Cui Bono?

	.American Free Press
	.Vol VIII .#52 December 29, 2008americanfreepress.net

Page 12, AMERICAN FREE PRESS * December 29, 2008 * Issue 52 AFP ON THE "PAY-TO-PLAY" SCANDAL

Who Benefits From
White House Scandal(s)

By Michael Collins Piper

.Republican critics of President-elect Barack Obama are enthusiastically shouting “gotcha” in the wake of allegations that Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) was secretly trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat. However, there are much bigger long-term policy implications at work behind the scenes.

The truth is that Illinois politics—particularly in Obama’s home base of Chicago—have long been known as a cauldron of venal political corruption with a handful of powerful secret interests directing the course of events. Even if Obama has “clean hands,” the thread of corruption surrounding the governor and other Democratic power brokers may start to unravel, implicating many close Obama associates.

Already, Obama’s newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is being implicated in the context of the bizarre Senate seat-for-sale tragicomedy.

The Watergate affair, which came to light as a result of a break-in by operatives linked to the Republican Nixon administration, snowballed into a more-wide-ranging series of scandals involving influence peddling, obstruction of justice, bribery, illegal campaign contributions, etc, netting a host of GOP figures and ultimately bringing down Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew.

Although an argument can be made that there was a secret agenda behind the Watergate affair—that it was effectively a coup d’etat designed to topple Nixon (who was intent on cleaning house in official Washington and redirecting U.S. foreign policy against the long-standing “special relationship” with Israel)—the fact is that the scandal did entwine the president and prevent him from acting as he wished, and kept Nixon at bay for the two years following the 1972 election (which Nixon won by a landslide) until he was forced out of office.

The ongoing revelations in Illinois may well have a similar impact on the new Obama administration, keeping the president on edge, essentially destabilized.

This is precisely what happened with the so-called “Whitewater” scandal that enveloped Bill and Hillary Clinton from virtually the first days of his administration, ultimately leading—through a tangled series of events—to the Monica Lewinsky mess, involving Bill Clinton’s illicit affair with a White House intern.

Despite the common (and quite inaccurate) perception— particularly by Clinton’s many “conservative” critics—that somehow the “liberal media” lionized Clinton during his presidency, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the truth is that throughout his presidency, Clinton was very much under fire from the mass media in America.

The record demonstrates that it was that media— which is controlled by Jewish families and financial networks sympathetic to Israel—which played such a large part in promoting public knowledge of the scandals surrounding the Clintons.

The January 4, 1999 issue of The Nation featured a revealing article by Michael Tomasky which examined this phenomenon in quite revealing detail.

Tomasky pointed out that it was actually The New York Times—the flagship “liberal” newspaper—which played a substantial part in leaking many damaging revelations from the long-running investigation of President Clinton and Hillary Clinton by Special Prosecutor Ken Starr. Tomasky wrote: “At every crucial turn and pivot, the Times’ editorial page has marched in lockstep with the prosecutor and his cheering section.”

“Why is this worth remarking on?” asked Tomasky. Because, he pointed out, “on national matters, [the Times’ editorial] page serves as more of an ideological Baedeker, instructing the country’s elite as to what constitutes responsible liberal opinion.”

In other words, The New York Times—voice of the pro-Israel elite—was telling its readers that it was “okay” to support Ken Starr’s maneuvering against Clinton. And so the question, then, was why one of America’s most liberal presidents would be the target of the editorial wrath of the very liberal New York Times.

The answer it was that it was because Bill Clinton was perceived to be insufficiently supportive of the demands of Israel. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal forced the president into retreat as far as pushing Israel was concerned—much to the delight of Israel’s Likud.

On Jan. 27, 1998 The Washington Post let the cat out of the bag when it reported that “last week, Clinton demonstrated he could not compel the Israelis to meet their responsibilities for a further military pullback. This week [in the wake of the scandal] he is even less capable, if only because people in his own party, not to mention the Republicans, will not support a policy of greater pressure on Israel.”

