Bill Clinton said he \u201cwould grab a rifle\u201d and fight for Israel during paid speech. Bill and Hillary Clinton are under increasing scrutiny from the mainstream press over paid speeches they have given to big banks in exchange for millions of dollars.\u00a0According to<\/a>\u00a0CNN, the couple has earned a total of $153 million in lecture fees from companies and organizations affiliated with the financial industry<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n But the media has been conspicuously silent about the large sums the Clintons have raked in from paid addresses to pro-Israel organizations, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF<\/strong>), which directly participates in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel.<\/p>\n An evaluation of Hillary Clinton\u2019s public disclosures<\/a>\u00a0from 2001 to 2015 shows that she and Bill, and their daughter, Chelsea, have earned roughly $4 million in speaking fees from pro-Israel organizations, including JNF and organizations allied with the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The vast majority of these documented payments\u2014$3,599,999\u2014have gone toward the Clintons\u2019 personal income, and up to $450,000 has been funneled into the Clinton Foundation.<\/p>\n Bill Clinton\u2019s presidency ended with the collapse of the U.S.-led peace process at Camp David in 2000. After leaving office, Clinton\u00a0publicly blamed<\/a>\u00a0Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat for the failure of negotiations, explicitly violating\u00a0a promise<\/a>\u00a0he made to Arafat at the start of the Camp David process. The former president thus reinforced then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak\u2019s infamous talking point that there was \u201cno Palestinian partner\u201d for peace.<\/p>\n Bill Clinton received $425,000 for two speeches to Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a right-wing group that generally supports the Likud-run government of Benjamin Netanyahu and is hostile to Democrats. Simon Wiesenthal Center president Marvin Hier, who\u00a0addressed<\/a>\u00a0the 2000 Republican National Convention, has\u00a0compared<\/a>\u00a0President Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain and described the Iran nuclear deal as \u201canother Munich.\u201d In 2011, three years before Bill Clinton\u2019s second paid speech before the organization, Hier\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of \u201ca sell out\u201d to anti-Semitism for opening diplomatic discussions with Egypt\u2019s democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n While unmentioned in public disclosures, the Clinton Foundation website\u00a0notes<\/a> that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main arm of America\u2019s pro-Israel lobby, contributed between $10,001 and $25,000 to the organization for at least one speech delivered by Bill Clinton, with the exact date or amount paid unspecified. S. Daniel Abraham, the Slim Fast diet mogul who serves on the board of AIPAC, has\u00a0given<\/a>\u00a0as much as $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Through a series of front groups, ad campaigns and Israel propaganda tours for freshman members of Congress, AIPAC\u00a0spent upward<\/a>\u00a0of $40 million in a failed attempt to derail the Obama administration\u2019s Iran nuclear deal.<\/p>\n Chelsea Clinton raked in as much as $325,000 in speaking fees from the United Jewish Appeal and its affiliate, the Jewish Federations, a pro-Israel umbrella group of Jewish American establishment organizations that\u00a0actively combats<\/a>\u00a0the Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. She remits 100 percent of her speaking fees to the Clinton Foundation, where she is a board member and helps decide how the foundation spends its $180 million annual budget.<\/p>\n In addition, Bill Clinton received $250,000 for a speech to Univision Management Company, the media corporation co-owned by pro-Israel billionaire Haim Saban. As AlterNet\u2019s Grayzone Project\u00a0recently reported<\/a>, Saban and his wife Cheryl contributed $5 million to the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA Action, this February. Saban has also\u00a0contributed<\/a>\u00a0between $5 and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. \u201cI\u2019m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,\u201d Saban said in 2004.<\/p>\n Public records show that Bill Clinton earned a total of $549,999 in four speeches to the JNF. The disclosures do not mention the JNF\u2019s most generous fee. JNF provoked an outcry within pro-Israel circles when it\u00a0transferred<\/a>\u00a0half a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation through the Peres Academic Center to pay for a single speech by Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton later said he\u00a0donated<\/a>\u00a0his large fee back to the Peres Academic Center, but there are\u00a0lingering questions<\/a>\u00a0about where all the money went, including funds from the JNF.