Weeks before the US elections, the local Arab American community gathered at a Harris-Walz presidential campaign rally in Michigan, home to the largest Arab-majority US city. Former US President Bill Clinton was a key speaker at the event, “Souls to the Polls.”
Clinton’s Gaza speech: Why it matters
The current war in Gaza has been a main issue for most Arab and Palestinian Americans. Pro-Palestinian rallies across the US and especially on US campuses are united by the chant “From the River to the Sea.”
Some Michigan Arabs pledged their support to third-party candidate Jill Stein or Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Most Arab Americans, including a few members of Congress, have characterized Israel’s actions as a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.
Former president Clinton opened his talk by addressing why the death toll in Gaza is too high and that the fighting needs to come to an end. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says over 40,000 Gazans have been killed in the war and Israeli bombing, though it does not distinguish between civilians and terror operatives.
US Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have both rejected the depiction of Israel’s actions as a genocide and have supported Israel’s right to defend itself after the horrific attacks perpetrated against its citizens by Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups on October 7th, 2023.
Clinton’s unfinished business in the peace process
Clinton focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through peace negotiations, including his efforts during his presidency (1993-2001) to bring then-Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ehud Barak together to forge a deal.
He spoke about the US Middle East policy and deals he worked out — rejected by the Palestinians and accepted by the Israelis. “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, adding that the Palestinians “would have [had] a capital in East Jerusalem.”
Clinton told the crowd: “The only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out.”
He also asked the audience to consider the perspective of Israelis who live on the border with Gaza. “Let me talk about the hardest issue here in Michigan is the Middle East. I have to be careful [with] what I say because there's only one president at a time and none of us can get ahead of where we're going but I think we're going to have to essentially start again on the peace process. I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died… 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, [and the] most pro two-state solution of any of the Israeli communities, were the ones right next to Gaza and Hamas butchered them.”
He said: “Then the people who criticize [the war and Israel] 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?”
He continued: “Jews were there first — before [the Muslim] faith existed. Jews had been in the land in the time of King David, and the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria,” using the Hebrew names of the area. Most of the world refers to that region as the “West Bank.”
“This is far more complicated than you know, and all I ask you to do is to keep an open mind,” he concluded.
CAIR, The Council on American Islamic Relations, later released a response to President Clinton’s Gaza speech:“Bill Clinton’s callous and dishonest attempt to justify the Israeli government’s attacks on civilians in Gaza was as insulting as it was Islamophobic… “Prominent leaders like Bill Clinton should be upholding Palestinian human rights, not rationalizing war crimes against Palestinian civilians.”
Uri Pilichowski is an author, speaker, and senior educator at institutions around the world.