Should there be any doubt that Bill and Hillary Clinton were certainly aware that the Lewinsky affair was being promoted by Israel’s Likudniks and their American allies, bear in mind that at the height of the Lewinsky frenzy the first lady publicly called for the creation of a Palestinian state. This was a clear shot over Israel’s bow, much to the shock of Israel’s U.S. partisans.

The first lady was, as a consequence, thrashed relentlessly by Israel’s partisans, but there’s no question that this was an obvious and calculated provocation by Hillary (and certainly her husband) meant to show her husband’s enemies that the Clintons could play hardball with Israel if necessary.

Although the Clinton administration itself formally distanced itself from Hillary’s remarks, the point had been made.

Ultimately—some seven years later, in December of 2005—the truth about the Israeli role in utilizing the Lewinsky affair to put pressure on Clinton emerged.

Television evangelist Jerry Falwell couldn’t resist bragging and admitting the truth: he and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu did conspire— at a critical time—to trip up Clinton and specifically use the pressure of the Lewinsky scandal to force Clinton to abandon pressure on Israel to withdraw from the occupiedWest Bank.

Falwell’s confession didn’t make national news—as it should have. Instead, the preacher’s confession came buried in a lengthy story in the December 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, describing the flourishing love affair between American evangelicals such as Falwell and hard-line Jewish extremist forces in Israel then under the leadership of Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

The admission by Falwell confirmed precisely what this author first revealed in The Spotlight in 1998 and later recounted in a lecture before the Arab League’s official think tank, the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi, in March of 2003.

Although, following my lecture, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, a lobby for Israel, denounced as a “bizarre conspiracy theory” my charge that “Monica-gate” did have Israeli origins, the assertion by Falwell that the public unveiling of the Lewinsky affair forced Clinton to pull back on pressuring Israel confirmed exactly what I had charged.

Regarding Falwell’s recounting of how he worked with Netanyahu in undermining Clinton’s pressure on Israel, Vanity Fair reported:

On a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1998, Netanyahu hooked up with Jerry Falwell at the Mayflower Hotel the night before [Netanyahu’s] scheduled meeting with Clinton. “I put together 1,000 people or so to meet with Bibi [Netanyahu] and he spoke to us that night,” recalls Falwell. “It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Mr. Clinton. . . . The next day, Netanyahu met with Clinton at the White House. “Bibi told me later,” Falwell recalls, “that the next morning Bill Clinton said, ‘I know where you were last night.’” The pressure was really on Netanyahu to give away the farm in Israel. . . . It was during the Monica Lewinsky scandal . . . Clinton had to save himself, so he terminated the demands [to relinquish West Bank territory] that would have been forthcoming during that meeting, and would have been very bad for Israel.

What Falwell did not mention—at least as reported by Vanity Fair—is that his meeting with the Israeli leader took place on the very evening before the mass media in America broke open the Monica Lewinsky scandal with much fanfare.

Nor did Falwell mention that one of Netanyahu’s leading American publicists, neo-conservative power broker William Kristol, was the first American media figure to publicly hint (in the days before the scandal was officially unveiled) that there were forthcoming revelations regarding a sex scandal about to be unveiled to Clinton’s detriment.

The story of Clinton’s imbroglio with Israel is something Bill and Hillary Clinton would prefer be forgotten, but the lesson of Israel’s success in using such a scandal to batter Clinton is not something that Israel and its media allies will forget.

Barack Obama stands warned as his administration is now the subject of a frenzy of investigation and cover up surrounding corruption within the circles that brought him to power.

. . ..Michael Collins Piper can be heard every week day night live on the Internet at republicbroadcasting.org. He is the author of Final Judgment, the controversial “underground bestseller” documenting the collaboration of Israeli intelligence in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is also the author of The High Priests of War, The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America , The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within, Dirty Secrets: Crime, Conspiracy & Cover-Up in the 20th Century, The GOLEM: Israel's Hell Bomb, and Target: Traficant. These works can be found at America First Books and FIRST AMENDMENT BOOKS: 1-888-699-NEWS. He has lectured on suppressed topics in places as diverse as Malaysia, Japan, Canada, Russia and Abu Dhabi.

