel, defending his son’s intensely anti-Israel book from a liberal critic.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former New Yorker writer turned Clinton adviser from the White House to the 2008 campaign, has been waging an online campaign against Nation columnist Eric Alterman for negatively reviewing his son Max Blumenthal’s book, Goliath. The book was described by Alterman, himself a frequent critic of Israel, as “awful” and something that “could have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed).”

Reached for comment on the email flap, Alterman said he understood why Blumenthal would want to defend his son’s book.

“I actually feel for Sid,” Alterman said. “Leaving aside the quality of Max’s journalism, it has to be painful for any Jew to see your own kid going around calling Jews ‘Nazis’ and ‘fascists,’ and insisting that not only should Israel be destroyed, but its Jewish population should be kicked out.”

Maybe. It doesn't seem that painful for Sidney Blumenthal.

In a follow-up blog post after the initial review, Alterman wrote that he had become the target of emails sent around by Blumenthal to friends and associates as a result of his review of the book.

“I attribute to these friendly relations the fact that until now, Sid Blumenthal had not seen fit to make me the object of any of the unflattering e-mails he so often sends around to journalists and others — myself included — about individuals of whom he disapproves,” Alterman wrote. “Privately, I worried that by telling the truth about his son’s book, I would soon hear of nasty e-mails about me sent by Sid to our mutual friends and professional acquaintances. Call it ‘bizarre,’ if you will, but sadly, that’s just what happened.”

“The thing about Sidney is that he’s absolutely obsessed with his enemies and his way of communicating and dealing with his obsession is that he sends out emails to this very elite list of liberal journalists mostly,” said one source who has been on Blumenthal’s list.

Blumenthal’s current role in the Clinton universe is unclear. In the bio on his author page on the Atlantic’s website, he is described as an “adviser” to the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s non-profit. Several phone calls and emails to the Clinton Foundation seeking clarification on Blumenthal’s role in the organization went unanswered. A BuzzFeed reporter who went to the Clinton Foundation’s offices in New York on Tuesday seeking the organization’s most recent IRS 990 form was turned away.

Emails alleged to be from Blumenthal that were made public earlier this year suggest that he was in communication with Clinton on matters relating to Benghazi and other national security issues this year.

Not only was Sidney Blumenthal emailing Hillary with solicited or unsolicited advice, but he was forwarding her material from his son.

And Dershowitz is speaking out and warning that Hillary Clinton is going to have break with Sidney Blumenthal over this.

On Friday, Dershowitz told Breitbart News that Sid Blumenthal's vociferous advocacy for his son's book could damage Hillary Clinton's widely anticipated run for her party's nomination for president in 2016:

"Max Blumenthal is well outside the acceptable range of rhetoric about Israel. His constant comparisons between Nazi Germany and the Jewish state establish him as an extremist bigot whose greatest appeal is to antisemites and others who apply a double standard to the Jewish state. Any political candidate who would associate himself or herself with such views would be unacceptable to Americans. In addition to being extremist in his anti-Israel views, Blumenthal is also vehemently anti-American. I have long known his father and have worked with him. But even understanding how a father would want to identify with a son, no decent person should ever support the views expressed by Max Blumenthal. I would sincerely hope that Sid, while continuing to love his son, would completely dissociate himself from his son's bigotry. And I ask decent people to ask themselves what they would do if they had a son who espoused views akin to those expressed by the KKK, Hamas and other antisemites. I would hope they would do the right thing and dissociate themselves from such views.

"In light of the long association between the Clintons and Sid Blumenthal, I hope that the Clintons ask Sid to expressly disassociate himself from his son's views--and if he refuses to, that they no longer work with him on any matters."

I wouldn't count on Hillary Clinton asking Sidney Blumenthal to make any tough choices. But they may ask him to back off his vocal campaign against critics of his son Max "Hamas Book of the Month Club" Blumenthal