On campaign trail for Harris in Michigan, Bill Clinton defends Israel’s war in Gaza
Recalling efforts to broker peace during his own presidency, Clinton urges voters in crucial swing state to think ‘what you would do if it was your family’ killed on October 7
Former US president Bill Clinton on Wednesday defended Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan.
Opposition to America’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has been a thorn in the side of Harris’s campaign in the battleground state, home to the country’s largest Arab-American community, where many local leaders have vowed not to support Harris, or have endorsed her opponent, former president Donald Trump, due to the war.
“I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died,” Clinton said at the “Souls to the Polls” rally in West Michigan, but asked voters to imagine “if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel, right next to Gaza.”
“The most pro-two-state solution of any of the Israeli communities were the ones right next to Gaza, and Hamas butchered them,” he said, referring to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught, in which some 1,200 people were massacred and 251 were seized as hostages when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded dozens of communities across southern Israel.
The shock terror assault triggered the ongoing war in Gaza through which Israel aims to destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and ensure that it can no longer pose a threat to Israel.
“The people who criticize [Israel’s response] are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in retaliation, how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?'” the former US president continued.
“That all sounds nice until you realize what you would do if it was your family and you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village.”
“You would say, ‘You have to forgive me, but I’m not keeping score that way.’ It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself,” Clinton continued.
Israel frequently notes that it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas operatives often fight from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
“Look, I worked on this,” Clinton said, beginning an overview of his efforts as president to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
The former president was instrumental in brokering the Oslo Accords, an interim agreement to begin the process of transferring control over the West Bank to Palestinian self-government, which created much of the current regime in the territory but ultimately broke down in its later stages, partly due to a wave of Palestinian terror attacks targeting Israeli civilians.
“The only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out,” Clinton said, referring to the late Palestinian leader.
He told rallygoers that the deal “would have given the Palestinians a state on 96 percent of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was.” Additionally, he noted, the Palestinians “would have a capital in East Jerusalem,” and “they said no.”
“When I read that people in Michigan are thinking about not voting, because they’re mad at the Biden administration for honoring its historic obligation to try to keep Israel from being destroyed, I think that’s a mistake, because Donald Trump has shown what he wants,” he said.
Trump, who has been courting disillusioned Arab and Muslim voters and recently brought several Muslim leaders onstage at a rally, has previously cast himself as Israel’s “protector” and said Netanyahu’s government must “finish the problem” in its war against Hamas.
Harris and Trump are locked in what polls indicate is a historically tight race for the White House, as they make a final push for voters ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Clinton went on to note the history of the Jewish people and Judaism in what is now the State of Israel, saying that Jews “were there first — before their faith existed,” apparently referring to Islam and the Palestinian people.
He said that Jews had been in the land “in the time of King David, and the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria,” referring to the West Bank using the Biblical terminology also in use among Israelis.
US policy deems Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law — a position that was also held by Clinton’s administration.
The former president went on to present the fight over Israel’s borders as having been a political fault line within Israeli society since the state’s founding, noting that left- and right-wing factions have always struggled for domestic power in the country.
In the conclusion of his remarks about the war, Clinton explained the significance of Iran’s support for Hamas, noting that while the other regional terror groups that Iran supports are Shi’ite Muslims, Hamas are Sunni Muslims, suggesting a wider terror alliance than has existed in the past.
“This is far more complicated than you know, and all I ask you to do is to keep an open mind,” he said. “But Kamala Harris has said that she will try to negotiate an end of the violence, an end of the killing, and a new peace process.”
The remarks by the former president drew backlash from some left-wing and anti-Israel groups.
The Council on American Islamic Relations, in a statement Thursday, declared that “Bill Clinton’s callous and dishonest attempt to justify the Israeli government’s attacks on civilians in Gaza was as insulting as it was Islamophobic.”
“It is completely unacceptable to dismissively reference Islam and falsely claim that every Palestinian man, woman and child killed by Israel was a human shield,” the statement said, presumably referring to Clinton’s comment about the history of Jewish presence in Israel before Islam, and his note that Hamas fights from civilian areas.
“Even President Biden admitted months ago that the Israeli government has engaged in indiscriminate bombing in Gaza,” the statement said, referring to comments by Biden early in the war.
“Prominent leaders like Bill Clinton should be upholding Palestinian human rights, not rationalizing war crimes against Palestinian civilians,” CAIR concluded.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
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