As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton called Max Blumenthal, a staunch anti-Israeli writer and son of her longtime confidante Sidney Blumenthal, a “mitzvah” in an email praising some of Max’s work.
After asking an aide to print out three copies of Max Blumenthal’s article that day in the Guardian, Clinton informed his father in a Sept. 13, 2012 email that “[y]our Max is a mitzvah!”
The story in question “argued even though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video,” on which he then reported in detail, “the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film’s backers.” Clinton attempted to blame the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the YouTube clip in a series of statements that have since been widely discredited.
But the writer she extolled just three days after that attack is best known for his deeply controversial writings that, among other things, have called Israel an apartheid state and likened Israel to Nazi Germany.
Writing in the Nation shortly after the 2013 publication of Max Blumenthal’s most recent book, Goliath, Eric Alterman, a liberal writer, said Max Blumenthal was a “profoundly unreliable narrator” who had written a book that “will likely alienate anyone but the most fanatical anti-Zionist extremists.”
Clinton has vowed to maintain a close friendship with Israel throughout her presidential campaign, especially during a period of dissonance within her own party earlier this fall over President Obama’s embrace of a nuclear deal with Iran that Israel fiercely opposes.
Some of her emails have hinted Clinton welcomed input from figures with an antagonistic view of Israel, including from the pair of Blumenthals.
She also received encouragement from Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton who was caught smuggling classified documents, to treat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace in the region and said his life should be made “uneasy.”