(Issue #52, December 29, 2008, AMERICAN FREE PRESS)

Mercredi 6 janvier 2010 | Mise en ligne à 16h48 | Commentaires (216)
Y en a marre des Israéliens et des Palestiniens!

Le directeur de cabinet de la Maison-Blanche, Rahm Emanuel, a récemment confié au consul d’Israël à Los Angeles que l’administration Obama «en a marre» des Israéliens et des Palestiniens. C’est du moins ce qu’a affirmé aujourd’hui la radio de l’armée israélienne, selon cet article du quotidien Haaretz. Emanuel aurait déclaré que les Américains sont excédés par la propension des Israéliens à adopter des idées plusieurs mois après que celles-ci eurent perdu leur utilité, et par l’habitude des Palestiniens de ne jamais perdre une occasion de perdre une occasion.

Comme le souligne Jeffrey Goldberg dans ce billet, la Maison-Blanche nie qu’Emanuel a tenu les propos qu’on lui prête.

(Photo AP)

 Michael Collins Piper, The Golem

Chapter Fourteen

Did Bill Clinton "Turn His Back" on Israel?

The Zionist Intrigues Behind "Monica-Gate" 

Even former President Bill Clinton—who is generally perceived to be wildly popular in the American Jewish community—managed to get himself in trouble with America's organized Jewish groups over the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons program. 

It didn't make national headlines, but Clinton's contretemps with the Jewish community was very much a subject of discussion in the higher circles of the Jewish establishment in the spring of 1999. This came not long after Clinton was acquitted by the Senate on perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from the now-infamous scandal involving Clinton's amorous adventures with famed "Jewish American Princess" Monica Lewinsky. 

And, as we shall see, a careful review of the circumstances surrounding La'Affaire Lewinsky strongly suggests that the scandal was orchestrated by hard-line pro-Israel elements in the United States, working directly in conjunction with their like-minded allies in Israel. 

There was much more to the Lewinsky scandal than most realize, and in this chapter we will examine that affair in a way that it has never been outlined before. 

But first, let's take a brief look at Bill Clinton's run-in with Israel over its nuclear weapons program. 

On May 14, 1999, the influential New York-based Jewish weekly, Forward, published an article expressing outrage and concern that "President Clinton is raising for the first time public concerns about Israel's nuclear program." 

The article pointed out that some 35 members of the U.S. Congress had written a letter to Clinton expressing concerns about imprisoned Israeli nuclear engineer Mordechai Vanunu who was the first to publicly expose— first-hand—Israel's nuclear bomb production program. 

Responding in a letter dated April 22, 1999 to Rep. Lynn Rivers CDMich.), President Clinton did more than just express his own concerns about Vanunu's plight. And this is what particularly distressed Israel and its partisans: Clinton also said that "I . . . share your concerns about the Israeli nuclear program. We have repeatedly urged Israel and other nonparties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to the Treaty and accept comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards." 

Forward reported: "Jewish leaders reacted with shock at news that Mr. Clinton had weighed in on Mr. Vanunu and Israel's nuclear program," and cited the reaction of Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman who attacked Clinton, saying: "I can't believe the president would send such a letter. These are very sensitive issues. It is so judgmental."

However, Foxman's disgust with President Clinton was not singular. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, declared: "The president's reference to Israel's nuclear program is surprising and disturbing— as far as we know it's unprecedented." 

That Clinton dared to follow in the path of his lifelong hero, John F. Kennedy, and challenge Israel on the issue of its nuclear Golem—rather even go further than JFK and publicly talk about Israel's atomic arsenal is remarkable indeed. But since Clinton had already survived the attempt to remove him from office, the president obviously had the proverbial "wiggle room" to be able to take his stand. 

