On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” host and NBC News Correspondent Katy Tur stated that while “Israel says they’re warning” Palestinian civilians of strikes, “I find it hard to believe that if a mother or a father was warned that they’re in danger, that a bomb might be coming toward them, that they wouldn’t leave.”
Tur said, “The U.S. has such influence because we give so much money to Israel, we give so much military aid to Israel, we are their strongest ally. I find it hard to believe that if a mother or a father was warned that they’re in danger, that a bomb might be coming toward them, that they wouldn’t leave. I find that hard to believe, and yet, we still see so many civilians being killed. Israel says they’re warning them. But there’s a disconnect there. So, I wonder, does the U.S. say to Benjamin Netanyahu, hey, listen, we understand you have to get Hamas. We agree with that, but there is a limit to what we can stomach?”
White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby responded, “Well, I won’t get into our private conversations with Israeli leaders, I can tell you, though, unequivocally, privately and publicly, we are making it clear to our Israeli counterparts that we will continue to support their effort to go after Hamas and the terrorists that caused the October 7 attacks. That’s legitimate. No country should have to live with that threat next door the way Israel has had to live with it. At the same time, we are urging them, privately and publicly, to do this in a way that reduces harm to civilians and to work harder to do that, to work harder to reduce those casualties. It is a specifically tough environment for them to operate in. It’s not like you can perfectly separate the terrorists from the civilian population, since the terrorists, they find value in hiding behind civilians, so it makes it much more difficult for the Israelis in this military environment than it would in other conventional military environments.”
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