Clinton campaign slams 'hateful' Max Blumenthal comments on the late Elie Wiesel
"Secretary Clinton emphatically rejects these offensive, hateful, and patently absurd statements about Elie Wiesel.”
By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZIUpdated: JULY 6, 2016 23:57Blumenthal and Wiesel(photo credit: REUTERS,Wikimedia Commons)
The Clinton campaign criticized recent comments made by pro-Palestinian Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal regarding the late Elie Wiesel.“Secretary Clinton emphatically rejects these offensive, hateful, and patently absurd statements about Elie Wiesel,” Jake Sullivan, senior policy adviser to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.Sullivan released the statement following a Post report earlier this week on anti-Israel activists who attempted to vilify Wiesel after his death.“She believes they are wrong in all senses of the term. She believes that Max Blumenthal and others should cease and desist in making them,” Sullivan said.He added: “Elie Wiesel was a hero to her as he was to so many, and she will keep doing everything she can to honor his memory and to carry his message forward.Blumenthal is the son of longtime Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, but is not related to her campaign. Less than an hour after the announcement of Wiesel’s passing he took to Twitter and said: “Elie Wiesel is dead. He spent his last years inciting hatred, defending apartheid & palling around with fascists.”He continued with a series of tweets posting links to articles citing that Elie Wiesel “denied Armenian genocide” and “repeatedly lauded Jewish settlers for ethnically cleansing Palestinians in East Jerusalem.”He then tweeted: “Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a supporter of those who commit them.He did more harm than good and should not be honored.”Blumenthal was joined in his denigration by other pro-Palestinian activists.
Despite the attempts at defamation, the tweets came in stark contrast to the majority of outpourings from world leaders, public figures, and countless people touched by Wiesel’s works who offered their praises and expressed their mourning on social media and beyond.