CBS ’60 Minutes’ edited Ahmadinejad’s comment on Israel/Palestine: ‘Solution Is Democracy’

About two years ago CBS ’60 Minutes’ did an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Recently at the request of the Iranian President, the FULL UNEDITED version was shown on C-SPAN. The aired edited 60 Minutes was followed by the full 90-minute interview, to give viewers a window on what is left on the cutting room floor

A very diligent blogger has reported on what “60 Minutes” cut out of the interview when it initially aired. When Mike Wallace confronted Ahmadinejad with the “wipe Israel off the map” threats, Ahmadinejad said that the solution is democracy” in Israel and Palestine, but it seems the CBS team decided to cut this all important section and continued to paint this leader in a negative view.

We can see what they cut out, a call for democracy. This is another example of Mainstream Media’s continuing suppression of basic facts concerning Israel and the Palestinians and other dramatic details related to the Middle East. It is a scandal for news editors to suppress the fact that democracy is being denied to people and that U.S. policy makers are behind the injustices. It is a scandal that the mainstream media suppresses the fact that the President of Iran is calling for democracy.


The original edited video can still be seen on the CBS website here and the detailed text read here.  Its ironic that Mike Wallace ended up being honored with his 21st EMMY for this very same interview

I then share with you sections of the interview and the edited out text section that failed to meet the final 60 Minutes broadcast has been highlighted in red

Or alternatively watch the video here

MR. WALLACE: You are very good at filibustering. You still have not answered the question. You still have not answered the question. Israel must be wiped off the map. Why?

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, don’t be hasty, sir. I’m going to get to that.

MR. WALLACE: I’m not hasty.

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: I think that the Israeli government is a fabricated government and I have talked about the solution. The solution is democracy. We have said allow Palestinian people to participate in a free and fair referendum to express their views. What we are saying only serves the cause of durable peace. We want durable peace in that part of the world. A durable peace will only come about with once the views of the people are met.

So we said that allow the people of Palestine to participate in a referendum to choose their desired government, and of course, for the war to come an end as well. Why are they refusing to allow this to go ahead? Even the Palestinian administration and government which has been elected by the people is being attacked on a daily basis, and its high-ranking officials are assassinated and arrested. Yesterday, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament was arrested, elected by the people, mind you. So how long can this go on?

We believe that this problem has to be dealt with fundamentally. I believe that the American government is blindly supporting this government of occupation. It should lift its support, allow the people to participate in free and fair elections. Whatever happens let it be. We will accept and go along. The result will be as you said earlier, sir.

MR. WALLACE: Look, I mean no disrespect. Let’s make a deal. I will listen to your complete answers if you’ll stay for all of my questions. My concern is that we might run out of time.

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, you’re free to ask me any questions you please, and I am hoping that I’m free to be able to say whatever is on my mind. You are free to put any question you want to me, and of course, please give me the right to respond fully to your questions to say what is on my mind.

Do you perhaps want me to say what you want me to say? Am I to understand —

MR. WALLACE: No.

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: So if that is the case, then I ask you to please be patient.

MR. WALLACE: I said I’ll be very patient.

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Maybe these are words that you don’t like to hear, Mr. Wallace.

MR. WALLACE: Why? What words do I not like to hear? [the words highlighted in red and edited out of the interview]

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Because I think that you’re getting angry.

MR. WALLACE: No, I couldn’t be happier for the privilege of sitting down with the president of Iran.


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8 responses to “CBS ’60 Minutes’ edited Ahmadinejad’s comment on Israel/Palestine: ‘Solution Is Democracy’”

  1. Riaz Haq Avatar

    While acknowledging that Iran is probably the most democratic country in the Muslim world and has a vibrant civil society, I believe Ahmadinejad is in no position to preach democracy to the Israelis. Israel does practice a form of apartheid in occupied West Bank, but within its own borders it is very democratic. There is no such thing as a Guardian council with veto power over everything, including the laws, the constitution and elections. Israel is a secular democracy.

