Tag: mideast peace process
Danziger: Give Peace No Chance

Danziger: Give Peace No Chance

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

Without Explanation, FBI Abruptly Releases Old Documents About Clinton Pardons

Without Explanation, FBI Abruptly Releases Old Documents About Clinton Pardons

Why would the FBI suddenly release hundreds of mostly blank pages of documents from its investigation of presidential pardons by Bill Clinton — a probe that ended without any prosecution almost 15 years ago — just one week before Election Day? On Tuesday morning, the “FBI Records Vault” tweeted a link to the bureau’s website where those documents were displayed with a short description, but no explanation for the abrupt release.

What little can be gleaned from the heavily redacted pages indicates they mainly concern the pardons of Marc Rich and Pincus Green, a pair of fugitive traders then living in Switzerland, although the pardon investigation undertaken by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in February 2001 dealt with other pardons as well.

In the hours that followed, the bureau failed to explain its decision to dump the pardon documents, despite many press inquiries. But the mysterious release immediately stoked fresh consternation about FBI director James Comey’s clumsy intervention in the presidential race on Oct. 28, when he sent a letter to Congress announcing that agents had discovered materials on a laptop owned by former Rep. Anthony Weiner that might prove pertinent to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Since then, Comey has been under increasingly direct fire from Democrats, former prosecutors, and Justice Department employees for ignoring ethical guidelines about interfering in elections. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and a former ethics counsel in the Bush White House have accused him of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their office to intervene in elections.

Almost nothing in the released documents is new, beyond glancing references to bits of evidence (a “red rope”) that may or may not have anything to do with Rich, whose ex-wife Denise was a major donor to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Foundation’s library fund. It was Denise Rich’s donations that spurred demands for an investigation.

Angry federal prosecutors in New York who had worked on Rich’s indictment were only too happy to proceed. Clinton’s failure to follow normal Justice Department procedures in awarding scores of pardons during the final hours of his presidency had aroused public suspicions and further enraged the prosecutors whose opinions he had ignored.

Mary Jo White, the U. S. attorney in the Southern District appointed by Clinton, opened the case within weeks after the pardons. At the time, Rich was living in a luxurious chateau in Zug, Switzerland, where he had fled to avoid trial on charges that he had done illicit business with Iran. He died in a Lucerne hospital in 2013, never having returned to the United States because Clinton’s pardon required him to pay a $21 million civil fine if he came back.

As the documents released on Tuesday attest, several squads of FBI agents across the country spent months serving subpoenas and interviewing witnesses in pursuit of evidence that the pardons were awarded corruptly. With its demands for information from the Clinton Foundation and its donors, the bureau effectively intimidated many from making additional contributions.

Yet while the investigation continued for months after White returned to the private sector and President Bush appointed a new U.S. attorney in her place, the case against Clinton was always weak. After all, he had rejected requests from personal friends who had given much larger sums than Denise Rich and then sought pardons for arguably more deserving convicts, such as financier Michael Milken and native American activist Leonard Peltier — both of whom, unlike Rich, at least had served time.

Most important was the pile of evidence, produced by a Republican-led Congressional committee investigating the pardons, that Clinton had actually pardoned Rich chiefly as a favor to Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, in the midst of Mideast peace negotiations. Barak had reached out to Clinton on three occasions, including the night before Clinton’s final day in office, to importune him on behalf of Rich — who was a longtime secret asset of Israeli’s intelligence services. (The full story of Barak’s campaign to pardon Rich is told in Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, my new book about Clinton’s post-presidency.)

The underlying irony of the FBI document dump is that the pardon investigation ended in 2002, on the watch of James Comey, the newly appointed U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Having inherited the Clinton matter from White, he effectively closed the case before moving on, after less than two years in that post, to serve as deputy attorney general in Washington.

While this action was obviously intended to frame the Clintons again, it is more likely to embarrass Comey, as yet another bonehead move by a law enforcement leader who no seems able to conform to crucial standards of fairness.

On Israel, Bernie Sanders Is Right (And Hillary Clinton Knows It)

On Israel, Bernie Sanders Is Right (And Hillary Clinton Knows It)

The most significant moment of the Democratic primary debate in Brooklyn – and perhaps any presidential debate this season – came when Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton over her refusal to criticize Israel’s excessive use of force against the Palestinians in Gaza. For the first time in memory, a major American political figure insisted publicly that the Jewish state and its leaders are “not always right” – and that in attempting to suppress terrorism, they had killed and injured far too many blameless human beings.

Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about his judgment that Israel’s military response to attacks from Gaza in 2014 was “disproportionate and led to the unnecessary loss of innocent life,” the Vermont Senator answered firmly: “Yeah, I do believe that.” He mentioned that many other nations, including longtime allies of Israel, had denounced the atrocities in Gaza, along with human rights organizations around the world.

Having reiterated that he supports Israel as our ally — with every right to self-defense — Sanders said that “in the long run, if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”

That should be blindingly obvious, especially to Clinton, who has worked alongside President Clinton and President Obama toward a decent two-state solution for almost a quarter century. Hillary Clinton’s disappointing reply to Bernie Sanders on Israel reflected her political priorities in the New York primary, rather than her commitment to human rights or her assessment of American diplomatic interests.

She talked about her effort in negotiating a Gaza ceasefire, but that self-serving paean was evasive, as Sanders pointed out. Pressed for a serious answer, she pandered to the most conservative voters, Jewish and Christian, who mistakenly believe friendship with Israel means supporting any violence perpetrated by Israel’s government. She blamed the casualties among Palestinian civilians solely on Hamas, even as she vaguely mentioned “precautions” that Israel should have taken to prevent them.

This display of subservience to the most right-wing elements in Israel and its Washington lobby was all too typical of American presidential aspirants. Rarely does any U.S. politician dare to utter the truth about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. But coming from Clinton the usual pap sounds worse because, unlike the average pol, she possesses deep knowledge of the region.

When Bill Clinton was president, he and Hillary became close friends of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a former general in the Israel Defense Forces and a war hero who courageously sought a just peace with the Palestinians – and paid for that brave policy with his life when a right-wing fanatic assassinated him in November 1995. Her memoir, Living History, describes hopeful moments with Rabin and his wife Leah around the time of the Oslo accords — and an affecting account of the moments after President Clinton, who loved Rabin like a father, told her he had been murdered.

Hillary Clinton knows that the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, responsible for the Gaza disgrace and more, is far closer in outlook to the ultra-nationalists who applauded Rabin’s assassination than to the peacemaker whose death she lamented. She knows that Netanyahu’s aim is annexation, not negotiation. She knows that our interests – indeed, those of the entire world — can only be advanced by a just peace that both protects Israel and relieves the suffering of the Palestinian people.

The day after the Brooklyn debate, her campaign issued a lengthy press release: “Hillary Clinton and Israel: A 30-Year Record of Friendship, Leadership, and Strength.” But its failure to mention Palestinian rights and needs again revealed weakness, not “strength.” We can only hope that if she wins the presidency, she will prove herself to be a true friend of Israel and its people – as her husband did when he warned that unless they achieve a durable agreement with a new Palestine, Israelis will eventually lose their nationhood, their democracy, or both.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s current approach is the dismal standard in American politics, which made Sanders’ honesty even more refreshing. What a surprise to hear a Jewish candidate for president — the first with a realistic shot at his party’s nomination — speak so candidly and courageously about the country where he worked on a kibbutz as a young man. With those words Bernie made a bit of history, and earned a lot of respect.