Forgetting Who Our Friends Are

Netanyahu is right on history and right on policy. So why must Bill Clinton continually snub Israel while boosting the arch-terrorist Arafat?

by Rod D. Martin
May 15, 1998

Bill Clinton has made a career out of forgetting who his friends are. As Arkansas Times editor (and lifelong liberal Democrat) Max Brantley once told me, "Bill Clinton would walk past a hundred friends to shake hands with one enemy."

So it should be no surprise that the President snubs Israel at every turn, boosting the terrorist leader Yassir Arafat. And yet it rankles.

The Clinton Administration's antipathy for Israel, and especially its valiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, veritably bubbles over. The State Department did everything in its power to influence Israeli voters to defeat Netanyahu in the first place; it has then sought to undercut him at every turn. No chance is missed to snub him (and therefore his country). The President alternates between treating him like a bad child and decrying him as a dangerous extremist.

You would think Netanyahu was Saddam Hussein.

But, of course, he is not. The Israeli Prime Minister is an American-educated conser…