By the time we will finish this interview, another baby will be killed in Gaza.
By the time that you will finish your show, there will be
another two women killed in Gaza.
How long can this last?
Israel had the full right to go for this campaign, for this war.
But they must be limits. And we crossed them so long time ago.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy slammed the Netanyahu government
and the IDF's military operations in the Gaza Strip following Hamas's
terrorist attacks on October 7th.
Now, he writes a weekly column for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and has actually won
some human rights awards for reporting on the suffering of the Palestinian people.
We're talking about a guy who is an Israeli and has no problem
speaking out against the injustices that he is noticing,
seeing and wanting to shed light on.
So he sat down for an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN,
and he shares his concerns about the high civilian death toll in Gaza.
And it is, in fact, backed up by the numbers.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza on Tuesday said that in the previous 24
hours, a total of 126 people had been killed and 241 injured on most days.
Recently, the ministry has reported between 100 and 200 people killed,
the ministry said.
The number killed by Israeli military operations since October 7th has risen
to 23,210, with 59,167 people injured.
And when you look at that death toll, it is true that the Palestinian Health
Ministry does not separate the Hamas militants from the civilian population.
Unfortunately, you can't get any straight answers from the Israeli government
in regard to how many Hamas militants are represented in that overall number.
But I also want to remind you all that that overall number does not include
Palestinians who remain trapped under the rubble thanks to the bombardments,
the aerial bombardments that the IDF has been conducting on the Gaza Strip.
So my point is the civilian death toll is likely much higher
because these are individuals who have been trapped under the rubble and they're
presumed to be dead considering how long they've been trapped under the rubble.
Now, Levy was then asked, you know, about the Al-Aqsa martyrs hospital
basically receiving dozens of casualties from several parts of central Gaza due to
heavy overnight airstrikes by the IDF.
Let's take a look at what he had to say about that.
There is the latest and we have to say, graphic video that's coming in from Gaza
today, resulting from airstrikes.
Last night, the hospital at Al-Aqsa there in Gaza says 57 people were killed,
nearly 70 injured.
At least ten of those were children.
In your mind, having covered so many of these Israel-Gaza wars, what is the point?
What is the purpose?
Three months in of this, as you, as you put it, very heavy death toll.
- What is the strategic point? - I doubt very much if there is one.
First of all, everyone is paying. It's his lip service.
The Americans, the Israelis, they do their best.
The Americans ask gently Israel to refrain from killing civilians.
But the outcome is very clear.
It is a bloodbath. And you cannot you cannot ignore it.
That answer that he gave really resonated with me because look, guys,
the truth of the matter is.
You know, people in your personal life, you know, Jewish Americans that are really
struggling right now because they feel like they have a target on their backs.
They feel that, you know, some of the news coverage about what the Israeli government
is carrying out and what the Israeli Defense Forces, what they're carrying out,
is leading to hateful thoughts and hateful treatment toward Jewish people.
And I don't want that. I don't want that.
And I feel like I'm in this incredibly impossible, difficult place
where I can't ignore these stories.
I just can't.
And so my heart breaks for Jewish Americans that feel like they're living
in an increasingly difficult environment because they feel that, you know,
they're they're targets that people are are directing hatred toward them.
And I don't want that to happen.
But then at the same time, you see what's happening to the Palestinian people
in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank.
And how are you supposed to ignore that Jewish individuals
are not responsible for the decisions that are being made by the Israeli government.
I want to be clear about that.
And any anti-Semitism I wholeheartedly reject and condemn.
So again, that last part where he's like, how do you pretend
like you're not seeing it?
And that's where I'm at.
How do I pretend like this isn't happening?
This is happening, and the reason why I care so deeply about it, and why I believe
others feel so deeply about it, is because this is something that is wholly supported
by the United States government, and the United States government represents
the American people on the world stage.
And if we don't speak out against what's happening,
I don't want anyone on the world stage to think that the American people are
complicit because they're not complicit.
Poll after poll indicates that anywhere between 65
to 71% of Americans want a cease fire.
The reason why President Joe Biden keeps getting protested during public
appearances, including a one protest while he was speaking at a South Carolina
church, is because they want a cease fire.
