Once Again, Sanders Turns To Anti-Israel Advisers
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has turned to yet another Israel critic for foreign policy advice, this time a former U.S. official who espoused the conspiracy theory that Israel may have carried out chemical attacks in Syria as a false-flag operation against the Assad regime.
Last week, Politico reported that Sanders is being advised by Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and later became a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq.
In 2013, U.S. and other Western intelligence officials concluded forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad had used chemical weapons twice on March 19 of that year.
At the time, Wilkerson appeared on the radical left show “The Young Turks” on Current TV, where he suggested that Israel might have been behind the chemical weapons attacks.
He stated: “We don’t know what the chain of custody is. This could’ve been an Israeli false flag operation. I it could’ve been an opposition in Syria, and one wonders what part of the opposition false flag operation, or it could’ve been an actual use by [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad…”
Wilkerson’s wild claim was gleefully disseminated by Al-Manar, the official media network of the Hizbullah terrorist organization.
Haaretz notes that Wilkerson has expressed anti-Israel sentiments before. For example, speaking to TheRealNews.com, Wilkerson said: “Israel has an enormous impact on U.S. foreign policy, but it’s beginning to be so detrimental to U.S. foreign and security policy that people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, with their hands out to the Jewish lobby for more donations to their PACs and so forth, just simply need to shut up and go back into the dark shadows from whence they emerged.”
Sanders has admitted to seeking foreign policy advice from other critics of the Jewish state. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, the Democratic candidate gave the following reply when asked about his plans for Secretary of Defense: “We talked to people like Jim Zogby, talked to the people on J Street, to get a broad perspective of the Middle East.”
While the George Soros-funded J Street describes itself as a liberal, pro-Israel lobby, it has faced mounting criticism for the policies it advocates, which many argue are harmful to the Jewish state.
President of the Arab American Institute James Zogby is notoriously anti-Israel. He refers to the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement as a “legitimate and moral response to Israeli policy.”
Released E-Mail Contains Advice For Palestinians
Correspondence contained in the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails released by the State Department on Friday and reviewed by this reporter may provide a window into the Obama administration’s thinking when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The e-mail recommends that the Palestinians return to the “peace of the brave” rhetoric utilized by PLO Leader Yasir Arafat. Arafat, who helped pioneer terrorism as a political tactic, was famous for referencing the “peace of the brave” to foreign audiences while supporting the destruction of Israel in Arabic and allowing his various militias to carry out terrorist attacks against the Jewish state.
The September 23, 2012 e-mail was sent to Clinton from her then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, who currently serves as the top foreign policy advisor to Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The dispatch provides a summary of a 14-point Israeli-Palestinian peace plan devised by a “Dennis,” presumably a misspelling of Denis McDonough, President Obama’s then-Deputy National Security Advisor. McDonough is currently White House Chief of Staff.
Arafat’s “peace of the brave” motto, aimed at Western audiences, was also a theme of his 1994 acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. The terrorist leader never abandoned his support for attacks against Israel nor the PLO’s call for a “phased plan” leading to the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state.
At Camp David in 2000, Arafat turned down a generous Israeli offer of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem with no counteroffer. Instead, he returned to the West Bank to launch the Second Intifada, a terrorist war targeting Israelis.
New E-Mail On U.S. Support Of Muslim Brotherhood
Another dispatch contained in the 1,500 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mails released last weekend provide insight into the level of support the U.S. was considering in 2012 for Egypt’s newly elected Muslim Brotherhood government.
On August 30, 2012, Robert D. Hormats, the under-secretary of state for economic affairs, wrote to Clinton’s then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan to update him on a meeting he held with Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Adviser Khairat al-Shater.
Shater was later sentenced to life imprisonment and then to death for multiple alleged crimes, including inciting violence and financial improprieties.
The e-mail reveals that Hormats and other U.S. diplomats discussed methods of cooperation with Shater, including an increase in American direct foreign investment.
Hormats wrote:
“Anne Patterson, Bill Taylor, and I met with Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater. He discussed broad principles of economic development based on 100 large infrastructure projects (over a billion dollars each) as part of Morsi’s Nadah (Renaissance Plan) Plan; ways of cooperating with the US to obtain support for these projects and for SMEs; and his hope for an IMF agreement and increased foreign direct investment from the US, the West, and the Arab world. He also noted that it was a priority for the GOE to build a true democratic system based on human rights and the rule of law.”
Patterson, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt at the time, was known for her repeated engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood. Taylor was the U.S. Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions; that is, the U.S. envoy to the new leadership that emerged in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.
Hormats’s meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood were not secret. But the e-mails reveal the scope of his discussions with the group about possible future investment.
In September 2012, The New York Times reported that Hormats had led a delegation of businesses to Egypt to discuss possible private investment. That same month, the State Department published a document that received little news media attention. It revealed that in August and September 2012, “Hormats visited Egypt to negotiate possible bilateral debt relief,” but the document did not provide further details.