Taxpayer-supported PBS again showed its ongoing hostility toward Israel in its war in Gaza against the terrorist group Hamas on Wednesday’s night episode of the NewsHour.
The initial sympathy the NewsHour showed for Israel’s plight after the brutal October 7 invasion has been replaced by endless doomsaying over unavoidable civilian casualties in a war where one side, Hamas, hides among the civilian population, thus harvesting anti-Israeli headlines about mass “civilian” casualties from gullible, biased outlets.
NAWAZ: Israel's ground offensive in the Gaza Strip continues to expand, as does the human cost. Health officials there say the 11-week-long war has already claimed the lives of more than 21,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children….
In a separate segment, Nawaz conducted a hostile interview with Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog. After opening with informational questions about how the war was going, Nawaz then repeatedly gouged the ambassador with politically sharpened accusations about strip-searching suspected terrorists captured in Gaza, a perfectly sensible move given the huge support for Hamas among Gazans.
Nawaz: I'd like to ask you about the video we just reported on. It was shared yesterday. The New York Times verified it this morning. It seems to be a detention area set up by Israel inside a stadium in Gaza, men stripped to their underwear, detained en masse. Mr. Ambassador, I'm sure you have seen there seemed to be children in that group. And human rights groups say that this violates international standards of detention. Is this practice sanctioned by your administration?
Herzog explained: ….we strip people of their clothes in order to make sure there are no explosive belts or explosive charges or weapons….
NAWAZ: If this is not your policy, then why does this keep happening? These seems to be groups, large groups of men, detained en masse. There were previous videos also showing men detained en masse, similarly stripped, many blindfolded, in the backs of military vehicles. Why is this allowed to happen?
…. And what qualifies people being suspected terrorists? I mean, we spoke recently to the poet Mosab Abu Toha, who said he, even though he was on a list to evacuate with his American citizen son, he was arrested, detained at the Rafah border crossing, beaten and blindfolded for over two days. When he was asked why he was being held, he said the IDF soldier told him: "You have to prove you are not Hamas." Is that the policy by which your soldiers are operating?
Was it coincidence that Nawaz was the interviewer for PBS’s emotionally manipulative take on the poet’s story?
Nawaz then switched to weaponize Hamas fatality figures, without revealing their discredited source.
Nawaz: As we mentioned, that death toll among Palestinians has now risen over 21,000. Women and children reportedly make up most of the dead. We know your intelligence shows you how many people you expect to hit in each strike. And I understand, according to reporting, some of those constraints have been loosened. You previously used to tolerate dozens of civilians as collateral damage. That number has now risen to hundreds. Is there a limit to that number of how many civilian casualties you tolerate?
Herzog rejected her premise as propaganda: "You cite Hamas numbers from Gaza."
The ambassador used the example of the mainstream press laying false blame on Israel for targeting a hospital a few weeks ago as an example of how Hamas could not be trusted. Indeed, back in October, Nawaz herself dredged up reasons to believe Hamas’s lies about who struck the hospital.
Nawaz defended her numbers: "Mr. Ambassador, I will just clarify these numbers I was citing come from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs."
Herzog got in a parting shot against the operationally anti-Semitic United Nations: "The United Nations office cites Hamas numbers. They don't have numbers of their own."
This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.
PBS NewsHour
12/27/23
7:06:03 p.m. (ET)
Amna Nawaz: The Israel-Hamas war is approaching the three month mark.
To help explain what Israeli strategy and tactics are, and what the future of Gaza may look like, I'm joined now by the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog. He is a retired brigadier general in the Israel Defense Force.
Mr. Ambassador, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thank you for joining us.
Michael Herzog, Israeli Ambassador to the United States: Good evening, Amna. Thank you.
Amna Nawaz: So, as we mentioned, the war is now heading toward that three-month mark. We know the stated goal of Israel here is to eradicate Hamas and ensure the horrors of October 7 never happen again.
Can you update us on where you are on meeting that goal? How much of Hamas have you eliminated?
Michael Herzog: First, our goal is twofold.
It is to defeat Hamas, to remove the threat of Hamas in Gaza, which means to dismantle their military infrastructure, their military capabilities, and to dismantle their government capabilities that built these military capabilities and operated them on October 7.
Our second goal is to release all of our hostages. We still have close to 130 hostages, including, by the way, Americans. And we will do everything possible in order to release our hostages and bring them back home.
We are advancing our military operation in Gaza. We are operating in both the northern part of Gaza and the southern part of Gaza. Our military operation, in military terms, is effective, in the sense that we are dismantling the Hamas military infrastructure. Hamas is deployed in five brigades and 24 battalions in Gaza. It's an army of terror.
And it is a war which is not only over ground, but in the subterrain, because they built the biggest terror complex in the world, stretching hundreds of kilometers, where they host their leadership, command-and-control centers and rockets.
So this is a big challenge. And — but we are moving ahead. And I believe our military operation is effective.
Amna Nawaz: You say it's effective, but what does your intelligence show you in terms of how far along you are in progress of dismantling Hamas? How much of their senior leadership have you targeted?
Michael Herzog: I'm going to — not going to put numbers on that, but I think, in all the areas that we engage their battalions in the city of Gaza, Khan Yunis, and elsewhere, we were successful in dismantling these battalions.
And I think we dealt a very severe blow to them. There are still several thousand armed people in Gaza, and we haven't touched all of them. And we don't intend to run after each and every one of them, but to break the backbone of Hamas in a way that they will no longer be able to pose a threat to the state of Israel.
I think there's still a lot of military work to be done. They continue to this day to fire rockets at the state of Israel. And since the beginning of the war, Hamas and other terror organizations in Gaza fired over 11,000 rockets into Israel, and they're still holding our kidnapped civilians.