Despite the common (and quite inaccurate) perception—particularly by Clinton's many "conservative" critics—that somehow the "liberal media" lionized Clinton during his presidency, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the truth is that throughout his presidency, Clinton was very much under fire from the mass media in America.

 The record demonstrates that it was that very media—which all honest persons acknowledge is controlled by Jewish families and financial networks sympathetic to the interests of Israel, claims to the contrary notwithstanding—which played such a large part in provoking public knowledge and discussion of the Lewinsky scandal in particular. 

The January 4, 1999 issue of The Nation featured a revealing article by Michael Tomasky which examined this phenomenon in quite revealing detail. Tomasky pointed out that it was actually The New York Times—the flagship "liberal" newspaper—which is also, not incidentally, the premier pro-Israel journal in America—which played a substantial part in leaking many embarrassing and damaging revelations from the long-running investigation of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton by Special Prosecutor Ken Starr. Tomasky wrote: "At every crucial turn and pivot, the Times' editorial page has marched in lockstep with the prosecutor and his cheering section." 

"Why is this worth remarking on?" asked Tomasky. Because, he pointed out, "on national matters, [the Times' editorial] page serves as more of an ideological Baedeker, instructing the country's elite as to what constitutes responsible liberal opinion." 

In other words, The New York Times—voice of the pro-Israel elite— was telling its readers that it was "okay" to support Ken Starr's maneuvering against President Clinton.And so the question, then, was why one of America's most liberal presidents would be the target of the editorial wrath of the very liberal New York Times. 

Obviously, it was because Bill Clinton was perceived to be insufficiently supportive of the demands of Israel.

When, during the frenzy over her husbands shenanigans, Hillary Clinton propounded the theory that there was a "right-wing conspiracy" to destroy her husband, Mrs. Clinton was correct. 

However, Mrs. Clinton failed to mention whose "right-wing" was behind that conspiracy or how the "Monica-gate" scandal was used to manipulate U.S. Middle East policy. 

Hillary Clinton's argument that a "right wing conspiracy" in America was behind the sex-and-perjury scandal that threatened to topple her husband had one big flaw, and it was a point that we already noted:After all, it was the major media in America—led by The Washington Post and Newsweek, joined by The New York Times and Time magazine--, along with the major networks, that were hyping the scandal and suggesting that it might be Bill Clinton's undoing.  

Newsweek itself enlisted longtime Clinton confidant George Stephanapolous to write of Clinton's "betrayal" and young Stephanapolous, who had moved on to become an ABC commentator, even went on the air to bring up the possibilities of Clinton's resignation and/or impeachment. 

And nobody had ever accused any of those major media voices of being a voice for the "right wing"—or the "right wing" in America, at least. However, the first lady clearly put her finger on something when she claimed that a "right wing conspiracy" was energizing the "Monica-gate" scandal. In fact, digging deep enough, one could find that the conspiracy of which Mrs. Clinton spoke reached all the way to the hardline "right wing" in Israel. 

It was no coincidence that—just as the American supporters of Israel's right wing (the Likud bloc) were launching a major (and bitter) public relations campaign against President Clinton—the pro-Israel mass media in America picked up the lead and suddenly began trumpeting the allegations about yet another Clinton "sexcapade." 

Let's look at some basic facts (reported in the major media itself) that somehow got buried in the midst of all the frenzy over the Lewinsky affair. 

First of all, although the media focused on former White House staffer Linda Tripp and her brassy New York promoter friend, Lucianne Goldberg, as being the prime instigators of "Monica-gate," The Washington Post pointed out rather circuitously in a story buried at the back of the paper on January 28, 1998 that lawyers for Paula Jones "first received several anonymous tips that Lewinsky may have had a sexual relationship with the president." 

(Miss Jones was the young lady who had sued President Clinton for sexual harassment stemming from the time that he was governor of Arkansas and she was a state employee. It was during a deposition in that case that President Clinton lied under oath and denied that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.) 

It apparently wasn't apparently until after this that lawyers for Paula Jones contacted Miss Lewinsky, tipping off the president that his (thenpublicly- unknown) relationship with Lewinsky had been exposed. 

