In an interview to promote his autobiography, Bill Clinton has revealed one of his “moves” – only this time, it is designed to avoid sexual contact.
Clinton also told an anecdote from the signing of the September 1993 Oslo Accords on the White House lawn. He described breaking the news to a reluctant Rabin that he would have to shake Arafat’s hand, and Rabin replying that he would do so if he did not have to kiss the Palestinian leader, his nemesis for decades.
“It seems so easy now, oh they’d do that, but at the time, it was revolutionary. You know, the idea that they were gonna come and sign a deal together before the whole world,” said Clinton.
“So the first thing we had to deal with was, were they gonna shake hands at all? And I could tell Rabin didn’t want to do it. Arafat was very unpopular in Israel. And I said to him, ‘Yitzhak, you know you’re gonna shake his hand.’ And he said, ‘Oh,’ you know, and he went through ñ I said, ‘Yitzhak, you gotta shake his hand. You’re gonna have a billion people looking at you on television.’ So he said in his wonderful deep voice, ‘All right, all right. But no kissing.’ Because, you know, the traditional Arab greeting is a kiss on the cheek.”
Clinton continued: “I figured that if [Arafat], if he didn’t kiss me, he couldn’t kiss Rabin. So, Tony Lake, my national security adviser, who has a wonderful sense of humor, says, ‘Well, I know how to do this. Now, you be Arafat. And I will be you, and you try to kiss me,’ ” added Mr. Clinton, who asked Rather to shake hands with him, and demonstrated the evasive move.
So, I shook hands and he put his hand like this, in my elbow. And he says, ‘If you’ve got your hand in your elbow, he can’t kiss you.’ So, we practiced it,” Clinton said, illustrating how an outreached arm in the other person’s elbow could preempt a kiss.
I bet he learned that one from Hillary.
And still on the topic of the Clinton autobiography and Afatrat, Clinton has criticized the PLO Arab leader.
Former US president Bill Clinton, in his new autobiography My Life, suggests that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat seemed confused, not fully in command of the facts, and possibly no longer at the top of his game, according to a New York Times review published Sunday.
And when it comes to being not fully in command of the facts, and no longer at the top of his game, Clinton can talk with authority.
But I wonder what he means by Afatrat being “no longer at the top of his game.” We all know what his “game” is. Does not being “at the top” of it mean that he is no longer able to murder as many people, and orchestrate the hijacking of as many planes, as he once was able to do?
