The United States is gearing up for the 2016 general elections. Candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been making some items on their agenda public. Fuelled by the dollars provided by special interest groups and powerful lobbies, these potential victors are in the process of selling out their country.

Hillary Clinton, one of the candidates running for president in the Democratic Party, is hankering after dollars from deep pocketed American Jews and Zionist sympathisers.

Like virtually every current candidate who is looking for donors, Clinton is well aware of the economic muscle of the Israeli lobby and in order to get on their most favoured status, she recently sent a letter to billionaire Haim Saban, a man known to spend lavishly on political figures for favours in return.

Saban is an Israeli-American and a staunch Zionist who had previously gone on record to state that his ‘greatest concern is to protect Israel’. Speaking sometime back at a conference in Israel, Saban explained to the audience how he was going to achieve his objectives. His three ways to influence American politics were to “make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets”.

Hillary asked for his input on how to fight the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement that is gaining ground on US campuses and among those contemplating and doing business with Israel. This is part of a global response against the illegal Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land.

Demanding the right to return

The BDS is also asking for full equality and freedom for Palestinians in Israel who are currently treated as second-class citizens. It also demands the right to return for those who fled Israeli atrocities over the years. One would think that such democratic principles that the US is founded on would ring a bell and find favour with Hillary Clinton, but sadly, she’s too busy trying to sell US foreign policy to those with money.

In the letter to the wealthy Zionist, Hillary asked Saban for his advice “on how leaders and communities across America can work together to counter BDS”. She stresses the need to contest the BDS campaign “with information and advocacy and fight back further attempts to delegitimise Israel”. In her spiel she also adds that “from Congress and state legislature to boardrooms and classrooms, we need to engage all people of good faith in order to explain why the BDS campaign is counterproductive to the pursuit of peace and harmful to Israelis and Palestinians alike”.

But her pandering for Zionist favour and dollars doesn’t simply end there. The two-page letter that was released to the press by Saban’s office demonstrates the level of solicitation the former US secretary of state has reached. She is very alarmed she says by such movements which are anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist. She is concerned about the ‘murderous attacks on French Jews,’ forgetting the thousands of innocent Palestinians killed by Israeli bullets, and she continues with how she first fell in love with Israel when she and her husband visited occupied Jerusalem’s old city more than 30 years ago, which is part of Palestine.

“Hillary Clinton has definitely chosen to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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Choosing to take sides

“I am also very concerned by attempts to compare Israel with South African apartheid. Israel is a vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy, and it faces existential threats to its survival. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.”

Clinton has definitely chosen to take sides where the bread is being buttered. Forget democratic principle … it is the greenback instead. Clinton pens that “the Palestinians cannot unilaterally declare a state, and no one can impose a solution on Israel”. She boasts of her record as a US senator and secretary of state on Israeli issues, stating that she had opposed dozens of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. She reminds Haim that she supported Israel after the “biased” Goldstone Report. She concludes that “time after time I have made it clear that America will always stand up for Israel, and that’s what I’ll always do as president”.

This blatant and servile stance by a candidate running for the office of the most powerful position in the world should be indeed alarming to foreign policy analysts and those who believe in justice and equality. Israel continues to imprison and murder Palestinian men, women and specially children, while US politicians continue to hanker after Zionist dollars.

Selling out the principles a great country like the United States was founded on is tantamount to prostitution.

Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.