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It has Arabic symbols on it and has been there from the beginning.
The last time an American president interfered in an Israeli election (Clinton with Carville and Goldberg) it proved a disaster for Israel with the election of Ehud Barak.
Obama is pressing for Herzog and Livni to replace Netanyahu and is encouraging Israeli Arabs to get out and vote now that they have combined their three parties into one.
Even if Bibi loses it is likely Israel's new Defense Minister will be hawkish.
From what I know about Herzog and Livni, more the latter than the former, Obama and the Palestinians should be delighted because they are far more pliable and dreamy.
That is not to say Bibi is everything Israel needs either but American presidents have a lot to do with how an Israel P.M is perceived. (See 1 below.)
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Hillary goes from Sham Rock to Shill Elagh on this special Irish day!
She just cannot walk an ethical and straight line. Too much Irish Whiskey? Her background is Scotch. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Most American coverage of the Israeli election continues to center on the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his possible replacement by a Labor-led coalition that will steer the Jewish state away from confrontation with the United States. If Netanyahu loses tomorrow, there’s no doubt that it will greatly please the Obama administration. The president and his foreign-policy team regard the Israeli leader as public enemy No. 1 both because of their personal antipathy for him and his willingness to challenge their desire to create détente with Iran. But just as the White House’s expectations for a more pliable Israeli negotiating partner with the Palestinians may be unrealistic, so, too, is their confidence about Labor’s attitude about Iran. As a Times of Israel interview makes clear, the opposition’s designated candidate for defense minister, former general Amos Yadlin, is every bit the hawk about stopping and, if necessary, bombing Iran, as Netanyahu has been.
It bears repeating that the image of Netanyahu as an extremist that is often the keynote of American press coverage betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of Israeli politics. Though after three terms and nine years as prime minister Netanyahu may have outlasted his expiration date for the Israeli public, the general dissatisfaction with him should not be mistaken for disagreement with this policies on either the Palestinians or Iran. To the contrary, polls show that there is little support for more concessions to a Palestinian Authority that has repeatedly rejected chances for peace, let alone to the even more implacable Hamas in Gaza. Nor is there much of a constituency for complacency about the peril about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Netanyahu’s problems in the election stem from anger about his foolish decision to call an election when he didn’t need to do so and the fact that many voters want more attention paid to economic and domestic issues that the prime minister has sidelined while highlighting security threats.
Though his Zionist Union opponents have criticized Netanyahu’s confrontational tactics with the Obama administration, they have been falling over themselves to make the public think there isn’t much difference between them on security issues. That is largely the case since it is unlikely that either Isaac Herzog or Tzipi Livni (who represented Netanyahu in the peace talks the past two years) will be able to offer the Palestinians any more than the prime minister. Indeed, Herzog has been eager to declare that he wouldn’t divide Jerusalem, as Obama wants him to do.
Assuring the Israeli public that his government wouldn’t be any less tough than that of Netanyahu was the reason Herzog brought Amos Yadlin onto his ticket and designated him as the likely defense minister in the next government. Yadlin, a former head of intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces, is, like many in the old left-dominated army establishment, a stern critic of Netanyahu. But if Obama and his team are reading what Yadlin is saying they might be a little less enthusiastic about the prospect of a new Israeli government. That is especially true of his rhetoric on Iran :
“Are we at the juncture where [all options have failed and] we have to choose between two very problematic alternatives: to accept an Iranian bomb, or to do what it takes so they don’t have a bomb? In English, ‘the bomb or the bombing?’ We have to ask ourselves constantly if we have reached this juncture? Have we exhausted all the other options to stop Iran?”Many in Washington — “in the ‘belt,’” as Yadlin calls it from his days as military attaché to the US — “are at this juncture and are willing to accept a nuclear Iran. They believe in containment and deterrence.”Do “they” include President Obama or his cabinet?Yadlin skirts the question. “You’ll find them among the strategists and among the government officials. I still belong to those who believe that President Obama won’t let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.” …Readers who discern distinctively Netanyahu-esque rhetoric in this list of US-Israeli differences on Iran are not mistaken. When it comes to the scale of the danger, the precariousness of trusting in American assurances, and the intentions of the ruling ayatollahs in Tehran, one might be forgiven for labeling Yadlin something slightly more hawkish than the catch-all “centrist.”And that’s only natural, Yadlin explains.“The goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and the desire to reach an agreement that will push Iran back as much as possible is not an issue of disagreement between Israel’s [political] parties.”
