A Profile in Pandering

By Yousef Munayyer

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a stunning example of precisely why people in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as the broader international community, have lost all faith in the United States being an even-handed mediator capable to brokering Middle East peace.

Gone are the days when a US principle could make such a speech without it reverberating in the Middle East. Surely, millions of people in the region will have heard Clinton come off as biased (at the least) if not an all out hypocrite. She spoke of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, ignoring that the largest per capita nuclear arsenal in the world is in Israel. She demanded the release of Gilad Shalit by name, but did not mention the 300 children in Israeli prisons and the thousands of other civilian political prisoners Israel holds.

Secretary Clinton spoke about Neda, the Iranian citizen killed protesting the regime in Tehran, but she never mentioned Rachel Corrie, the American citizen killed by a bulldozer when she protested the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. Rachel’s family is currently suing the State of Israel in Israeli civil courts.

She even repeated the myth that Israelis “made a desert bloom”, part of an Israeli narrative that is used to pretend that Palestinian refugees never had and never will have a claim to the lands and homes they were removed from.

Secretary Clinton may have received a standing ovation from a room full of Israel Lobbyists and said a word or two about how settlement expansion is problematic, but if the Obama Administration is naïve enough to think that this is how to be “even-handed” they are in for many more surprises in the Middle East.

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