Israeli forces have launched a large scale military operation in the West Bank.
At least 8 people have been killed and
50 others injured according to Palestinian health officials.
>> That is correct as of now,
at least 8 Palestinians have been reported as killed in the city of Jenin today,
as 2,000 Israeli soldiers backed by drone strikes stormed the region.
Five teenagers are allegedly among the eight individuals who were killed.
Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops while protesting the attack.
Now, dozens of people were injured, with 80 people currently reported as wounded.
And today's attack marks the most expansive Israeli military
operation in the occupied West Bank in two decades.
So here are more of the details of how the raids and this assault unfolded.
>> Israel's raid began long before dawn,
the morning call to prayer pierced by the sound of heavy gunfire.
[SOUND] The Israeli military says it launched a missile after 1 AM local time,
and carried out drone strikes to clear the way for ground forces.
[SOUND] Some 2,000 soldiers are said to be taking part in the large scale operation.
It stated goal, destroying what the army calls terrorist infrastructure.
Palestinian health officials say dozens of people have been injured in the Israeli
strikes and the gun battle that followed, some of them seriously,
meaning the death toll could rise further.
>> Now, Israeli officials are saying that they're not fighting against
the Palestinian people and are instead going after jihadists backed by Iran.
To give you more details on that,
the military said a drone attack struck a joint operations center used by militants
of a group known as the Jenin Brigade in the refugee camp.
And that Israeli forces also targeted a facility for weapons production and
explosive device storage.
The military said it had located and confiscated caches of weapons,
hundreds of explosive devices and an improvised rocket launcher.
Now, residents of the camp were holed up in their homes.
Apparently, they were told people in Jenin received a text message from
Israeli numbers telling them to stay inside, and
militants received texts telling them to give themselves up.
Now, the Jenin Brigade, which was the target of these raids,
operates at this Palestinian refugee camp where thousands of people live
in close quarters, it's densely packed.
Now, the close proximity to the refugee camp makes it virtually impossible to
avoid civilian casualties,
which is why we're now getting reports of civilian casualties.
And with 2,000 soldiers deployed into the area and
helicopter gunships in the air, it's pretty clear that this was more than
this precision operation to take out very specific people.
It's the latest and most egregious attack and
it's an escalation of an ongoing tension and violence in that region.
So just a few more details and I'll go to you Cenk.
Tensions have escalated in the area recently, with local Palestinian militias
waging a series of attacks against Israelis, and extremist Jewish settlers
rampaging through Palestinian villages and setting fire to property.
There have been almost daily raids by the Israeli military to arrest Palestinians
suspected of armed activity.
And the killing last month of four Israeli civilians outside
a West Bank Jewish settlement by two gunmen from the Islamist militant
group Hamas increased pressure on the Israeli government to take tougher
military action against armed Palestinians in the northern West Bank,
though this attack was not linked to militants from Jenin.
That attack on the four Israelis was not tied to the militants in Jenin.
>> Yeah, all right, so first of all, let me be clear and
buckle up race for impact, Israel is 100% guilty.
Now, let me explain.
So in my lifetime in covering this issue in America, what used to be the case,
is that in all these instances, the press would universally,
for almost the entirety of my life, until recently, would say,
the dirty Muslim Palestinian savages had it coming.
There no violence, and they're terrorists, terrorists, terrorists,
brown Muslim terrorist, terrorist, poor Israel trying to protect its citizens.
They had to, they had to kill all those Palestinians.
Now, recently, that has changed.
So from what I can see, it's become a little bit more fifty-fifty.
So in the last, I don't know, however many years, five years or so, people go,
now the journalists are like, but it turns out Palestinians are dead, and
not all of them are guilty.
Some of them are teenagers, right?
And by the way, Jews in Israel have also died, and we should make that clear,
everybody should make that clear, okay?
So now it's kind of gotten around fifty-fifty, and
I'll give credit to the press for that, okay?
So why do I say that Israel is 100% guilty?
Because you can't occupy people for
decade after decade, 60 long, brutal,
horrible years in an open camp, let's put it that way.
And then go, my God,
can you believe some of these sons of bitches tried to fight back?
They should know their place.
