The State Department’s August email dump of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton included numerous communications with close confidante Sid Blumenthal, who often passed along his son Max’s anti-Israel articles.
The older Blumenthal, who served in the Clinton White House as a close political aide to the president and first lady, sent Clinton, in December 2010, an article his son wrote about “Islamophobia” in the Republican Party, the tea party, and the “Islamophobic crusade” from the “pro-Israel lobby.” (Email 1 , Email 2)
Max attacked a number of individuals and groups for their financial or political support of Israel as well as excoriated them for their criticism of radical Islamic terrorism.
In response to a tweet from The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein asking the younger Blumenthal if he was an “informal adviser” to Clinton, Blumenthal responded, “I warned her about the danger of #JSIL. She didn’t listen.”
I warned her about the danger of #JSIL. She didn't listen. https://t.co/7eEEwmugBN
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 1, 2015
The JSIL (The Jewish State of Israel in the Levant) hashtag on Twitter is the creation of Max and fellow anti-Israel writer, Rania Khalek. The hashtag is meant to compare Israel to the terrorist organization ISIL.
In June 2010, Sid sent Clinton a piece Max wrote about the Gaza-bound flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists, which ended in a deadly raid by Israeli commandos after the flotilla refused to turn around when it attempted to break through Israel’s coastal territory.
The incident remains in dispute to this day. In his piece, Max claims that Israel provided no proof the flotilla passengers had terrorist connections and Israeli media was playing along with whatever the Israel Defense Forces told them.
Sid sent Clinton another Max article that attacked Israel over the flotilla incident in June 2010. The piece is titled, “The Flotilla Raid Was Not ‘Bungled.’ The IDF Detailed Its Violent Strategy In Advance.”
A few months later in August, Sid sent Clinton an email with Max’s piece that described Israeli teenagers who spent their summer demolishing Palestinian structures in the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib. Max calls it the “Summer Camp Of Destruction.”
By September 2010, Sid sent Clinton the preface to his son’s book “Days of rage: the tea party & America’s right.” The older Blumenthal previously sent an email to Clinton a month earlier telling her about his son’s new epilogue to the paperback edition of his previous book “Republican Gomorrah: The Right’s Days of Rage.”
Sid sent Clinton a November 2010 email with a piece Max writes that is critical of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders. Max described Wilders as “far right” and “whose agenda is comprised exclusively of xenophobic populism.”
He noted that while sitting on a panel at Tilburg University he responded to a question about American media, corporations, and elections:
“Riemen asked me if the United States was a democracy given the rapidly rising influence of corporations over the media and elections. After two panelists had described Israel as a vibrant democracy while another labeled Italy a non-democratic quasi-dictatorship, I decided that our definition of democracy was subjective at best. So I sidestepped the question and outlined a few of the greatest blows to American democracy, from the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine to the Telecommunications Deregulation Act to the Citizens United SCOTUS decision.”