Campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris at Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church in Muskegon Heights, Mich., on Wednesday night, former President Bill Clinton discussed Israel extensively at the end of his nearly 45-minute remarks.
“I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died since—I get that. But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim and in Israel, right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine, most pro-two state solution of any of the Israeli communities—were the ones right next to Gaza, and Hamas butchered them,” Clinton, 78, said.
Those who criticize the Jewish state “are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in [retaliation]. So how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?’” Clinton added. “That all sounds nice until you realize what would you do if it was your family? And you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village.”
“You would say, ‘Well, you have to forgive me. I’m not keeping score that way. It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians,’” he said. “They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”
Clinton said the Hamas terror group doesn’t care about a Palestinian homeland.
“They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. Well, I got news for them. They were there first before there was—their faith existed,” he said. “They were there in the time of King David in the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria.”
The former president recalled his own efforts to try to bring Israel and the Palestinians together.
“Look, I worked on this hard, and the only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was that he promised me he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was,” he said.
“I can hardly talk about this,” he said.