At this juncture, it seems apparent neither the aforementioned Tripp nor Goldberg were the sources, inasmuch as they had other interests to exploit in the Clinton-Lewinsky caper. In fact, Tripp instead went directly to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. 

Therefore, the big question was this: who tipped off the lawyers for Paula Jones that there might be a "smoking gun" in the president's relationship with Monica Lewinsky? 

Monica Lewinsky had been a Clinton loyalist and it was certainly not Miss Lewinsky who leaked the story to the lawyers. So someone close to— or spying on—the president's inner circle had to have leaked the word about the president's relationship with Miss Lewinsky (however innocent or not so innocent) to Jones's attorneys. 

But let's go further. Although Michael Isikoff of Newsweek (published by the Meyer-Graham empire, which also owns The Washington Post) was the first journalist officially "digging into" the story, it now turns out that, according to the Post, reporting in passing on January 28, 1998 that one William Kristol—described generally as "editor of the conservative Weekly Standard"—as having been one of the first to "publicly mention" the allegations. 

Kristol's role as being one of the "first" to float the story publicly, you see, is critical to understanding the big picture. 

Not only is Kristol the front man for billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch—a major ally of Israel's hard-line Likud—but Kristol himself is the son of journalist Irving Kristol and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, two self-styled "former Marxists" who have emerged as "neoconservative" figures with long-standing close ties to Israel's "anti-communist right wing." 

Young Kristol, a "Likudnik" like his parents, and was a harsh critic of what was being called Clinton's decision to "turn his back" on Israel. In fact, the theme that Clinton had "turned his back on Israel" was precisely the specific rhetorical focus of a wide-ranging heavy-handed advertising campaign by Likud supporters in the United States in the immediate weeks before the Lewinsky scandal erupted. 

The record shows that at least six days before the first news of the Lewinsky scandal began breaking in the broadcast media at midnight on Tuesday, January 20, 1998, an advertisement appeared in the January 15 edition of the respected Washington Jewish Week newspaper accusing President Clinton of having "turned his back on Israel." 

What made the advertisement so striking was that it used a rear view of President Clinton (first captured on video in 1996) that had never been published but which, in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal, became very familiar. It was a view of the president, his back to the camera, clearly taken from the video in which he was seen hugging the soon-to-be infamous Miss Lewinsky when she was in a receiving line at the White House some two years before. Miss Lewinsky had known the existence of this video and bragged about it among her associates prior to the time that the scandal broke. 

So clearly, Clinton's critics among the pro-Netanyahu forces in the United States—who sponsored the advertisement—were already tuned in to the fact of the Lewinsky-Clinton liaison and, more significantly, of the fact that it was soon to be unleashed upon the president. 

That it was one of Netanyahu's key American partisans, the aforementioned William Kristol, who was first to announce the impending scandal is clearly no coincidence. 

At the time, this author (Michael Collins Piper) published the story of the evidence of the Likudnik role in the Lewinsky scandal in the February 2, 1998 issue of The Spotlight newspaper, reproducing the "rear view" of Clinton from the videotape (as published in newspapers all across the United States) side-by-side with the same rear image as utilized in the Likudnik propaganda campaign against the president. 

This particular Spotlight story came as a follow-up to an earlier story by this author in that same newspaper's issue of February 9, 1998, outlining the other previous indications of Israeli-Likudnik orchestration of the scandal. 

Shortly after the publication of these stories that critics accused of being "conspiracy mongering," a friend of the author—who also just happened to be an old Arkansas friend of President and Mrs. Clinton— passed on the Spotlight stories to persons whom he described as "my friends" and then told the author: "I think you're right. And my friends think you're right. But we've never had this conversation." 

So, in many respects, one might say that the Lewinsky affair was "made in Israel"—probably in the office of then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself. 

