Primary foe rips Hillary on Israel

Yes, Hillary Clinton DOES have a primary opponent. And you can be sure that Rupert Murdoch isn't hosting any fund raisers for him!

From the August 1, 2006 NY Daily News, by Helen Kennedy:

Hillary Clinton's primary opponent lashed out at the senator over Israel yesterday, blaming the deaths of 37 children in Qana on her refusal to push for a ceasefire.

"She, and a broad segment of our political leadership, bear responsibility for the deaths of these children," Democrat Jonathan Tasini said in a statement. The youngsters were among about 60 civilians killed in Israel's weekend strike on the southern Lebanese town of Qana.

"Rather than call for restraint, Hillary Clinton stopped just short of declaring, 'Let the bombs fall.'"

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson called Tasini's statement "outrageous and beyond the pale" but didn't engage further.

In intensely personal terms, Tasini, who is Jewish and has lived in Israel, also branded Clinton a pandering chicken hawk.

"I know what it is like to sit in a bomb shelter or touch the body of a person killed by war," Tasini said.

He said his father fought in the Jewish underground that helped found Israel in the 1940s, a cousin was killed in the 1973 war and an elderly relative was axed to death by a Palestinian while sitting on a park bench.

"Has Hillary Clinton or other so-called 'friends of Israel,' who have cheered for armed conflict and death and destruction, ever spent one night in fear from war or sobbing in sorrow because of the death of a loved one in war?" he asked. "For them, it is all about political calculations, pandering and votes."

Tasini, a former president of the National Writers Union, has been struggling to gain traction against his monumentally better known and better funded opponent.

Clinton has ignored his attempts to get her to agree to a League of Women Voters debate Sept. 6 ahead of the Sept. 12 primary.