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Hillary Clinton condemns anti-Israel campus protests, says 'outside' groups influenced students: 'Nasty'

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"We basically sat down and answered questions for 45, 50 minutes, and the questions were really raw. I mean, we had a student from Palestine, a Palestinian student. We had a student from Israel, we had students from across the Middle East. We had students from Asia and obviously the rest of the world, struggling to understand what all of it meant. But it was a respectful, informative, open dialogue, and literally at the end of it, the students applauded," Clinton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday morning of a class she held last year when war broke out in Israel. 

"Within a few days, we were doing an event, and we started being protested – the dean and I and our guests – and being screamed at, being called, you know, all kinds of names. What happened in that period? And the best I can sort of unpack it, is that there, there were already existing groups within our country, and particularly on certain campuses like Columbia, who had talking points, they had a plan for protest and disruption, and I watched it sort of morph into something that was not student led, even though students participated, but which had outside funding, outside direction," she said. 

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival on May 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Clinton added that "to this day," she's still not sure how the outside funding and outside influence swayed college students to join the anti-Israel protests. 

Pro-Palestinian supporters demonstrate with a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University on April 29, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The former secretary of state went on to say that when she pressed college students about their anti-Israel views, they lacked historical context surrounding politics in Israel and the Middle East. 

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks onstage for a celebration of the release of her book "Something Lost, Something Gained" at Dolby Theater on Sept. 20, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

"And so in trying to talk to students, not just at Columbia, but elsewhere, I would be met with slogans. I would be met with attacks, and, you know, very inflammatory language. And when I would ask, ‘Well, what about, do you know what happened in 2000 at Camp David?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know what happened in 1947?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know how difficult the relationships have been?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know that there are Arab Israelis, and some are serving in the IDF?’ None of that. And this whole chanting of, you know, ‘from the river to the sea.’ What does that mean? What river, what sea? That's what bothered me," Clinton said. 

Clinton said that so far this year, it "has been much quieter" with "a much more educational environment."

Hillary Clinton and Fareed Zakaria speak during the 10th Anniversary Women In The World Summit at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 12, 2019, in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

She condemned the harassment on college campuses against Jewish students, saying the temperature quickly changed from holding "legitimate" dialogue among students disagreeing with a country's foreign policies to open antisemitism. 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest the Israel-Hamas war at the University of Wisconsin Library Mallon on April 29, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Getty Images)