    In fact the reason most Israelis want a two-state solution is to avoid the apartheid or Jewish minority government labels in a one-state entity where the majority would be Arab-Muslim in about a decade. That’s the one hope for Palestinians that the Israelis are reluctanct to be stuck with unflattering labels undermining their democracy.

  2. guYasir Avatar

    If anyone wanna know about Zionism and its malevolent side-effect(because its secular in nature)on mideast in particular and rest in general should visit and read
    http://www.nkusa.org
    This is anti-zionist site of an orthodox jews who called ’em Torah-Jews. They’re forbidding an Israel state and demanding zionist to go back b4 1967 position
    Zionism is political polity of NWO who made deal with the devil which masquerade in many seducing names like Enlightenment or enlightening moderation, freedom, democracy, media, movies etc
    http://www.henrymakow.com/041102.html
    We’re heading towards satanic secularism under the guise of democracy or dictatorship both being run and sung by Plutocracy which handicapped Judiciary so they plutocrats may get a Carte blanche to do whatever they want to do under the guise of 2 D’s both stands for devil due to their rampant corruption and injustice.
    We should get rid of British democracy and seek Islamic-democracy as same we’ve created Islamic Banks so why not an Islamic democracy???
    so we may prosper here and hereafter.
    Otherwise we esp Mahmoud nejad wont be able to “wipe out Israel from the map” but rather Israel will be able to wipe out entire mideast including pakisatan in the lust of Greater-Israel.
    Coming shakedown btw US and Iran. plz ponder on finger signs and read wiki entry about nejad
    http://www.savethemales.ca/001967.html

  3. Jusathot Avatar
    Jusathot

    What to talk about the blight of censorship at CBS-60 Minutes?

    Take for instant the reporting based on “sheer hearsay and exaggeration” that created a furor over what Amir Liaquat or his guest said (or rather NOT said) on his Alim Online TV show. Those who have seen the actual program and read the transcript will quickly discover that “the Asian Human Rights report was based entirely on hearsay and not on facts.” (Read the post of Geo’s Rehan Ibrahim under Alim Online post to hear the version of the one who actually seen the program and read the transcript of the show).

    Similarly, one of our own blogger Hassan Abbas recently wrote: “I was the first to post the news of Pakistan Army defiance of USA on the blogs,and how it had been recieved by the people;I sent it to a few pakistani blogs and also to an Indian one(instablogs).do you know none of the Pakistani blogs posted it;but the Indian one did-and it still remains there. That told me a lot about Pakistani blogging.Even the best of us have limits to which we like to tell the truth!”

    We should have no illusion about the so-called “free-press” or for that matter the blogosphere. The control, the bias and the selective (or half-baked) reporting is visible all over.

  4. KarimG Avatar
    KarimG

    Oh my God…Riaz Haq
    How in the world did you manage to associate apartheid with Israel and at the same time declared them a democracy… and you do go on right… that this is what these poor Israelis want to avoid…to APARTHEID the palestinian. What organ of your body do you use for thinking. Is it not clear that Israel wants the land without it’s inhabitants? Is it not clear that all the progroms whether inside Israel proper or other side of the wall is to “encourage” Palestinians to leave? Tutu and Mandela must know a thing or two about apartheid, read what they say about Israel.
    And before you ever write a nonsense like that again read what leaders of this “democratic” country that really is in pain for inflicting the worst human rights violations on a native population have said about Palestinians:

    1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ­not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

    2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

    3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

    4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” ” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

    5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

    6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

    7. “There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.” Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

    8. “The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1972.

    9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti – Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

    10. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : “We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return.” Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. “The old will die and the young will forget.”

    11. “We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

    12. “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” – Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI’s cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking.)

