Hillary Clinton failed to rebuke a questioner at an event today who criticized Israel. "[M]y third question is about Israel, we spend too much money, $6 billion dollars to Israel funding apartheid!" said the questioner. "There is not the shared values that we are supposed to share with Israel!"
Clinton refused to rebuke the questioner -- or even to answer the question.
The event took place at Brookland Baptist Church in Columbia, South Caroline. Watch here:
The questioner asked, “Mrs. Clinton, thank you for being here. You said that we have six million young people without jobs, out of school. How you target that problem that is very very serious, especially here in the south, Columbia. We have a high rate of homeless students here. This is very sad, because this is the richest country in the world and we don’t supposed to have that problem. My second question, is how you going to restructure all those laws in the judicial system, that by the way was approved by President Clinton, mandatory minimum sentence, the three strikes, how you going restructure the judicial system in order to reduce the mass population is the more higher in the whole world. I’m sorry my third question is about Israel, we spend too much money, $6 billion dollars to Israel funding apartheid! There is not the shared values that we are supposed to share with Israel! Thank you.”
Clinton responded, “Well let me tackle your questions. First, you are right that we are struggling with a homeless problem, for young people, for families, for veterans. And it’s particularly challenging when it comes to young people because they don’t get regular schooling, they don’t have a predictable schedule, they don’t have a home that can give them the security and support they need. And we have to do more on homelessness, I agree with you completely. And I would like to see us also really focus in on the children who are homeless because so many of them are paying a double price, they don’t have a home and they don’t have a continuity of education. And I’d like to see us follow some of the good demonstration projects that are happening around the country. What is the answer to homelessness? A home. Right? And some communities now are actually moving homeless people, individuals as well as families into apartments, into a place of their own and it gives them gives them the stability to deal with a lot of other problems—if they have lost a job, if they have an addiction problem, whatever it might be, and it also gives their children an address to be able to go to school. I’d also like to see us look at some of the communities that have used education funding for boarding schools during the week to deal with—this is public school boarding schools—to deal with at risk populations and homeless children so that they have a stable environment when they’re in school. So I think there’s a lot of ideas, but you’re right, we have to address it. And let me say that the first speech I gave in this campaign was about mass incarceration and the need to have body cameras on police officers. I believe strongly that we have to rebuild the trust and respect between the police and the community they serve, and the community that is served and the police. And I also think that one of the benefits of our political system, if we do it right, is we learn what works and we learn what doesn’t work. In the 80’s we had a very serious crime problem, and we did not have enough police on the streets and we did not have enough sentences that deterred criminal behavior, and we did not have enough facilities to house people. I remember that. We lived through that. And in some places worse than others. But certainly I think everybody can relate to that. So now we know what we need to do to move forward by making it easier to deal with non violent, low level offences to focus on those people, to divert them to drug courts, or to mental health treatment, or to job training, or to further education, and that’s what we need to be doing now. Because we’ve learned that one size, does not, cannot fit all. And so we have to bring back some discretion, and some judicial decisions that will look more closely at the individual circumstances. And I want to see us tackle mass incarceration, I want to see us tackle criminal justice reform. I think that the president’s policing commission which was led by a chief of police came up with some very good ideas that I would like to see us seriously consider. Finally, I would—I would just say it’s important that as we do this, we recognize, that if we’re going to divert people, which we should, from going to prison or jail—we have a jail in New York where people get lost. You know, young people go in and are there for a year without ever being charged. And that is just wrong. That is just absolutely wrong. And some of them come in with addiction problems and mental health problems. Some of them develop them when they’re in there. But then when they’re released we don’t have enough treatment and enough places for people who have substance abuse and mental health issues. So we have to look at this holistically, and that’s what I’m going to do.”