It was thus no coincidence that on January 26, 1998, just as the Lewinsky affair began escalating and engulfing Clinton, American Likudnik William Kristol released a letter to Clinton, pressuring the president to launch a military attack on Israel's hated enemy, Iraq. 

Signing the letter along with Kristol were a bevy of other famed American supporters of Israel's "right wing" including former Rep. Vin Weber, a longtime close ally of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Richard Perle, a former deputy secretary of defense who was then a highlypaid consultant for Israeli arms interests (and, during the later George W. Bush administration, head of the Defense Policy Board, from which post he promoted the U.S. war against Iraq).

Then, in light of the Kristol-Murdoch connection, it is critical to note that Murdoch's Fox television led the stampedge in the Establishment media against Clinton, forcing the other networks to compete in the rush for the latest "news" on the Lewinsky affair. 

The Fox News Channel carried the story almost non-stop around the clock. Even when other features were telecast, they were subject to interruption for any breaking developments in the scandal, regardless of how mundane they were. Fox even brought in a reported specialist in "body language" to view the video of Clinton and Lewinsky on the receiving line, after which the "specialist" declared Clinton was treating the girl as though she were "the first lady." 

Not surprisingly, in addition, some of the most tawdry stories to break in the burgeoning scandal were in The New York Post, along with other Murdoch-owned news publications. 

At a town hall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a strong supporter of the Netanyahu regime in Israel, received an enthusiastic response from the mostly-Republican crowd when he called the president's treatment of the Israeli prime minister "below the dignity of America." 

Gingrich was referring to Clinton's efforts to get the Israeli leader to take a more conciliatory view toward achieving a peace settlement in the Middle East. 

In the meantime, in her effort to once again "stand by her man," the first lady named television preacher Jerry Falwell and his friend, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), as among those who were part of the "right wing conspiracy" that was out to "get" her president. 

What Hillary didn't mention was that both Falwell and Helms were especially close to—once again—the hard-line "right wing" Likud bloc in Israel and both were adamantly opposed to President Clinton's perceived support for Likud's rivals in Israel's Labor Party which had been far more amenable to the peace process. 

Having more or less openly supported Netanyahu's rival, Shimon Peres, in the recent Israeli elections, Clinton was embarrassed politically when Netanyahu won. And Netanyahu's American supporters were doing everything within their power to damage Clinton's presidency in return. The Lewinsky affair became a vital political tool in their effort.

And note that even prior to his official meeting with President Clinton, the Israeli prime minister had already met with (and appeared at a pro- Likud rally in the company of) the aforementioned Jerry Falwell, one of Clinton's most vociferous critics. 

Even The Washington Post revealed on January 22, 1998 that "a senior Netanyahu official had said the Israeli leader was prepared to respond to opposition from the White House by demonstrating his 'own ammunition' in U.S. political circles"—namely Falwell and the boisterous pro-Zionist "Christian Right." 

In Israeli itself, according to the Post on January 24, 1998, the press had "lapped up the Clinton allegations." The Post said that "interest seemed particularly sharp because Monica Lewinsky is Jewish." 

Writing in the January 22, 1998 issue of the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth, Nahum Barnea wryly commented: "We innocently thought the fate of the peace process was in the hands of a Jewess, born in Prague, named Madeleine Albright [referring to the American Secretary of State who was of Jewish origin]. Apparently, the fate of the peace process is, to no lesser degree, in the hands of another Jewess, named Monica Lewinsky, 24 years old, a Beverly Hills native, who spent a fun-filled summer three years ago as an [intern] at the White House." 

What was interesting is that by the time Barnea's comments were repeated in the February 2, 1998 issue of Newsweek, which devoted a special issue to the scandal, Newsweek had carefully edited Barnea's words so that they now read: "It turns out that the fate of the peace process depends on a different woman." The Jewish angle to the Lewinsky affair had thus been utterly erased. 

In fact, the Lewinsky scandal forced the president into retreat as far as pushing Israel was concerned—much to the delight of Israel's Likud. 

