When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she was in simpatico with the rest of the Obama Administration’s disdain for Israel.

There was her infamous 45 minute hectoring of Benjamin Netanyahu over the phone concerning Israel’s settlements policies after an expansion had been announced during a visit by Vice President Biden in March 2010. In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Hillary boasted that she was the Obama Administration’s “designated yeller” at Israel. Last year, when her book Hard Choices came out, she accused Israel of denying “dignity and self-determination” to the Palestinians.

Of course, if we want to go back to the Clinton Administration days, there was her infamous kiss of Suha Arafat, the wife of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and Hillary’s failure to condemn her after she accused Israel of poisoning the Palestinian water supply with gas. Although she would belatedly take Arafat to task, at the time she said Suha’s remarks “were not as harsh in the English translation that she heard.”

But Hillary sings a much different tune when she needs Jewish votes. In February 2007, shortly after announcing her presidential exploratory committee for the 2008 election, Hillary appeared at a joint press conference with Palestinian Media Watch to condemn incendiary Palestinian textbooks. 

Fast forward to the 2016 race and Hillary once again needs Jewish voters, especially with the presence of socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, running hot on her heels. Hillary has written a letter condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. In the letter, Hillary writes about the need to “fight back against further attempts to isolate and delegitimize Israel.”

I am strongly against the BDS movement as indicated with my post last week concerning the United Church of Christ’s decision to divest its holdings in Israeli companies and companies that do business with Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

With this in mind, I would normally welcome any statement against the BDS movement. But given Hillary’s statement against Palestinian textbooks only to ignore the matter altogether during her four years as Secretary of State doesn’t inspire my confidence that she will put her words into action. It is nothing more than a cynical attempt to shore up Jewish voters.

The saddest thing of all is that a lot of Jewish voters will take her at her word.