One is left wondering what, exactly, ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir tried to accomplish during his interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which very quickly veered into a negotiation over the long sought-after “humanitarian pause” in Gaza.
Watch this condensed excerpt of the interview, wherein Muir presses Netanyahu, on SIX different occasions, for said humanitarian pause:
DAVID MUIR: President Biden has repeatedly said that Israel has every right to defend itself, has an obligation to defend its people. We also know what the administration is now saying, calling for a humanitarian pause to help get aid into Gaza and to help minimize the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Will there be a pause?
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: First of all, let me say that I deeply appreciate, as do the entire people of Israel, President Biden's and the American government and the American people's support for Israel with great moral clarity. I think there's a -- the question of a cease-fire, the president himself has said that a cease-fire would be a surrender to Hamas. It would be a victory for Hamas, and he would no more have it than he would have a cease-fire after the Al-Qaeda bombings of the World Trade Center.
MUIR: I know the Biden administration has also said now is not the time for a cease-fire. What they're proposing is a humanitarian pause. There will be no pause?
NETANYAHU: Well, there will be no cease-fire, general cease-fire in Gaza without the release of our hostages. As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there, we've had them before. I suppose we'll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods, to come in or hostages- individual hostages to leave. But I don't think there's going to be a general cease-fire.
…
MUIR: If Hamas agrees to release the hostages, then there would be a pause?
NETANYAHU: Well, there would be a cease-fire for that purpose, and we're waiting for that to happen. It hasn't happened so far.
…
MUIR: You have refused any temporary pause that doesn't include the return of hostages. You mentioned that right here with me again today.
…
MUIR: You spoke with President Biden just before you came on the air here to talk with me. Does he agree with you on this? No pause unless hostages? Or is this a disagreement with president Biden?
NETANYAHU: We agree on many things. I've known president Biden. I've known Joe Biden for 40 years. He's a great, great supporter of Israel, and he's a great friend. It's trying times for both of us and for the people of Israel and our friends. We understand that. But we have to stand together, and I think we stand together.
MUIR: But there is daylight here on this notion of a humanitarian pause. You don't agree with the Biden administration on that?
NETANYAHU: We agree that we have to provide humanitarian assistance. We're doing it and coordinating it with our American friends and with President Biden.
We know that the media often act as an arm of Democrat administrations, but it is nonetheless unsettling to watch a network news anchor come in behind the Secretary of State of the United States (and the President himself given that Bibi had just gotten off the phone with Biden) in a manner reminiscent of a closer at a car dealership. “What will it take to get you into this humanitarian pause?” “If we can get Hamas to release the hostages, can we get you to sign this deal today?”
Will there be an equal prodding to get Hamas to release the hostages? We don’t know because the legacy media, at least in the United States, has not asked those questions.
Once the shock and horror of the initial attack faded, the media’s coverage of the conflict shifted the burden of proof of human decency to Israel- which is how we end up with a network anchor playing diplomat in prime time.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned portion of the interview as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Monday, November 6th, 2023:
DAVID MUIR: Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for joining us here. I know you spoke with President Biden just a short time ago. President Biden has repeatedly said that Israel has every right to defend itself, has an obligation to defend its people. We also know what the administration is now saying, calling for a humanitarian pause to help get aid into Gaza and to help minimize the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Will there be a pause?
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: First of all, let me say that I deeply appreciate, as do the entire people of Israel, President Biden's and the American government and the American people's support for Israel with great moral clarity. I think there's a -- the question of a cease-fire, the president himself has said that a cease-fire would be a surrender to Hamas. It would be a victory for Hamas, and he would no more have it than he would have a cease-fire after the Al-Qaeda bombings of the World Trade Center.
MUIR: I know the Biden administration has also said now is not the time for a cease-fire. What they're proposing is a humanitarian pause. There will be no pause?
NETANYAHU: Well, there will be no cease-fire, general cease-fire in Gaza without the release of our hostages. As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there, we've had them before. I suppose we'll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods, to come in or hostages- individual hostages to leave. But I don't think there's going to be a general cease-fire. It's not that I don't think- I think it will hamper the war effort. It will hamper our effort to get our hostages out because the only thing that works on these criminals and Hamas is the military pressure that we're exerting.
MUIR: If Hamas agrees to release the hostages, then there would be a pause?
NETANYAHU: Well, there would be a cease-fire for that purpose, and we're waiting for that to happen. It hasn't happened so far.
MUIR: Do you know where the hostages are? Do you know where the Americans are?
NETANYAHU: We have some intelligence. I'm not sure it's wise to share it here with Hamas.