    13. “We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.” Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces – Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

    14. “We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return” David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

    15. ” … we should prepare to go over to the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon, Trans-jordan and Syria… The weak point in the Arab coalition is Lebanon [for] the Moslem regime is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be established… When we smash the [Arab] Legions strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan, too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo.” ” David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

    16. “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” Israel Koenig, “The Koenig Memorandum”

    17. “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

    18. “We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘Drive them out!’” Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

    19. Rabin’s description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. “We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters” Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From “The Arabs in Israel” by Sabri Jiryas.

    20. “There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:…the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish…with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary.” Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

    21. “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

    22. “It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.” Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

    23. “Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

    24. “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” — Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

    25. “We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own.” (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).

    26. “We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

    27. “We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or not…You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world.” (Chaim Weizmann, Published in “Judische Rundschau,” No. 4, 1920)

  5. Riaz Haq Avatar

    KarimG,
    It’s obvious you have very strong feelings against Israelis and their illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands. You have singled out a few statements by top Israeli leaders to prove your point that all Israelis are demons. I disagree with your assessment. I know many Jews and Israelis who are very fair-minded and concerned about the plight of the Palestinians. In fact, there is a very strong peace movement in Israel that is pushing for the implementation of a two-state solution for the very practical reasons I stated earlier. There is also a movement in Israel to acknowledge their past sins and true history of the birth of Israel that resulted in the Palestinians being dispossessed and dispersed. Please read my post on this at http://www.riazhaq.com/2008/05/yom-haatzmaut-and-nakbah.html

  6. arab muslim Avatar
    arab muslim

    There is no democracy in Israel as a state is illegitimate and illegal and not recognized

    Evidence of this if anyone wanted to write a comment in the Israeli websites

    Does not allow him or be there are many obstacles to prevent him from writing a comment The reasons for Arab-Israeli conflict is the occupation of Palestine in 1948.

    Palestine Arab Islamic state like the rest of the Arab and Islamic states surrounding

    Them. Means that there are Jews and Zionists in Palestine a big mistake, because this entity

    Zionist is not consistent with the surrounding area (such as language, customs, traditions and religion)

    The only solution to end the Arab-Israeli conflict is the expulsion of Jews from Palestine

    All of Palestine. The Jewish people will not rest and will not feel comfortable and stability

    But if it gets out of Palestine and the Middle East completely. If people continue to

    Jews in Palestine and the Middle East, the death and destruction will continue.

    Palestine Arab Islamic state and will remain

  7. arabb Avatar
    arabb

    There is no state called Israel.

    State of thieves called Israel a

    basis of the displacement

    and killing of Innocent nation of thieves

    basis bloodshed and war

    And the arrest of people

    for tens of years to

    prevent him from claiming

    The right to life .

    basis steal the land of the

    Palestinian people

    And then steal

    the land of the Arab-Muslim

    the entire .State of the

    thieves do not know the law …..

    Does not recognize the

    law of the United Nations,

    a state that considers itself above the

    law . the law is the siege of Gaza

    And the bloodshed and

    destruction of houses and

    killing innocent people

    and occupying the country

    This is a country named Israel thieves

  8. democracy in israel Avatar
    democracy in israel

    DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL

    There is no democracy in Israel as a state is illegitimate and illegal and not recognized

    Evidence of this if anyone wanted to write a comment in the Israeli websites

    Does not allow him or be there are many obstacles to prevent him from writing a comment The reasons for Arab-Israeli conflict is the occupation of Palestine in 1948.

    Palestine Arab Islamic state like the rest of the Arab and Islamic states surrounding

    Them. Means that there are Jews and Zionists in Palestine a big mistake, because this entity

    Zionist is not consistent with the surrounding area (such as language, customs, traditions and religion)

    The only solution to end the Arab-Israeli conflict is the expulsion of Jews from Palestine

    All of Palestine. The Jewish people will not rest and will not feel comfortable and stability

    But if it gets out of Palestine and the Middle East completely. If people continue to

    Jews in Palestine and the Middle East, the death and destruction will continue.

    Palestine Arab Islamic state and will remain