Former US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sparked controversy this week when leaked excerpts from her upcoming book criticized pro-Palestine campus protesters and Palestinian political leadership.
Clinton described a Columbia University campus “tense with shock and grief” after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel last year. The former first lady has lectured on the Ivy League campus since January 2023 and described seeking advice from the university’s School of International and Public Affairs Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, who grew up in Israel and served as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Clinton also described a tense environment during classes after the event, claiming she was “troubled” by a student who asked why Hamas is considered a terrorist organization but the IDF is not. The IDF has killed an estimated 41,118 Palestinians amid its military operation in Gaza and traces its roots to self-avowed Zionist terrorist groups such as Lehi, Irgun, and Haganah.
The former secretary of state also claimed campus protesters lacked an understanding of the history of the region, an attack she made earlier this year on liberal cable television channel MSNBC.
“A lot of young people… don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history, in many areas of the world, including in our own country,” Clinton chided in comments that provoked significant criticism on social media.
A group of students walked out of Clinton’s class at Columbia in November to protest the school’s response to pro-Palestine activism on campus, while earlier this year demonstrators disrupted her appearance at her alma mater Wellesley College.
Opinion surveys show a significant age divide on perceptions of the Palestine-Israel conflict in the United States, with younger Americans – increasingly including young Jews – more likely to express sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Some 48% of people from 18 to 29 years old say Israel is intentionally killing civilians, while 55% oppose further US aid to Israel. There is broad support among the age group for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Clinton also took the opportunity in her new book to repeat a common line of attack against former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom she blames for the failure of peace talks organized by her husband former President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000. But Arafat had warned Clinton that “the two sides were not ready” before finally agreeing to take part in the discussions after the former president assured him he would not be blamed if talks failed.
“Clinton put enormous pressure on Arafat to come [to the peace talks],” recalled international relations scholar John Mearsheimer of the discussions. “Arafat said, ‘I'll go to Camp David, but I want to be clear that I don't think this is going to work out, and if it doesn't work out, I don't want you to blame me. In other words, I don't want you to stab me in the back.’”
“So they went to Camp David, they negotiated,” he continued. “It was a very dysfunctional negotiating process… And of course, the negotiations failed, right? Camp David broke up and, of course, Bill Clinton stabbed Arafat in the back. He blamed Arafat for the failure. And the story that Hillary is now telling is the story that Bill told after Camp David failed.”
“If you talk to most supporters of Israel in the United States today, they’ll tell you that story every time. It's a story that's constantly repeated. And Hillary now repeating it will just give more ammunition to Israel's supporters to make the argument that 'we'd all be living happily ever after had it not been for Arafat,' which is another way of saying 'if it hadn't been for those evil Palestinians.'”