There is a disconnect between the desires and the demands of the American people,
including Democratic voters, and what the Biden administration
continues to provide cover for.
It's deeply, deeply frustrating and the immoral nature of the aerial bombardments
that have been carried out, the shelling that's been carried out,
the high civilian death toll that's been carried out in the Gaza Strip is something
that needs to be spoken out against.
I want to just give you some more information, though,
about the images that you saw of the.
Al-Aqsa martyr hospital. Martyrs Hospital.
The video shows people praying for the dead who had been brought there from Deir
Al-balah, Al-maghazi and Al Nusrat, all areas of central Gaza where there has been
heavy fighting and extensive airstrikes.
Jamal Haim said that he lost his, his mother, three daughters
and three grandchildren.
One of his daughters was a 27 year old by the name of Shaima.
She had just graduated from school to be a dentist and.
He told the media that he only was able to find fragments of her body, and he
also told CNN, quote, we were asleep in a shelter house in Deir Al-balah.
We had evacuated from Nuseirat, as we were told it's safe here.
Suddenly, at 11 at night, the house was struck.
We don't know why they struck the room that my daughter slept in.
My mother was martyred as well as my three daughters and three grandchildren.
Again, I don't know how people keep moving forward
after suffering such tragic losses.
And maybe this isn't something that most people do.
I'm not in the heads and in the minds of most people.
Obviously I can only speak for myself, but when you read stories like that, how
could you not think about your loved ones?
If one of my loved ones were killed in this way, I don't even.
I don't know how I would be able to move forward after that.
But three daughters, three grandchildren. Your mother?
All wiped out in one airstrike.
How do you move forward and more importantly, how do you not grow resentful
from all this death and destruction?
This is the kind of stuff that breeds extremism.
People clearly would want revenge after experiencing the tragic losses that
these Palestinians have been experiencing, which is why this war and the way it's
being conducted is so counterproductive.
And it's not only unfair and unjust for the Palestinian people.
When you consider what's being bred right now, the extremism
that's being bred right now, it's also unfair to the Israeli population.
Now, what I found most interesting about this interview is what Levy had to say
about media coverage in Israel, and I want you guys to keep in mind how powerful
propaganda is, especially when it comes to things like this, when it comes to war.
And just keep that in mind before you decide to judge or make generalizations
about an entire population of people.
Let's watch.
The Israelis are the only people in the world right now who are not exposed
at all to what's going on in Gaza.
Nothing.
We were always laughing at the Russian TV covering the war in Ukraine.
Ours is much worse because here it is voluntarily.
Nobody dictates us not to show the suffer and the punishment of Gaza
and Israelis are not exposed to it.
But that's just by the way, remark. They are goals.
The Prime Minister had declared them, namely releasing the hostages
and crushing Hamas after three months.
I can tell you we are not getting closer to both of them.
I think about about the the releasing the
hostages from my point of view must be in first priority and they don't go together.
I think that here we are going farther and farther.
We are much more distanced now than a few weeks ago from releasing the hostages.
I think he's absolutely right about how they're further away from the
possibility of releasing those hostages.
But more importantly, when you look at public opinion polling in Israel and you
see that the majority of Israelis have cosigned to the IDF carrying out these
military operations in this ongoing war, you have to consider the media environment
that they're currently living in, what they're exposed to,
and what they're not exposed to, because the fact of the matter is,
we see how this plays out in our context in the United States, if you're stuck
in a filter bubble, you will be completely ignorant of a whole different perspective
pertaining to the exact same story.
And if they're not seeing what the Palestinian people are currently
suffering, the extent to which they're suffering, if they're not exposed to that
information, they're not seeing those images, all they're really thinking about
is what they suffered, understandably.
And they're understandably terrified for their own safety.
They don't want to experience another October 7th.
So the reason why I cover stories like this is because for a long time in the
United States, there seemed to be a bit of a corporate media blackout when it came
to the plight of the Palestinian people.
That has changed a little bit with this ongoing war.
But we're going to keep doing our jobs, and we're going to keep telling
you the truth about what's happening on the ground there.
But I also think it's important to avoid making generalizations
about any specific population of people.
That includes the Israelis.
That includes our Jewish brothers and sisters, do not feed into the kind
of hatred that we want to condemn.
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