MUIR: I know you said you're doing everything you can to minimize civilian casualties. Obviously the world saw the horror in Israel, the 1,400 brutally killed in that terror attack. We were on the ground for several days, as you know. But the world has also now seen the toll in Gaza. The health ministry run by Hamas now says 10,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed, 4,000 of them children. I'm not asking about hamas here. I'm asking about the 10,000 civilians killed. Are you concerned about the number of civilians that we've seen lost, caught in the middle of this conflict?
NETANYAHU: I think every civilian loss is a tragedy. Every civilian life lost is a tragedy. We're fighting an enemy that is particularly brutal. They're using their civilians as human shields. And while we're asking the Palestinian civilian population to leave the war zone, they're preventing them at gunpoint. They're using them as human shields.
MUIR: I know you have told Palestinian civilians to move to the south. We know that there have been strikes in the south as well. We should just point that out. When you talk about the tactics used by Hamas, the world is aware of those tactics. Are you taking that into account because when you start to see numbers that are difficult to wrap your head around, 10,000 Palestinian civilians, is there a more targeted approach in going after Hamas being explored here to try to minimize the number of Palestinian civilians who are not Hamas, who are not militants, who have lost their lives here?
NETANYAHU: The answer is yes. First of all, I wouldn't take those numbers at face value. I think we have to check them, and there are quite a few -- several thousand Palestinian combatants there. That is, Hamas terrorists that are incorporated in those numbers. It's a very tough enemy, but we can't let them have immunity. If we let them have immunity, David, then barbarians win.
MUIR: You have refused any temporary pause that doesn't include the return of hostages. You mentioned that right here with me again today. I'm curious what you would say to the families of those hostages who believe that this mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, now at 10,000, is putting their own loved ones, these hostages, at greater risk?
MUIR: Well, we're taking that into consideration, believe me. There's no one who wants to get our hostages back more than us. I think that it's important to understand that there is no way to defeat terrorists embedded in a civilian population without going in as targeted a way as you can against the terrorists. But there will be, unfortunately, these civilian casualties. We'll do -- again, and again I say it. We'll do everything in our power to reduce that.
MUIR: You spoke with President Biden just before you came on the air here to talk with me. Does he agree with you on this? No pause unless hostages? Or is this a disagreement with president Biden?
NETANYAHU: We agree on many things. I've known president Biden. I've known Joe Biden for 40 years. He's a great, great supporter of Israel, and he's a great friend. It's trying times for both of us and for the people of Israel and our friends. We understand that. But we have to stand together, and I think we stand together.
MUIR: But there is daylight here on this notion of a humanitarian pause. You don't agree with the Biden administration on that?
NETANYAHU: We agree that we have to provide humanitarian assistance. We're doing it and coordinating it with our American friends and with President Biden. We'll do whatever we can. We don't want to give Hamas the opportunity to endanger our soldiers. We saw that until we started the ground action, there was no pressure on them to release hostages. What we see is the minute we started the ground action, there is pressure.
MUIR: I know Israel prides itself on its intelligence capabilities. We now know the Hamas attack had been planned for months. We saw the training videos. Of course we saw the thousands of Hamas terrorists swarming into Israel. How did your government miss this?
NETANYAHU: It's a very good question because the first task of government is to protect the people, and clearly we didn't live up to that. We had a big, big setback.
MUIR: As prime minister, do you personally bear any responsibility here?
NETANYAHU: I've said that there are going to be very tough questions that are going to be asked, and I'm going to be among the first to answer them. We're not going to evade that. The responsibility of a government is to protect the people, and clearly that responsibility wasn't met.
MUIR: But you know what I'm asking here because so many Israeli officials, including the defense minister, the military intelligence chief, the military chief of staff, they've all taken some responsibility for Israel being caught off guard. They didn't say we have to wait for an investigation here. Do you believe that you should take any responsibility?
NETANYAU: Of course. That's not a question. It's going to be resolved after the war. I think there will be time to allocate that.
MUIR: President Biden has said that it would be a mistake for Israel to occupy Gaza. Who should govern Gaza when this is over?
NETANYAHU: Those who don't want to continue the way of Hamas. It certainly is not -- I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we've seen what happens when we don't have it, when we don't have that security responsibility. What we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn't imagine.
MUIR: Do you have a warning to Iran, to Hezbollah?
NETANYAHU: I think they've understood that if they enter the war in a significant way, the response will be very, very powerful, and I hope they don't make that mistake.
MUIR: Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for taking the time for us, I appreciate it.
NETANYAHU: Thank you, David.