So, there's still a long way to go, but I think we're at the point where they understand that they will be defeated militarily.
Amna Nawaz: I'd like to ask you about the video we just reported on. It was shared yesterday. The New York Times verified it this morning. It seems to be a detention area set up by Israel inside a stadium in Gaza, men stripped to their underwear, detained en masse.
Mr. Ambassador, I'm sure you have seen there seemed to be children in that group. And human rights groups say that this violates international standards of detention. Is this practice sanctioned by your administration?
Michael Herzog: So, first of all, I'm not sure these pictures are from recent times. We do — when we arrest suspects…
Amna Nawaz: I'm sorry, Mr. Ambassador. When would these be from, if not from recent times? These were reportedly shot by an Israeli photographer embedded with the IDF.
Michael Herzog: I will say that we strip people of their clothes in order to make sure there are no explosive belts or explosive charges or weapons.
And I think that is customary. The fact that these photos came out, I don't think this is our policy, and I don't think this was sanctioned by any people with authority in our government.
But I will say, from our experience — you talk about children. We have 15-, 16-, 17-, 18-old people who are part of the Hamas military wing who carry weapons and fight our forces, and they killed our soldiers. So we make sure that none of them has explosive vest.
But I want to differentiate between the very act and the fact that these photos came out, which, again, is not our policy.
Amna Nawaz: If this is not your policy, then why does this keep happening? These seems to be groups, large groups of men detained en masse. There were previous videos also showing men detained en masse, similarly stripped, many blindfolded, in the backs of military vehicles.
Why is this allowed to happen?
Michael Herzog: There were not put out by any people with authority. There are people with mobile phones who take photos. You can't control all of it.
And, again, I'm saying it's not our policy to put out these photos. We are against it.
Amna Nawaz: I understand it's not your policy to put them out, but they are out. They have been verified.
Why is this practice continuing to happen?
Michael Herzog: Because, when you have a situation like that, it is impossible to control each and every mobile phone on the ground.
Amna Nawaz: No, sir, I apologize, not why is the video coming out. Why are your military forces detaining men en masse, including some children, in this way?
Michael Herzog: We are at war, let's not forget. And our soldiers get killed in Gaza. Let's not forget that.
We are fighting for our lives in Gaza. And when we have terrorists or suspected terrorists, we detain them and we make sure they have no weapons or explosive charges. This is war.
Amna Nawaz: And what qualifies people being suspected terrorists?
I mean, we spoke recently to the poet Mosab Abu Toha, who said he, even though he was on a list to evacuate with his American citizen son, he was arrested, detained at the Rafah Border Crossing, beaten and blindfolded for over two days. When he was asked why he was being held, he said the IDF soldier told him: "You have to prove you are not Hamas."
Is that the policy by which your soldiers are operating?
Michael Herzog: Here, we are fighting against over 30,000 terrorists in Gaza. And our soldiers get killed there every day. So, there are a lot of people who are terrorists, and there are people who are suspected of being terrorists, and they are being detained in order to investigate and see if that suspicion is right or not.
If it is not, we release them. It is not our policy to target innocent civilians or to go after innocent civilians. But we have to make sure — we are talking about the protection of our forces, who, as I said, are fighting a very, very difficult war in Gaza and get killed every day.
Amna Nawaz: As we mentioned, that death toll among Palestinians has now risen over 21,000. Women and children reportedly make up most of the dead.
We know your intelligence shows you how many people you expect to hit in each strike. And I understand, according to reporting, some of those constraints have been loosened. You previously used to tolerate dozens of civilians as collateral damage. That number has now risen to hundreds.
Is there a limit to that number of how many civilian casualties you tolerate?
Michael Herzog: Well, I totally disagree with that. And I reject that. We do not target civilians, and we're very careful about collateral damage.
You cite Hamas numbers from Gaza. There are no other numbers, only Hamas numbers. And the U.S. cites Hamas numbers. And we don't know exactly how many people got killed. We do know that innocent civilians got killed. It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy for every civilian getting killed.
But Hamas never tells you — putting aside not sure what the exact numbers are, an organization that carried out a massacre is capable of also putting false numbers outside. But we recognize that civilians were — got killed. But they never tell you what's the breakdown between terrorists and innocent civilians.
Our forces claim that, in fighting Gaza, in battle, we killed over 8,000 terrorists. You don't know the exact breakdown. And you don't know how many of them are women and children and how many of them are terrorists. These numbers are out by Hamas, and nobody can verify it.
And let me give you an example. When the whole world accuse Israel of targeting a hospital in Gaza a few weeks ago — I'm sure you remember that — Hamas immediately put out that 407 people got killed in that attack, where
When the whole world got to the conclusion that it was an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, the numbers dropped dramatically to dozens. Did anybody ask Hamas, where are the 471 people you claim to have killed? Do you still count them or not?
So, let's be very careful about the numbers. I am not here to claim that innocent civilians do not get killed. This is war, and it's tragic. And Hamas embedded itself in civilian population, subterranean and over the ground and used them as human shield. And this is tragic.
But nobody really knows what the exact numbers and the breakdown between terrorists and civilians. We are fighting against over 30,000 armed people in Gaza.
Amna Nawaz: Mr. Ambassador, I will just clarify these numbers I was citing come from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
I invite you to join us again.
Michael Herzog: Cite — cite the Hamas numbers.
Amna Nawaz: We have…
Michael Herzog: The United Nations' office cites Hamas numbers. They don't have numbers of their own.
Amna Nawaz: Ambassador Michael Herzog, Israeli ambassador to the United States, we thank you for joining us. Please do come back and join us again sometime soon. Thank you for your time.
Michael Herzog: Thank you very much. Thank you.
