By Jennifer Rubin September 16 at 4:02 PM

Bill Clinton was caught off mike in Iowa this weekend “agreeing that the [Israeli] prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was ‘not the man’ to make peace with Palestinians — a position at odds with his wife’s pro-Israel stance, a new report said Monday. Clinton’s spontaneous comments came during an impromptu conversation with pro-Palestinian activists after he and Hillary spent the day at a political event in Iowa on Sunday.” This is part of a pattern for Bill Clinton  – “blaming the Israeli prime minister for the lack of progress toward peace with the Palestinians.” What do we learn from this?

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton holds hands with her husband former president Bill Clinton at the 37th Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa. (Jim Young/Reuters)
1. Democrats in private seem always to bash our ally Israel and never to criticize the Palestinians. If you believe what people say in private or off-script is more revealing of their real thinking, then you can conclude an anti-Israel bias is now a sort of sign of solidarity among Democrats. At the State Department, as we have seen from John Kerry’s utterances and the Israel bashing from negotiator Martin Indyk, it’s par for the course.
2. Bill Clinton still plays loose with the facts. He opined that “don’t forget, both [former Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat and [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas later tried to say they would take [the Camp David deal]. They said, ‘We changed our minds, we want it now.’ But by then, they had a government that wouldn’t give it to them.” This is nonsense. It was Clinton who complained bitterly to the incoming Bush administration that Arafat was a snake in the grass and not to be trusted. He of course initiated the intifada, which was Arafat’s real response to the attempt to broker peace. As for Abbas, he was given an even better deal by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and turned it down. Netanyahu in 2013, of course, confirmed Israel’s willingness to recognize a Palestinian state. Abbas has never agreed to recognize a Jewish state and give up the so-called right of return. Why does Clinton feel the need to embellish history to make Israel look bad?
3. This does complicate Hillary Clinton’s charm offensive with Israel. She’d like us to believe she’s not like President Obama when it comes to Israel, however relations reached a nadir under the Obama-Clinton administration, and she certainly took to slamming Israel in public for starting housing within existing Jewish neighborhoods.
4. If Bill Clinton is going to keep up the chatter during the presidency, voters may well attribute his comments — and ignorance — to Hillary Clinton or, worse, be reminded that his presence hovering in the White House would make for a whole lot of awkward moments.
5. The same pro-Israel liberals who would defend both Bill and Hillary Clinton also vouched for Obama’s pro-Israel sentiments. In public, Hillary Clinton, like Obama, will recite her pro-Israel credentials, but her words and action in public are more revealing; like so many other Democrats she tends to view Israel as an irritant. (Oh, and those same liberals will vote for her no matter what she says; Israel isn’t high on their priority list as we saw when they helped reelect Obama in 2012.
As with defense spending, the war against the Islamic State and a more muscular foreign policy, when it comes to Israel the Democratic Party is going to be pushing against even a president to the right of Obama. He or she will be swimming upstream against a party that has been flowing away from Israel for decades. In the GOP, the dynamic is reversed. The base, especially in light of events during the Obama years, is going to be weighing in on the side of Israel and for a more robust response toward terrorists. These things make a difference.