In praise of Hillary Clinton
Alfred Dreyfus is one of those figures from history about whom relatively few know about in much detail. By contrast, millions were once familiar, in exhaustive detail, with the “Dreyfus Affair” after the Jewish French army captain was charged with espionage in 1894.
Newspaper coverage was feverish, and an enormous amount of literature about Dreyfus’ prosecution and persecution was published in the years that followed. He was accused of selling military secrets to Germany, France’s hated foe, in a case marked by faked evidence and an explosion of antisemitism sparked by rage over Jews’ supposed disloyalty to France.
Dreyfus, who pleaded his innocence, was convicted of treason in a closed trial, sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony off the coast of French Guiana in South America. The risible case against Dreyfus gradually fell apart as forged documents were revealed and suppressed documents discovered.
A prominent Frenchman, a non-Jew, stood up and denounced the state conspiracy against Dreyfus: In 1898, novelist and journalist Émile Zola penned what became the famous open letter with the simple headline “J’Accuse …!,” on the front page of newspaper L’Aurore.
The paper’s publisher, Georges Clemenceau, the future French prime minister and savior of the nation in World War I, pleaded Dreyfus’ case in more than 600 articles as he was retried and convicted again in 1899 before being granted clemency and ultimately in 1906, exonerated.
Moments of national crisis bring forth those who rise to the moment and those who fail. We are in such a moment now, as Israel counterattacks Hamas terrorists in Gaza to the south and engages in a deadly duel with Iran’s other puppets, Hezbollah to the north, while the ultimate menace to the Jewish state bides its time in Tehran.
This moment has already revealed many villains and heroes in the United States, but I want to take my hat off for one person in particular right now: former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
In every public appearance I have seen, Clinton has stood resolutely with Israel and its righteous cause. She has never lost sight of the victims in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, doesn’t equivocate or descend into word salads, doesn’t muddy her declarations by engaging in absurd whataboutism. You won’t catch her indulging the idea that Israel is a “colonizer” or is engaged in “genocide.” Her smackdown of calls for a Gaza cease-fire was uncompromising; at Columbia University, she has fearlessly continued to teach even as antisemitic, sorry, “anti-Zionist” protesters disrupt her classes.
Clinton has a strong history of fighting antisemitism, as in 2016 when she said, “At a time when antisemitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.”
Two years earlier, when another Israeli counterattack against Hamas drew intense global criticism, she defended Israel’s response and noted of the criticism: “You can’t ever discount antisemitism.”
Clinton is a role model for every public person with a platform, and unlike Republicans for whom standing with Israel is relatively costfree, she and Democrats like her must deal with blowback every day.