I mean, it's almost like the opening scene of Gladiator that people should know when
they are defeated.
Would you, would I?
Would you in Texas know that you are defeated if Mexico occupied you for
60 years, and if any of you fought back, they crushed you and killed your kids?
Would you know you're defeated or would you fight back?
Now, I am against violence in all its forms, so I don't believe
killing an innocent Israeli is going to solve the issue at all, okay?
>> It exacerbates it.
>> Yes, and I'm against it.
But don't come and say, hey,
I'm just keeping these prisoners here for 60, some odd years.
And the reason I'm keeping them, and I see this with a straight face,
is because they are unable to govern themselves.
Say that again, say that again, they're unable to govern themselves.
Why, why are they unable?
Say it, say it, cuz they're Palestinians, they're Muslims, and they're brown, right?
Well, brown is less relevant there cuz a lot of people are similar shade there.
But God, for all the Muslims, the savages, sorry, deeply racist,
deeply bigoted, and I've got to tell you the truth,
that's just the reality of it, will end the goddamn occupation.
And by the way, not only does it destroy Palestinians, not only does it create
conflict all over the world, but it also destroys the moral core of Israel.
If you care about Israel, you have to be screaming at your friends and family and
colleagues saying to them, my God, brothers and sisters,
you got to let them go, you got to let them go.
What do you think is gonna happen?
What would you do?
No, all they get is more murder, mayhem, and violence.
And yes, to the American press and
to everyone else, state violence is also violence.
Don't tell me, the state murdered and killed and butchered, but that's okay,
the state kept them as prisoners.
And if they went this way or that way, they got crushed, crushed, but no,
that's not violence, that's not violence.
Only when a civilian fights back, that's violence, terrorism, awful.
No, hell no, definitely Israel's fault.
>> There's also the continued construction of Israeli settlements in
Palestinian territory which exacerbates the conflict, and needlessly so.
And we do have some more details on what led up to this deadly moment.
Let's watch.
>> Pensions in the West Bank, particularly in the northern West Bank where Jenin
is situated, have been very high for the last 15, 16, 17 months.
An operation to try and target militants in the area has been ongoing in that time.
And the city has seen nearly nightly raids, or
certainly cities throughout the West Bank have seen nearly nightly raids,
from the Israeli military during that time.
Now, in recent weeks, just two weeks ago, in fact, there was another Israeli raid on
Jenin refugee camp and that didn't quite go to plan.
One of the vehicles, as it was retreating, was targeted by a roadside bomb.
Now, in the wake of that, there were calls from the far right in the Israeli
government calls, they were saying that we need a bigger here in Jenin,
particularly in the north of the West Bank, a wider operation.
And it does seem that this might be what you might say might be
answering those calls.
>> And there were fatalities in the previous operations,
military operations in Jenin.
At least three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli drone attack on June 21st,
while seven were killed and more than 100 wounded in a raid
that involved helicopter gunships over Janine on June 19th.
Now, Israel's right wing government also recently announced
plans to build 5,000 new illegal settlements in the West Bank.
And Israeli officials are saying that there is no endpoint,
they're gonna continue doing this indefinitely.
In fact, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesperson, says,
we'll do it as long as it's needed, there is no timeline on this right now.
>> Of course they're gonna keep the occupation forever and ever,
they're gonna just totally brutalize those people for the rest of time.
And they're gonna do it for 100% bigoted reasons.
And then when challenged on it, you know what they're gonna do?
ADL did it today, Rashida Tlaib put out a benign tweet about, hey, this is terrible,
you shouldn't do this kind of oppression.
And ADL, which has done great work in fighting bigotry in America,
I love them for it, and they stood up for Muslims.
They're not Israelis, they're Americans, Anti-Defamation League.
And they've done a great job of not just defending Jewish-Americans, but
Muslim-Americans and other guys.
But now, but whenever it's political, whenever it's Israel.
What did he do?
Jonathan Greenblatt, how did they deal?
Done great work in the past, he says anti-Semitic.
How dare you question me while I'm in the middle of being a racist?
How dare, I'm gonna call you a racist?
