Clinton's smears young Jewish Americans over Gaza genocide

No, Jewish Americans aren't turning against Israel because of TikTok and ignorance

Young Jewish Americans are turning on Israel because they are ignorant of history and being brainwashed by TikTok, according to Hillary Clinton.

Her latest intervention speaks to our failure to win accountability for the Western crimes Clinton is complicit in - as well as being indicative of the moral bankruptcy of pro-Israel cheerleaders.

Clinton was speaking at an event organised by Israel Hayom, Israel’s biggest circulation newspaper, run by Miriam Adelson, who is an Israeli-American billionaire, a staunch donor to Donald Trump.

She said “smart, well-educated young people from our own country” were getting “their information from social media, particularly TikTok” about what happened on 7th October and “what happened in the, days, weeks and months to follow.”

She said this was “a serious problem for democracy, whether it’s Israel or the United States, and it’s a serious problem for our young people.”

“When you would try to talk to them to engage in some kind of reasonable discussion, it was very difficult because they did not know history,'“ she added. “They had very little context. And what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”

She specifically claimed that “it is a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.”

Where to begin. Hillary Clinton, a vocal supporter of the Iraq war, is here claiming that gullible young people are taking foreign policy stances based on bogus information.

Some might argue that if you were a US politician who voted to support the biggest Western foreign policy catastrophe of our time, which plunged Iraq into blood and chaos, as well as killing and maiming thousands of young American soldiers, you should just grovel for forgiveness before disappearing forever in disgrace - let alone stop commenting on foreign policy issues.

At the time, Hillary Clinton, who clearly sees herself as a towering figure when it comes to US foreign policy, was a Senator, and in her speech in support of granting authorisation to George W Bush to invade Iraq, she said: “I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt.”

She added: “It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare.”

She even said “He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.”

And yet Hillary Clinton suggests that young people are being brainwashed by misinformation and disinformation on Israel and Palestine.

It doesn’t stop there. Six years after the invasion of Iraq, Clinton became Secretary of State under Barack Obama. She was one of the most influential advocates for the 2011 war on Libya. How did that one go, Hillary? Any updates?

To be clear - Libya collapsed into hideous bloodshed and carnage, and remains - 14 years after that war - a failed state. It currently has two different governments vying for control. You will struggle to find evidence of Clinton discussing Libya in the last few years.

The last meaningful intervention I can find is from April 2016, so nearly a decade ago, when she said she had no regrets about intervening in Libya, which she saw as a “work in progress”. Nearly ten years, does our towering foreign policy guru still see that catastrophe as a “work in progress”?

And what about Afghanistan? Clinton, as Secretary of State, was firmly in the camp of supporting a surge of US troops into the country, which is what Obama’s administration decided to do. According to reporting by the New York Times, she backed “General Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, before endorsing a fallback proposal of 30,000.”

It adds: “her unstinting support of General McChrystal’s maximalist recommendation made it harder for Obama to choose a lesser option”

What happened then? There was a massive surge in US troop deaths, and there was also a massive surge in Afghan civilian deaths. That was the net lasting impact of this troop surge. Years later, the Taliban swept through the country, stronger than they’d ever been.

In the administration she served, there was also a massive increase in drone strikes - that is, extra-judicial killings - which she enthusiastically supported, which also killed large numbers of civilians, including an estimated 226 civilians in Pakistan. But only a tiny fraction of those killed were high-level leaders, with no clear evidence Americans were made safer, but certainly evidence these strikes helped radicalise new recruits for jihadi groups.

Clinton’s State Department also approved huge arms deal for Saudi Arabia - she designated this a “top priority” - and other murderous dictatorships. The Clinton Foundation had previously accepted millions of dollars in donations from the Saudi dictatorship. Boeing - which made the weapons for Saudi Arabia - donated while she was Secretary of State. These weapons would later be used by Saudi Arabia to commit heinous crimes in Yemen.

Clinton also staunchly defended Israel as it committed multiple war crimes not least in the 2012 onslaught on Gaza.

Clinton also legitimised the right-wing coup in Honduras in 2009 - and thus the regime which killed journalists, activists, ordinary peoplee.

It’s notable that in Clinton’s speech, she refers to Condoleezza Rice (though she affectionally calls her ‘Condi’) as a fellow authority on the Middle East.