This is a key point. There really isn’t any genuine disagreement between Israel’s mainstream parties (Labor and Likud) on the basic issues of war and peace. Neither can offer a Palestinian leadership that is not interested in peace anything that will tempt them to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. And both are adamantly opposed to appeasement of Iran. Labor may speak kindly about the administration whereas Netanyahu is no longer bothering with pretending that he trusts the president. But when it comes to opposing the sort of concessions the U.S. is making to Iran, Yadlin is every bit the hawk that Netanyahu has been.
All of which means that no matter who wins tomorrow, tension between an American government determined to embrace Iran and to push for territorial concessions to the Palestinians and Israel’s government will continue.
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2)
Hillary’s Emails and the Law
It is a crime—obstruction of justice—to destroy even one message to prevent it from being subpoenaed.
Hillary Clinton during a news conference at United Nations headquarters in New York, March 10. PHOTO: MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS
The fact that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private server in her home, rather than a secure government server, to send emails during her four years as secretary of state has raised many questions. She now says that it was a mistake but also emphasizes that she broke no law. News reports typically describe her offense as not following “policy.”
Whether or not Mrs. Clinton violated a State Department rule, her admitted destruction of more than 30,000 emails sure looks like obstruction of justice—a serious violation of the criminal law. Let’s consider some of the basic, undisputed facts, and then the law.
First, Mrs. Clinton was worried that communicating through email would leave a trail that might be subject to subpoena. “As much as I’ve been investigated and all of that,” shesaid in 2000, “why would I ever want to do email?” But when she became secretary of state, she didn’t have much choice. So she set up a private server in her house. That way, in the event of an investigation, she could control which emails would be turned over.
We know this is true because that is exactly what happened. When Congress subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton’s official communications, or when nongovernmental organizations filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the same, the State Department could not turn over her emails because it did not have them.
The State Department must have known that its leader was using a private account. Mrs. Clinton presumably emailed other officials within the department, and the “from” line would have shown clearly that she wasn’t sending the message from a proper government email address.
Mrs. Clinton claims that she never sent any classified or secret information on her private account, though many have noted that she conspicuously left out whether shereceived such material. Either way the claim is hard to swallow—one would think it would have left her out of the loop—but let’s assume she is telling the truth.
By her own admission, Mrs. Clinton destroyed more than 30,000 emails once the subpoenas started coming in. She claims that she only destroyed personal records. Team Clinton initially explained that her work emails were separated from her personal emails using keyword searches. Now, after the outcry about how much this method might have missed, Mrs. Clinton is insisting that every email was individually read before the deletion.
Still, this leaves questions unanswered. How did those reviewing the emails define “personal”? For instance, if Mrs. Clinton had emailed a foreign government about a donation to the Clinton Foundation, was that message—whatever its interest to watchdogs or voters—tossed in the trash bin?
The law says that no one has to use email, but it is a crime (18 U.S.C. section 1519) to destroy even one message to prevent it from being subpoenaed. Prosecutors charging someone with obstruction don’t even have to establish that any investigation was pending or under way when the deletion took place. As T. Markus Funk explained in ajournal article for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the prosecutor “need only prove that the defendant shredded the documents, at least in part, to make life more difficult for future investigators, if and when they eventually appear.”
Legal commentators call this “anticipatory obstruction of justice,” and the law punishes it with up to 20 years imprisonment. The burden of proof is light. The Justice Department manual advises that section 1519 makes prosecution much easier because it covers “any matters” or “’in relation to or contemplation of’ any matters.” It adds, “No corrupt persuasion is required.”
In addition, rules governing the practice of law forbid attorneys from anticipatory obstruction of justice. These ethics rules are drafted by the American Bar Association, but they are also reflected in real law. Virtually every state court adopts them, and violation can lead to disbarment. Rule 3.4 (which has been around for many years) provides that an attorney shall not unlawfully “conceal a document or other material having potential evidentiary value.” Mrs. Clinton is a lawyer governed by these rules. So are any attorneys who advised her to delete her emails.
When the Senate Watergate Committee discovered that President Richard Nixon had a very extensive inventory of White House tapes, both the committee and the special prosecutor subpoenaed them. At the time, some wondered why Mr. Nixon, a lawyer before entering politics, didn’t simply destroy the tapes. The answer was that doing so could have led Mr. Nixon to an indictment for obstruction as well as disbarment.
At the time, I was assistant majority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, so I remember that period well. Mrs. Clinton should remember it too: She worked on the House Impeachment Committee, which warned Nixon not to destroy the tapes.
Here’s another reason Mrs. Clinton should know about obstruction: Congress enacted section 1519, making the crime easier to prove, in 2002, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. As senator, she voted for the law.
Mr. Rotunda is a professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law and the co-author, with John Nowak, of “Treatise on Constitutional Law” (Thomson Reuters, fifth edition, 2013).
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