To mark this week’s United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared Wednesday morning on ABC, CBS, and NBC to discuss the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East with Israel facing attacks from nearly every direction from Hamas in the south to Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the north. Of course, the liberal media — specifically NBC’s Today and some on CBS Mornings — chose to frame their questions as a problem created by Israel.
NBC co-host Savannah Guthrie has had a welcome streak of sorts of holding the feet of Biden administration officials to the fire with challenging questions from the right, but this case was from the left.
After a lead-off question about the ongoing threats from Iran to assassinate former President Trump and ending with Joe Biden being a lame duck President, everything in between was brutally adversarial toward Israel.
On Israel’s fight against Lebanon, she first wondered whether the U.S. “support[s] this escalation strategy by Israel” on Hezbollah. Blinken gave a sensible answer about Israel wanting to eliminate the threat the Islamist group has posed to roughly 70,000 Israelis being forced from their homes since October 8, but that wasn’t enough for her.
“Israel is not listening to [calls for diplomacy]...[O]n Monday, this Israeli bombardment was the most serious — deadliest day in Lebanon since 2006. So Israel is not listening to the U.S. Why not,” she huffed.
A few minutes later, Guthrie pushed harder: “Why does the U.S. not have or use more leverage over Israel, its ally. We are the supplier of the bulk of its weapons of war, and yet, there are countless examples and you probably know them better than I that Israel seems to flout what the U.S. is asking or suggesting. Why is that?”
The two then went around and around on this crazy notion that the exploding pager operation last week was terrorism (click “expand”):
GUTHRIE: Shouldn’t the U.S. have been given a heads up, for example, that Israel was going to assassinate a political leader in Iran, in Tehran or this pagers attack of last week? Shouldn’t the U.S., the Israeli ally, have gotten a heads up at that at minimum?
BLINKEN: Look, it’s always nice not to be surprised by the action someone takes. Certainly that’s better, but since October 7, besides trying to make sure that October 7 never happens again, besides trying to make sure that civilians in Gaza, men, women, and children who are caught in this horrific crossfire of Hamas’s making are better protected and get the assistance they need, we’ve also been working to prevent this war from spreading, from escalating, from going to other places. That’s what we’re focused on now, making sure what you’re seeing in northern Israel, southern Lebanon now doesn’t become a full-scale war, and on the contrary that we resolve the problem Israel has.
GUTHRIE: Can I ask you about that pager attack where Hezbollah members were the targets and they’re — literally in their hands. their pagers exploded. Some see this as a technological coup and a genius move by Israel. Others, including John Brennan, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who you know well saying it’s a form of terrorism and it went too far. Where do you come down on it?
BLINKEN: Look, you’ve got to start with the proposition that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization —
GUTHRIE: No question.
BLINKEN: — so designated by the United States. And the reality is Israel left southern Lebanon. It had been occupying southern Lebanon for 15 years. It left in 2000, and all these militia that existed there were supposed to put down their weapons. Hezbollah didn’t do it and then repeatedly in the time after that, it attacked and posed a threat to people living in Israel, so it’s very legitimate Israel do something about Hezbollah.
GUTHRIE: No question about it. I mean — yeah.
BLINKEN: The only question is what’s the best way to do?
GUTHRIE: And the tactic.
BLINKEN: And — and what are the best tactics? And those are things we’re always discussing with them, but right now our main challenge is preventing a broader war, one that actually won’t solve the challenge that Israel has and, by the way, the Lebanese have because they want to get their people back to their homes in southern Lebanon, too. We want that, too.
GUTHRIE: In fairness, you didn’t answer whether or not you approve this particular tactic.
BLINKEN: Look, you’re always looking what someone is doing, trying to figure out what the second or third consequences might be? Does it open up a whole new Pandora’s box. It is something we’re looking at.
Guthrie began winding down with two question on ceasefire talks. While she conceded “it is Hamas that broke the cease-fire that existed” with the events of October 7, Hamas and Israel equally “do not seem very interested in a deal.”
Unlike Guthrie (and, as well see, on ABC), the CBS Mornings interview with Dokoupil involved each of the day’s co-hosts. Tony Dokoupil had most of the questions, which were actually productive and showed he’s personally familiar with the region. This allowed Blinken room to explain why Israel has taken such strong actions against Hezbollah and the reality often ignored in the liberal media that Hamas is the major impediment to a ceasefire (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: Boy, there’s only so many times you can mention escalating tensions and risks of an all-out war before it becomes cliche but things are definitely not going in the right direction, and I think there’s a philosophy question here for the US to answer. Do you end all of this violence in the Middle East by putting pressure on Israel to stop on both fronts? Or do you empower Israel to finish the job?
BLINKEN: Look, what we’ve seen since the horrific attacks on October 7 are periods wherein we’ve had a real risk of escalation, a real risk of something turning into a full-blown war, including in Lebanon, between Israel and Hezbollah and through diplomacy, through deterrence, we’ve managed to avert that in the days immediately following October 7, more recently in April. We’re focused right now on making sure that we can deescalate, avoid a full scale war. But Tony, Israel has got a legitimate problem here. Starting on October 8, Hezbollah in the north, from Southern Lebanon, started lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel. People living in Northern Israel had to flee their homes, about 70,000, and Israel understandably, legitimately wants a secure environment so people can return home. The best way to get that is through diplomacy, an agreement to pull back forces, allow people to return home in Northern Israel; also many Lebanese in Southern Lebanon forced from their homes. We want to get people back home. The best way to do that is not war, it’s diplomacy.
DOKOUPIL: So Hezbollah went to their weapons systems. Hezbollah began firing into Israel after October 7.
BLINKEN: That’s right.
DOKOUPIL: In allyship with Hamas and the people in Gaza.
BLINKEN: Exactly.
DOKOUPIL: Where does ceasefire talks stand, because that — if that is their motivation there on the Hezbollah side, that’s the key to making them pull back and stop.
BLINKEN: That would certainly be one of the keys. It would be an ideal key, because it would end the horrific situation in Gaza — horrific for the hostages, horrific for so many men, women and children who have been caught in this crossfire that Hamas is making. We’ve been working on this ceasefire deal for a while. We have an agreement, a piece of paper that’s got 18 paragraphs, 15 of them are agreed. The last three continue to need some work. The problem we have right now is that Hamas hasn’t been engaging on it for the last couple of weeks, and Sinwar, its leader, has been talking about an endless war of attrition. Now, if he really cares about the Palestinian people, he’d bring this agreement over the finish line.
Co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson took this detailed discussion and tried to seem in tune by blaming....Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Mr. Secretary, do you believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu truly wants a ceasefire,” he wondered before asking again moments later (and after Blinken explained Hamas’s rigidity): “So, on that part, do you put blame on the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?”
Fill-in co-host Adriana Diaz had the last question and cited the fear-left, dark money-funded site ProPublica, which presumably found time to do something other than falsely claiming Georgia Republicans are killing pregnant women:
ProPublica has determined that two agencies found that Israel is deliberately stopping humanitarian aid from getting to civilians, and as you well know, the U.S. government says that it has to restrict supplying weapons to a country that does this type of thing.Why have we not done so?
ABC’s Good Morning America was the newscast that was able to have Blinken’s interview conducted live and co-host/former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos used more than half the time to talk about Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Stephanopoulos still led off with the Middle East, but only two measly questions:
Do you think this can be contained?
(....)
Do you have objections to the way Israel is prosecuting the war right now?
To see the relevant transcripts from September 25, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
