Sometimes emails seem to have a life of their own. That is especially the case when the emails were sent to or by public figures, and even more so when one such public figure is running to become the President of the United States. And sometimes journalists try too hard to be good advocates.
Take Hillary Clinton’s emails, for example.
Clinton’s emails have attracted lots of attention ever since it was discovered that she used a private server for government business, eschewing the government email servers which nearly everyone now agrees she should have used. Claims have recently been made that emails which went through her private server required even more classification than top secret.
But just consider, once again, some other emails that were sent to and by Hillary Clinton that caught media attention recently.
Adam Kredo had two blockbuster revelations in the Washington Free Beacon on Jan. 11. He revealed that two sets of emails sent to Clinton while she was Secretary of State showed that some of her advisers were recommending she take wildly inappropriate action that would have been harmful to Israel.
Lots of other media outlets, including the JewishPress.com, then reported on those emails as well. The clear implication was that Clinton accepted advice from folks who were distinctly unfriendly towards Israel.
And now there are some media outlets who are using those same emails to dampen the damage, and even to promote Clinton as a friend to Israel.
The Forward‘s Natan Guttman, whose article was printed in Haaretz on the evening of Jan. 26, referred to Clinton’s “deep bench” of foreign policy advisers, as compared to Sanders’ empty bench. Guttman used the Free Beacon emails as examples of how much more involved in foreign affairs is Clinton than her main and now seemingly formidable primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.
One set of the emails in question came from former Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering. He suggested Clinton find a way to agitate amongst Palestinian Arab women to protest Israeli policies. Pickering advised Clinton that she would have to keep her involvement secret.
Guttman rightly points out that Clinton’s response: “please print,” was less than an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea. Fair enough, although the fact that someone in one of the most powerful positions in the western world even glanced at and made any comment suggests some level of interest in the concept.
But then something peculiar happened.
Guttman also pointed out that Clinton’s Director of Policy Planning Ann-Marie Slaughter offered to Clinton what she hoped would be a creative, if slightly off the wall, suggestion. Slaughter suggested Clinton gather up a gaggle of billionaires and encourage them to create a massive fund for the Palestinian Arabs. Slaughter suggested it be called the “Pledge for Palestine,” along the lines of Warren Buffet’s “The Giving Pledge” campaign.
Guttman gets a pass for suggesting that Clinton’s “please print” response to Pickering’s suggestion to invoke “peaceful” riots was phlegmatic, but his failure to mention Clinton’s positive response to Slaughter is more of a sticky wicket.
Slaughter delighted at the prospect of having Israelis “be shamed” for building homes “in the face of a Pledge for Peace.”
And Clinton’s response to Slaughter, as the JewishPress reported, was anything but phlegmatic. She wrote: “I am very interested – pls flesh out. Thx.”
In other words, a diabolical idea to get phenomenally wealthy Clinton Foundation donors and others to kick in a lot of dough for Israel’s enemies, and to embarrass the Israelis at the same time, was of great interest to Clinton. Not the kind of information promoters of Clinton as “good for the Jews” want noted.
Perhaps Guttman only read Kredo’s article about the emails, and not the emails themselves.