Former President Bill Clinton delivered an impassioned defense of both his own foreign policy legacy and that of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is currently the Democratic front runner for presidential elections later this year.
During a Friday campaign event in Ewing Township, New Jersey, Clinton was heckled over his wife’s support for Israel – prompting the former president to hit back, blaming the Palestinians for turning down generous peace offers.
“She and the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt stopped the shooting war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza,” Clinton responded to the heckler, who had shouted “What about Gaza?” according to Politico.
When the spectator continued protesting – citing comments in which Hillary Clinton rejected Donald Trump’s position of staying “neutral” – Bill Clinton responded: “Depends on whether you care what happens to the Palestinians as opposed to the Hamas government and the people with guided missiles.”
“They were human beings in Gaza,” the heckler continued.
“Yes, they were,” Clinton fired back. “And Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel, they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools, in the highly populous areas, and they are smart.”
“They said they try to put the Israelis in a position of either not defending themselves or killing innocents,” he added, citing Hamas leader’s own boastful comments about the effectiveness of their human shield policy during 2014’s war with Israel. “They’re good at it. They’re smart. They’ve been doing this a long time.”
“I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state,” Clinton asserted. “I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza.”
His wife, he insisted, had accomplished a great deal vis-a-vis the Arab-Israel conflict, even convincing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come to the table for face-to-face negotiations. Nothing ever came of those talks, however.
And he asserted that guaranteeing Israel’s security was the only way to ensure a lasting peace.
“There’s nobody who’s blameless in the Middle East, but we cannot really ever make a fundamental difference in the Middle East unless the Israelis think we care whether they live or die. If they do, we have a chance to keep pushing for peace,” Clinton said.
“And that’s her position,” he said of Hillary. “Not to agree with the Israeli government on everything, not to pretend that innocents don’t die, not to pretend that more Palestinian children don’t die than Israeli children. But that we can’t get anything done unless they believe, when the chips are down, if somebody comes for them we will not let them be wiped out and become part of the dustbin of history.”