On January 27, 1998 The Washington Post again let the cat out of the bag when it reported that "last week, Clinton demonstrated he could not compel the Israelis to meet their responsibilities for a further military pullback. This week [in the wake of the scandal] he is even less capable, if only because people in his own party, not to mention the Republicans, will not support a policy of greater pressure on Israel." 

Should there be any doubt that Bill and Hillary Clinton were certainly aware that the Lewinsky affair was being promoted by Israel's Likudniks and their American allies in the "right wing" conspiracy that Hillary had alluded to, bear in mind that at the height of the Lewinsky frenzy the First Lady publicly called for the creation of a Palestinian state.This was a clear shot over Israel's bow. The First Lady was, as a consequence, thrashed relentlessly by Israel's partisans, but there's no question that this was an obvious and calculated provocation by Hillary (and certainly her husband) meant to show her husband's enemies that the Clintons could play hardball with Israel and its American friends if necessary Although the Clinton administration itself formally distanced itself from Hillary's remarks, the point had been made. 

Ultimately—some seven years later, in December of 2005—the truth about the very real Israeli role in utilizing the Lewinsky affair to put pressure on President Clinton emerged. 

Television evangelist Jerry Falwell couldn't resist bragging and finally admitting the truth: he and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu did conspire—at a critical time—to trip up President Clinton and specifically use the pressure of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to force Clinton to abandon pressure on Israel to withdraw from the occupied West Bank. 

Falwell's confession didn't make national news—as it should have. Instead, the preacher's confession came buried in a lengthy story in the December 2005 issue of Vanity Fair. Entitled "American Rapture" the article (by Craig Unger) described the long-standing and still-flourishing love affair between American dispensationalist evangelicals such as Falwell and the hardline Jewish extremist forces in Israel then under the leadership of Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu.

The admission by Falwell confirmed precisely what this author first revealed in The Spotlight in 1998 and later recounted in a lecture before the Arab League's official think tank, the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi, in March of 2003. 

Although, following my lecture at the Zayed Centre, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, a lobby for Israel, denounced as a "bizarre conspiracy theory" my charge that "Monica-gate" did indeed have Israeli origins, the assertion by Falwell that the public unveiling of the Lewinsky affair forced Clinton to pull back on pressuring Israel confirmed exactly what I had charged. 

Regarding Falwell's recounting of how he worked with Netanyahu in undermining Clinton's pressure on Israel, Vanity Fair reported: 

On a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1998, Netanyahu hooked up with Jerry Falwell at the Mayflower Hotel the night before [Netanyahu's] scheduled meeting with Clinton. "I put together 1,000 people or so to meet with Bibi [Netanyahu] and he spoke to us that night," recalls Falwell. "It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Mr. Clinton."...

The next day, Netanyahu met with Clinton at the White House. "Bibi told me later," Falwell recalls, "that the next morning Bill Clinton said, I know where you were last night." The pressure was really on Netanyahu to give away the farm in Israel. It was during the Monica Lewinsky scandal Clinton had to save himself, so he terminated the demands [to relinquish West Bank territory] that would have been forthcoming during that meeting, and would have been very bad for Israel."

What Falwell did not mention—at least as reported by Vanity Fair—is that his meeting with the Israeli leader took place on the very evening before the mass media in America broke open the Monica Lewinsky scandal with much fanfare. 

Nor did Falwell mention—as this author pointed out at the time and as we've noted again here in these pages— was that one of Netanyahu's leading American publicists, neo-conservative power broker William Kristol, was the first American media figure to publicly hint (in the days before the scandal was officially unveiled) that there were forthcoming revelations regarding a White House sex scandal that was about to be unveiled to the detriment of William Jefferson Clinton. 

The story of Bill Clinton's imbroglio with Israel is probably something Bill and Hillary Clinton would prefer be forgotten, but the lesson of Israel's success in using such a scandal as the Lewinsky affair to batter President Clinton is not something that Israel and its American lobby are likely to forget. Should Hillary Clinton somehow assume the presidency, she must be prepared to face the consequences.