During an event at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics on Monday, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was challenged by a protester in the audience who asked her to denounce a “warmongering speech” given by US President Joe Biden.
The incident took place as Clinton and a roundtable of four others fielded questions about the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Can you please - can you make a statement about President Joe Biden's speech?” a man asked from the audience. “This is a clearly warmongering speech.”
“President Joe Biden is calling for $100 billion of funding for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, and we're supposed to just bundle these together and pretend like we're going to rush to World War III, and we're all just going to let Hillary Rodham Clinton sit here,” he continued.
"This is people constructing narratives that are openly hypocritical," the protester retorted. "Will you denounce Joe Biden's speech?"
"I'm not sorry. You sit down,” Clinton replied. "It's not free speech when you are disrupting everybody else's opportunity to speak," she added.
"What I want to hear is Hillary Rodham Clinton to denounce President Joe Biden's warmongering speech,” the protester continued. “He's trying to push us to World War Three. Do you understand?”
"I will not do that," said Clinton.
Both members of the Democratic Party, Clinton and Biden served together in the Obama administration, during which time both were accused of overseeing US foreign wars and regime change operations including in Honduras, Libya, and Ukraine, and supportive of Israel’s 51-day war with Hamas that killed 2,310 Palestinians and injured over 10,000.
According to some reports, Jerusalem has delayed the assault over fears that it could draw the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah into the war, creating a two-front conflict on Israel’s north and south.