Hillary Clinton Campaign Rejects Max Blumenthal’s Antisemitism

While the media have been obsessively focused on whether a deleted Donald Trump tweet was antisemitic, Hillary Clinton has had to deal — albeit less publicly — with the antisemitic remarks of Max Blumenthal, son of close aide Sidney Blumenthal.

Blumenthal greeted news of the death of Holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel on Saturday by tweeting: “Elie Wiesel is dead. He spent his last years inciting hatred, defending apartheid & palling around with fascists.”

That statement, and others that followed, cast the man who survived Auschwitz in the role of a Nazi collaborator — with the State of Israel as the Third Reich and the Palestinians as the Jews in concentration camps. These are antisemitic motifs that are common on the extreme right and left, and which Blumenthal indulges in his book Goliath, which casts Israel as a new Nazi Germany. The elder Blumenthal supported his son’s book, and frequently sent his other writings to Hillary Clinton.

Now, finally, in a statement to the Jerusalem Post, Clinton has distanced herself from Max Blumenthal’s views:

“Secretary Clinton emphatically rejects these offensive, hateful, and patently absurd statements about Elie Wiesel,” Jake Sullivan, senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in a statement to The Jerusalem Post.

Sullivan released the statement following a Post report from earlier this week on anti-Israel activists who attempted to vilify Wiesel after his death.

“She believes they are wrong in all senses of the term. She believes that Max Blumenthal and others should cease and desist in making them,” Sullivan said.

He added: “Elie Wiesel was a hero to her as he was to so many, and she will keep doing everything she can to honor his memory and to carry his message forward.

Aside from the Post, few other media outlets have challenged Clinton on Blumenthal’s very real and unmistakable hatred, while pressing Trump about a tweet that may or may not have had antisemitic resonances — and, if so, likely unintentionally.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, will be published by Regnery on July 25 and is available for pre-order through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.