A March 29 article in The Algemeiner newspaper described a phone call between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. According to Hoenlein, Clinton told him, “We need to all work together to return the special US-Israel relationship to constructive footing, to get back to basic shared concerns and interests.”

The statement hints at the problematic relationship between the two countries under President Barack Obama, but also sends a reassuring message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in the US Jewish community. But Clinton didn’t stop there. True, this conversation with a senior American Jewish leader took place just days before Clinton officially announced that she was running again for the Democratic nomination for president, a race in which all the candidates walk on eggshells when it comes to Israel. Nevertheless, Clinton threw caution to the wind with the potentially tendentious remark, “We must ensure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue.”

As a veteran politician, she hardly expects her Republican rivals to give up the Israel card in the presidential election. She certainly remembers the Jerusalem ambush that Republican nominee Bob Dole and House speaker Newt Gingrich set at the time for her husband when they proposed moving the US Embassy in Israel to a “united” Jerusalem. Netanyahu, then head of the opposition, was hard at work behind the scenes, doing all the he could to move this proposed legislation forward. What it did was force the president and the Democratic members of Congress to choose between a crisis in the already fragile diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians then underway, or one with the powerful pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). These days, Netanyahu, aided by his billionaire patron Sheldon Adelson, is more obvious about tugging the strings behind Republican legislative efforts to torpedo the agreement with Iran. In doing so, he's allegedly forcing the Democrats in general and Clinton in particular to choose between another crisis in the Middle East followed by a crisis in US relations with its partners in the UN Security Council or a one with the powerful Jewish organizations back home.

In the 2012 presidential elections, the Netanyahu-Adelson tag team threw its support behind Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The Jewish billionaire announced at the time that he would do everything in his power to remove Obama from office. Today, he is using fortune and power to keep Clinton from winning the White House. Netanyahu will be forced to choose between placating Adelson, the man who created a widely circulating newspaper just for him, and his innate desire to avoid getting on the bad side of the woman who could well become the next president of the United States.