<\/p>\n Formed in 1901, JNF has spent over a century driving Palestinians off their land, including through the creation of the paramilitary force euphemistically\u00a0named<\/a> the Green Patrol<\/strong>. Former JNF director Yosef Weitz outlined\u00a0detailed plans<\/a>\u00a0for the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948, demanding that their villages be destroyed and they \u201cbe harassed continually\u201d to prevent them from returning.<\/p>\n In recent years, JNF has teamed up with the Israeli military, police and\u00a0Christian Zionist donors<\/a>\u00a0to violently expel the residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel\u2019s Negev Desert. <\/strong>Among them is Al Arakib, which as of October 2015, has been razed to the ground a staggering\u00a090 times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton has made her unflinching support for Israel a centerpiece of her foreign policy agenda. In November 2015, she\u00a0promised<\/a>\u00a0to \u201creaffirm\u201d the \u201cunbreakable bond with Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu,\u201d suggesting she would adopt a friendlier posture to Israel\u2019s right-wing leader than Obama had.<\/p>\n In a July 2015\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to mega-donor Haim Saban, which her campaign distributed to the press, Clinton declared \u201cwe need to make countering BDS a priority.\u201d It was the first time in American history that a presidential candidate mentioned by name the grassroots movement to boycott Israel.<\/p>\n As the challenge to her primary candidacy from Senator Bernie Sandes grows, Hillary Clinton is tacking left. During her concession speech in New Hampshire, Clinton insisted to local supporters, \u201cI believe so strongly that we have to keep up with every fiber of our being the argument for, the campaign for human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether a Clinton presidency would alter the U.S.-Israeli special relationship remains to be seen. But as long as she honors the wishes of her family\u2019s top contributors, as she has pledged to do, her argument for human rights must exclude Palestinians.<\/p>\n (See the video by Max Blumenthal showing the destruction of Al Arakib by Israeli bulldozers in 2010 \u2014 the third time it was demolished \u2014 in order to\u00a0make way<\/a>\u00a0for a JNF-funded \u201cforest\u201d and Jews-only town<\/strong>. The JNF is widely opposed in Palestinian civil society and controversial even within Israel, where it owns roughly\u00a013 percent<\/a>\u00a0of state land and vows to lease it to exclusively Jewish <\/strong>tenants<\/em>).<\/p>\n Sarah Lazare<\/strong>\u00a0is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book\u00a0, About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at\u00a0@sarahlazare<\/a>.<\/p>\n Max Blumenthal<\/strong> is a senior editor of the\u00a0Grayzone Project\u00a0at\u00a0AlterNet,\u00a0and the award-winning author of\u00a0Goliath<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Republican Gomorrah<\/a>. His most recent book is\u00a0The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza.\u00a0Follow him on Twitter at@MaxBlumenthal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The original source of this article is AlterNet<\/strong><\/p>\n Adapted from:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.mondialisation.ca\/the-clintons-earned-over-3-5-million-in-paid-addresses-to-pro-israel-organizations\/5507562<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paju.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/942.jpg\")
<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThe W<\/strong>ages of Blaming Palestinians<\/h5>\n
Bill Clinton\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0in the summer of 2002, at the Toronto chapter of the pro-Israel group Hadassah-WIZO, \u201cIf Iraq came across the Jordan River, I would grab a rifle and get in the trench and fight and die,\u201d reportedly earning wild applause from attendees of the $1000-a-plate dinner. According to a New York Post reporter in attendance, Clinton again blamed Palestinians for his failure at Camp David, \u201caccusing Arafat of making a \u2018disastrous mistake\u2019 by turning down past peace proposals that would have given the Palestinian leader control of 97 percent of the West Bank.\u201d Clinton earned $125,000 for the speech.<\/h5>\n
\u00a0Payments From Obama\u2019s Opponents<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Whopping Fees From Ethnic Cleansers<\/h5>\n
Will Hillary Honor Her Commitments?<\/h5>\n