Want more. Here it is.
----
observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election
On
September 5, 2006, Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff writer for the
Jewish Press, and Hillary Clinton was running for a shoo-in re-election
as a U.S. senator. Her trip making the rounds of editorial boards
brought her to Brooklyn to meet the editorial board of the Jewish Press.
The tape was never released and has only been heard by the
small handful of Jewish Press staffers in the room. According to
Chomsky, his old-school audiocassette is the only existent copy and no
one has heard it since 2006, until today when he played it for the
Observer.
The tape is 45 minutes and contains much that is no longer
relevant, such as analysis of the re-election battle that Sen. Joe
Lieberman was then facing in Connecticut. But a seemingly throwaway
remark about elections in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority
has taken on new relevance amid persistent accusations in the
presidential campaign by Clinton’s Republican opponent Donald Trump that
the
current election is “rigged.”
Speaking to the Jewish Press about the January 25, 2006,
election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (the legislature
of the Palestinian National Authority), Clinton weighed in about the
result, which was a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the
U.S.-preferred Fatah (45 seats).
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the
Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen.
Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should
have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
Chomsky recalls being taken aback that “anyone could support
the idea—offered by a national political leader, no less—that the U.S.
should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.”
Some eyebrows were also raised when then-Senator Clinton appeared to make a questionable moral equivalency.
Eli
Chomsky, photographed today at the Observer offices, participated in an
interview with Hillary Clinton at the Jewish Press in 2006. - Observer
Regarding capturing combatants in war—the June capture of
IDF soldier Gilad Shalit by Hamas militants who came across the Gaza
border via an underground tunnel was very much front of mind—Clinton can
be heard on the tape saying, “And then, when, you know, Hamas, you
know, sent the terrorists, you know, through the tunnel into Israel that
killed and captured, you know, kidnapped the young Israeli soldier, you
know, there’s a sense of like, one-upsmanship, and in these cultures
of, you know, well, if they captured a soldier, we’ve got to capture a
soldier.”
Equating Hamas, which to this day remains on the State Department’s
official list
of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, with the armed forces of a close
American ally was not what many expected to hear in the Jewish Press
editorial offices, which were then at Third Avenue and Third Street in
Brooklyn. (The paper’s office has since moved to the Boro Park section
of Brooklyn.) The use of the phrase “these cultures” is also a bit of a
head-scratcher.
According to Chomsky, Clinton was “gracious, personable and
pleasant throughout” the interview, taking about an hour to speak to, in
addition to himself, managing editor Jerry Greenwald, assistant to the
publisher Naomi Klass Mauer, counsel Dennis Rapps and senior editor
Jason Maoz.
Another part of the tape highlights something that was
relatively uncontroversial at the time but has taken on new meaning in
light of the current campaign—speaking to leaders with whom our country
is not on the best terms. Clinton has presented a very tough front in
discussing Russia, for example, accusing Trump of unseemly ardor for
strongman Vladimir Putin and mocking his
oft-stated prediction that as president he’d “get along” with Putin.
Chomsky is heard on the tape asking Clinton what now seems
like a prescient question about Syria, given the disaster unfolding
there and its looming threat to drag the U.S., Iran and Russia into
confrontation.
“Do you think it’s worth talking to Syria—both from the U.S. point [of view] and Israel’s point [of view]?”
Clinton replied, “You know, I’m pretty much of the mind that
I don’t see what it hurts to talk to people. As long as you’re not
stupid and giving things away. I mean, we talked to the Soviet Union for
40 years. They invaded Hungary, they invaded Czechoslovakia, they
persecuted the Jews, they invaded Afghanistan, they destabilized
governments, they put missiles 90 miles from our shores, we never
stopped talking to them,” an answer that reflects her mastery of the
facts but also reflects a willingness to talk to Russia that sounds more
like Trump 2016 than Clinton 2016.
