Hilary Clinton 2016 is undergoing an Israel re-branding process that she hopes will lead her back to the White House.

The seven years with President Barack Obama have been traumatic for Israel. The hostility towards Israel has extended from his passion for ending Israel’s gradual rebuilding of its biblical heartland, including its eternal capital, Jerusalem, to his eager, no holds-barred rush to wrap up a nuclear deal with Iran, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction. The deal, which reportedly is 99% completed, will, by most Israeli accounts, enable the Iranian ayatollahs to achieve full nuclear bomb capability within ashort period of time. Therefore, the Israeli consensus po‎sition is that the deal to be concluded in the coming days will be disastrous for the Jewish state.

So where does Hillary stand on these two key issues and how they impact the relationship between our two nations?

At a Manhattan campaign fundraiser last week featuring a largely Jewish group of donors, Clinton defended Obama against charges he had weakened the U.S.-Israel relationship, asserting that such criticism stemmed from a “perception” problem, according to a donor who was present.

At the same time, according to the Politico news site, she also suggested that if she were elected president she could correct that problem and bring the two nations closer.

“Diplomacy is all about personal relationships, and I’ve got my own relationships,” she said, referencing her two-decade association with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Let’s examine the substance of that relationship, as developed by Secretary Clinton during her term in office.  Wherever they may fall in the political spectrum, Israelis will never forget Prime Minister Netanyahu’s infamous trip to the United States during Obama’s first term, when the President and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a huff over Israel’s settlement policy, abruptly left Netanyahu and his advisers standing alone in the White House to fend for their own dinner. Most Israelis instinctively understood that the humiliation of Israel’s leader in the eyes of the international media wasn’t just a personal insult to Netanyahu, but was, in fact, an affront to Israel’s national dignity.

So, too, Israelis remember similarly the visit of U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden to Israel during that same period. Near the start of Biden’s visit, a municipal committee in Jerusalem, in a previously scheduled meeting, authorized the building of 900 apartments in Israel’s capital. When she heard the news, Secretary Clinton was reportedly infuriated and she called Prime Minister Netanyahu, giving him a stern forty-five minute lecture (which the White House publicized afterwards) about the limits of Israel’s sovereignty in its own capital city, the capital that the United States doesn’t recognize to this day. This po‎sition is certainly ironic, given the fact that Israel’s unified kingdom stood in Jerusalem far longer than the USA has even existed as a nation.

Concerning the Iranian nuclear threat, which is by all accounts an existential threat for Israel, Clinton has been speaking out of both sides of her mouth.  According to Politico, several people who have heard her address the Iranian issue say the fact that different people can come away with such different interpretations is a testament to her nuanced approach to the issue and her skill as a politician, rather than any vacillation on the subject. “That’s just smart politics,” said one donor who supports the negotiations and recently talked to her about them. “Because, right now, you have the freedom to say all those things, so why would you commit and box yourself in until you saw what the deal was?”

Nonetheless, Israelis already know what the parameters are for this deal, if not the fine details, and it’s undoubtedly a bad one for Israel. Even so, Clinton recently told another pro-deal donor that she was “very supportive of the negotiating process,” the donor recalled, while a third funder said she boasted of her role in starting the talks. “So it seemed like she was supporting it,” recalled the funder.

Bottom line – Hillary Clinton was a loyal anti-Israel soldier during her term as Secretary of State. Her po‎sition firmly opposing the rebuilding of Judea and Samaria and her pro-Iran deal po‎sition are quite consistent with the new Left initiative to gradually reorient America’s relationship with Israel, in favor of the Islamic world. Americans who truly care about Israel should be wary of the latest Clinton “friend of Israel” offensive. Hillary the candidate can be expected to rely on the knee-jerk liberal sensitivities of American Jews, urging them to vote for her, while simultaneously wooing them to her side with pro-Israel platitudes that mean nothing.

Reprinted with author’s permission from Israel National News