I'm gonna say you're an anti-Semite, you should know when you are defeated and
you should know when you to be controlled by your superiors.
No, sorry, Jonathan, no deal, no deal,
there's tons of wolves out there right now.
Antisemitism is real, and in the middle of all these wolves, you're gonna cry wolf?
No deal, disgusting.
>> Let me shed a little more light on that, because what Congresswoman Tlaib was
drawing attention to was the fact that Palestinian medical personnel.
They're claiming that Israeli soldiers are essentially blocking, they're not
allowing emergency or medical personnel to enter the area, the refugee camp,
in order to save people's lives and provide treatment to them.
And so there's more on that in this next clip, that is what the ADL
was responding to, that was the statement that Rashida Tlaib named.
>> How dare you try to rescue citizens?
>> That ADL responded to.
So let's watch that video.
>> We often hear very loud exchanges of gunfire, and then we hear ambulances.
We've been speaking to the ambulance service in the last hour,
they say they're being allowed in, but it is sporadic.
It really depends on the soldier who's on the checkpoint,
then they need to negotiate at that point.
And when they get in, there is a real difficulty in moving around simply
because, as we've been saying, so much of the infrastructure has simply disappeared.
We have seen not only Israeli military vehicles, but
dual bulldozers moving into the camp in Jenin.
And they're ripping up the road, moving cars out of the way,
damaging people's property, and the ambulances then have to negotiate that.
>> So if the Israeli government is arguing that
this is not an attack on the Palestinian people,
that they have no interest in harming the Palestinian people.
How do you make that argument as the IDF is blocking medical
personnel from getting to wounded individuals in Jenin?
>> No, there is no argument.
And look, guys, whether it's the Pentagon in America or the Israeli Defense Forces,
do not listen to the press.
The press tells you, you should take everything they say at face value.
If the IDF says that, it must be true.
No, I don't believe anything the IDF says.
Yeah, we had to bulldoze those homes, these attacks against Palestinians where
we kill the Palestinians, they are not Palestinians.
They're literally saying that it's orwellian, well, they're Palestinians, but
remember, they're terrorists, monsters, terror Muslims, Muslims, terrorists,
monsters, monsters.
No, we have to get, since they're such monsters,
we have to just keep them in prison for the rest of their lives and
they should just know not to complain about it.
So Rashida Tlaib says, can you let the ambulances in?
And Jonathan Greenblatt says anti-Semite.
Are you kidding me?
In a country now filled with anti-Semitism,
where we're all worried to death that it's gonna explode?
You're gonna come in and cry wolf like that.
And then no one's gonna believe you, the next time that it's real because, no,
no, Israel, no matter how horrific, must be defended.
And must be defended 200%, it doesn't matter if they're guilty,
it doesn't matter if they're wrong in that particular instance, nop, nop, nop, nop,
nop, occupation.
So tell me, one person, one person,
justify the occupation without being racist, you can't do it's impossible.
Well, I mean, if we let them go, they might attack us.
Well, every country might attack us, and there's Greeks and
the Turks hate each other.
The Turks and their Persians hate each other.
The Russians hate the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians hate the Russians.
The Estonians, the Russians, everybody hates each other.
And from time to time, people attack each other, but everyone in the world is
allowed to have a country except the Palestinians, except the Palestinians.
Why?
Every single time, it is a form of racism.
When they say, well, they can't control themselves.
Well, they're savages.
Well, they would attack us.
Well, you know how violent they are?
You know how they are?
Muslims, Muslims, Muslims, hate, right, hate.
And then say, what, anti-Semitism?
What, what, just me, I can be racist all day long, I could be bigoted all day long.
I could imprison them for 60 years and not give them dignity and respect and
self government.
And say to them, you are uniquely savages and you're the only ones not allowed to
have your own country, not allowed to have your freedom.
And then I'm gonna call you a racist for defending them.
Hell, no, let them go, Israel, let them go, let them go.
But you won't do it, you won't do it cuz you've now sworn
allegiance to permanent hatred of Muslims.
It's ruining your moral core, you're destroying your country.
Israel could be a great country, something that we could all be proud of.
Instead, look at what it's turned into,
massacring kids because we have to maintain occupation.