At its July 25-28 convention, Hadassah honored Hillary Clinton with its Henrietta Szold award, named for the organization's founder. Thanks to Americans For a Safe Israel, and especially AFSI executive director Helen Freedman, the award to a public figure whose PLO sympathies are of long standing did not go smoothly. Led by Freedman, scores of protesting Hadassah members demonstrated in front of Hadassah's headquarters on July 14, burning a giant replica of a Hadassah membership card (the originals, made of plastic, refused to burn). The resulting publicity was enormous, from the International Herald Tribune (which ran a large photo of Freedman holding up the burning card, supporters behind her) to the Boston Herald, to the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Washington Post and Washington Times, not to mention virtually all the Jewish papers and the New York television channels.
Hadassah would have had to work hard to find a more inappropriate choice than the lady whom columnist Don Feder has dubbed "Hezbollah Hillary." In the 1980s, Hillary served on the board of the New World Foundation, which distributed funds to a wealth of radical left wing causes, including two PLO front groups. This was of course long before Arafat's specious "makeover" as peace partner. (Indeed perhaps the only foundation that could compete with New World in the 1980s in funding the wildest outcroppings of the left was the Veatch Foundation of Long Island's North Shore Unitarian Church.) Journalist Steven Emerson has written about "the many radical Islamic groups embraced by and invited to the White House" and spoken of the tendency of Mrs. Clinton specifically "to embrace militant Islamic groups that support terrorism." And in May 1998, in remarks to a Seeds for Peace group of Jewish and Arab youth meeting in Switzerland (this is one of those all too typical instances of alleged Jewish-Arab reconciliation in which the Arabs angrily parade their grievances and the Jews cry mea culpa), Hillary declared her support for a Palestinian state "on the same footing as other states." This state, according to Hillary "would serve the long-term interests of peace in the Middle East." Don Feder has noted mordantly that this would be as conducive to peace as making Libya and North Korea members of the UN Security Council. Shirley Friedman, former president of a Hadassah Chapter in Illinois, in a letter published in The Forward, noted sensibly: "To present Hadassah's highest award to someone who called for an independent Palestinian state without attaching any conditions or security safeguards for Israel, even before any kind of Palestinian state was American policy, is to debase the honored name of Henrietta Szold, the great founder of Hadassah...If, as has been quoted, the award is to be given because of Mrs. Clinton's "commitment to children's welfare, women's health and human rights," does there exist a political figure who does not claim a general adherence to these worthy issues?"
Clearly stung by the outcry and above all, the publicity, Hadassah engaged in damage control. The organization whipped up a multi-page series of "talking points" for national board members defending the award to Hillary and set up a committee (whose members presumably knew them by heart) to handle queries. When the protest refused to die down, Hadassah engaged in tactics familiar to regimes that practice censorship -- it threw the critics out. The following are excerpts from radio talk show host Lester Kinsolving's "Commentary" on July 26 on Baltimore station WCBM.
"Delegates to the annual national convention of Hadassah arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel Sunday afternoon and found a picket line of Jewish demonstrators covering both sides of the hotel and carrying signs such as "Hadassah: Have You Forgotten You're a Zionist Women's Organization?"
The demonstrators, who came from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, spent three hours in 95 degree heat to protest the action of 62 Hadassah directors who voted to give the 300,000 member organization's highest award to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Hey, hey; ho, ho -- Hill supports the PLO" they chanted, carrying other signs: "Hadassah -- Hamas(ah)" and "Rights? Values? Hillary Clinton accepts a sex predator."
The overreaction to this demonstration from Hadassah public relations director Roberta Elliott and her aide Lauren Galfond clearly illustrated Hadassah's painful embarrassment.
Leo Samet of Silver Spring, Maryland, told WCBM that when he went into the lobby of the Hilton to offer leaflets to incoming delegates, he was told by security police to leave the hotel.
WCBM, which displayed press credentials as well as a visible microphone tag, went to the Hilton lobby and then to Concourse One, where delegates were registering. There were no signs or security police to advise news media that this concourse was controlled by Hadassah.
After a consensual interview with a Hadassah delegate from Silver Spring, WCBM was confronted by a man in civilian clothes claiming to be a security policeman. This unidentified person ordered WCBM to leave the hotel. When we declined to leave on the order of this unidentified civilian, he returned
(Continued on p.8)
July-August 1999 - 7 - Outpost
Correction: The highlighted text from "policeman" to "returned" should have been included in the printed version of Outpost, but was missing due to an error.