Condoleezza Rice is a war criminal. She was George W Bush’s National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State during the so-called war on terror, including the catastrophe that was Iraq, and we should also add Afghanistan.

You may listen to this and ask - how does Clinton still appear in public and present herself as an authority on foreign policy while denouncing young people - and indeed young Jewish Americans - as brainwashed dupes? Because we failed to have a reckoning over the crimes committed by the West. The perpetrators walk from crime scene to crime scene, drenched with more and more blood, and yet still shamelessy baying for more.

This idea that TikTok has been responsible for the mass shift in public opinion against Israel in the United States is a common view among Israel’s cheerleaders, who are demonstrably conspiracy theorists. They think that the Chinese Communist Party was brainwashing the American public using TikTok algorithms.

This is their explanation for why 50% of Americans think Israel has committed genocide, compared to 35% who don’t.

It’s also their explanation for why the polling shows that six in ten Jewish Americans think Israel has committed war crimes, and 39% think it’s committed genocide.

Among younger Jews, 50% think Israel is committing genocide.

Hillary Clinton’s contempt for Jewish Americans is outrageous. She thinks they don’t know their own history and that’s why most have concluded Israel has committed war crimes, and so many that it has committed genocide.

As one Jewish American put it:

I find it offensive that a non Jew asserting that young Jews like me don’t know the history of our people. I know it all too well which is why I know that never again means Gaza too.

What is true is that, given most of the Western media covered up Israeli war crimes, the only way people could get access to the unfiltered truth about Israeli war crimes was through social media, including TikTok.

As I discussed earlier this year:

Despite claims that the push to ban TikTok was about national security because it was Chinese-owned, last May, Republican Senator Mitt Romney said support for banning TikTok was down to the “overwhelming” volume of “mentions of Palestinians” on the platform.

Safra Catz, a former Oracle CEO and a top executive leading the planned $14bn takeover of TikTok’s US operations told the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in 2015 that they had to “embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.”

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s executive chairman, previously inquired about now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s loyalty to Israel before he agreed to commit $3 million for his presidential campaign in 2015, and did so when he was reassured Rubio “will be a great friend to Israel.”

They will now have control of the TikTok algorithm.

Benjamin Netanyahu - the Israeli prime minister who is a wanted man with an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity - has openly boasted about how important the TikTok sale is for Israel. TikTok, he says, is the “most important” in Israel’s fight. “Weapons change over time… the most important ones are on social media,” he says.

Here’s a question for Clinton. Do you think Holocaust and genocide scholars concluded that Israel is committing genocide because of TikTok? There is a consensus among those scholars: a resolution at the International Association of Genocide Scholars concluding geneocide was being committed was passed by 86% in September.

Let’s name just Israeli scholars who have concluded Israel has committed genocide:

Omer Bartov - Dean’s Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brown University

Amos Goldberg - Professor of Holocaust History at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Daniel Blatman - head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Raz Segal - Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Shmuel Lederman - Holocaust Studies at University of Haifa

Does Clinton think these are all dupes brainwashed by disinformation from TikTok? Scholars who dedicate their lives to studying genocide? Who to believe: pre-eminent genocide scholars or a two-time failed presidential candidate who voted to invade Iraq on a pack of lies - and then sent American soldiers both to be killed and to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan, before the Taliban ended up taking the country, more powerful than ever?

The truth is, this genocide is more documented as it actually happened than any other genocide in history. We have detailed reports from the United Nations, NGOs ranging from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to Medicins Sans Frontiers.

We have detailed studies from the likes of Airwars, which looked at 606 incidents of civilian harm in the first 25 days of the genocide alone. According to their “most conservative estimates”, at least 5,139 civilians were killed in the sample of 606 attacks they looked at. They found evidence of Hamas casualties in just 26 of those attacks – that is, just over 4% of cases. The number of militants actually killed? Between 32 and 60.

We also have overwhelming evidence of Israeli soldiers gleefully posting their war crimes - yes, Hillary, on TikTok - as well as an avalanche of statements of genocidal and criminal intent issued by Israeli leaders and officials.

Clinton should not simply be regarded as a political failure who handed Donald Trump power. She is a monster with blood on her hands, who is associated with some of the great foreign policy catastrophes and, yes, crimes of our age. The younger generation of Americans - including Jewish Americans - that she smears are far more knowledgeable and moral than she is. And it is not hard to be moral than Hillary Clinton, because there is no evidence of any moral compass at all.