In a new book, the former US secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton hits out at Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, for taking “zero responsibility” for the surprise attack by Hamas on 7 October last year.
“In an important way, Netanyahu is nothing like [Golda] Meir,” Clinton writes, referring to the Israeli prime minister who was in power when Egypt attacked in 1973, and whom Clinton says she admired for the way she “mixed humor and gravitas”.
“She accepted a commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the Yom Kippur war and resigned from office. Netanyahu, by contrast, has taken zero responsibility and refuses to call an election, let alone step down.”
Nearly 1,200 people were killed on 7 October. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent onslaught against Gaza and other areas, with the US and allies unable to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
Clinton writes about Netanyahu and the Israel-Hamas war in Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty, which will be published in the US on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
The former first lady, New York senator, secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee has already published three memoirs. Her new book offers wide-ranging thoughts on global politics and descriptions of her time in power and adjacent to it, interspersed with nuggets of lifestyle advice and rare glimpses into her private life.
In one such nugget, Clinton, now 76, reveals that she was moved to give her post-menopausal stomach – or “newly thick midsection” – a name. It is “Beulah”. She also describes a birthday trip last year, for a “girls’ weekend in Las Vegas”.
“We ate, we laughed, we danced like no one was watching,” Clinton writes. “Friendship, Adele, and an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet? Life doesn’t get any better.”
More attention may be paid to sections in which Clinton addresses political moments and world events including the US evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021, in which she drove efforts to rescue members of a “kill list” of prominent Afghan women at risk under the Taliban. Such efforts reportedly earned Clinton a rebuke from Jake Sullivan, her former aide turned Joe Biden’s national security adviser, for contacting world leaders without White House approval.
Clinton expresses disapproval of Netanyahu in a lengthy passage on her experiences at Columbia University, where in 2023 she became a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs (Sipa) and presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects. After Hamas attacked Israel, and amid the Israeli offensive in response, Columbia was among US campuses gripped by anti-Israel protests. Clinton discusses dealing with students on both sides of the issue.
Describing a campus “tense with shock and grief”, she writes of constructive discussion sessions held with her fellow teacher, Keren Yarhi-Milo, the Sipa dean who grew up in Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). But, Clinton writes, some student questions “troubled me, like why was Hamas considered a terrorist organization but not the IDF?” She was also surprised, she writes, by what she characterized as some students’ lack of historical knowledge.
Clinton received “blank stares” when she told students “that if Yasser Arafat had accepted the deal offered by my husband in 2000 for a state that the Israeli government was prepared to accept, the Palestinian people would be celebrating their 23rd year of statehood”.
Bill Clinton pushed for peace in the Middle East but could not get Arafat to agree a final deal. President Clinton also clashed with Netanyahu, reportedly asking staffers, after his first meeting with the rebarbative rightwinger in 1996: “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”
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Nearly 30 years later, such questions still bedevil US leaders while Netanyahu directs an Israeli offensive many decry as genocide.
At Columbia, Hillary Clinton writes, most protesters “seemed earnestly heartbroken” by 7 October and its aftermath. But for some, she says “it was an excuse to chant antisemitic slogans” including “From the river to the sea”, which refers to Palestinian sovereignty between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The slogan has a complex history. It has been used to call for the destruction of Israel but also to protest against Israel’s suppression of Palestinian civil rights.
Clinton herself has faced protests about her teaching at Columbia. Earlier this month, a small group of students held a sit-in outside a class Clinton teaches at the Sipa building.
Clinton also offers advice to students based on her own experiences, from protesting against the Vietnam war in her youth to a visit to Egypt in 2011, when she was secretary of state. In Cairo, Clinton writes, she met students opposed to the dictator Hosni Mubarak who were protesting but had no plan for what might come next.
“They stared at me blankly,” Clinton writes, echoing her description of discussing Yasser Arafat at Columbia. “Not surprisingly, they achieved none of their goals other than deposing Mubarak, and Egypt ended up with a Muslim Brotherhood president … removed by the army and replaced with another military dictator.”
Turning back to Israel, Clinton writes: “The most effective protest movements do their homework, have clear goals, and build coalitions rather than alienate potential allies. Just look at the mass marches in Israel in 2023 that helped block Netanyahu’s rightwing government from gutting judicial independence.”
Clinton also repeats her call, first made on MSNBC, for Netanyahu to resign.