Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Tuesday CNN's News Night with host Abby Phillip, where he was asked if it is acceptable to carry out airstrikes in densely populated urban areas. To which, Graham told Phillips there is no amount of Palestinian casualties, [00:00:17] would make him question the scope of Israel ongoing military operations in Gaza, let's watch this. >> Speaker 2: In 2023, when militaries as advanced as Israel's and as the United States have choices, is it acceptable to drop bombs on [00:00:33] a densely populated civilian area where there are refugees, where people are living, where there are children? >> Speaker 3: Yeah, well, in 2023, who would imagine that someone who survived the Holocaust in World War II [00:00:49] would be killed by Islamic terrorists in Israel and later in life? In 2023, could anybody imagine a group of people would come into Israel and slaughter families, rape children in front of the parents, burn babies alive, put a baby in the oven, can you imagine that? [00:01:05] I can't imagine that, here's what I imagine, the destruction of Hamas is non negotiable, I hate the loss of innocent lives, the day after Hamas is destroyed I hope we have a better life for the Palestinian people. But I'm not blaming Israel, I'm blaming Hamas, I'm not blaming Israel at all I [00:01:21] know they're trying to limit civilian casualties, and I know Hamas is trying to increase civilian casualties >> Speaker 2: Is there a threshold for you, and do you think there should be one for the United States government at which the US would say, let's hold off for a second in terms of civilian casualties, is there a point at which you would start [00:01:40] to question- >> No, if somebody asked us after World War II, is there a limit what you would do to make sure that Japan and Germany don't conquer the world? Is there any limit what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews? The answer is no. [00:01:57] >> This is the convoluting of conversations, Dina, this idea that he said there's no limit, that what Israel should do to the people that are trying to slaughter Jews. The people that are being bombed, the 3600 kids that have been killed are not bombing Jews. [00:02:13] They're not killing Jews, and this is the convoluting that Americans, in this particular case, Lindsey Graham, is capable of doing and forgetting about the facts in this case, this is absolutely disgusting to me. I can't believe that he is so proud and to even bring up what we did in Japan, [00:02:31] where we dropped nuclear bombs, and Nagasaki and also Hiroshima, two civilian spaces, might I add, these are not military bases that we bomb. We bombed civilian people with nuclear weapons, and I can say that as [00:02:46] a Marine who was stationed 30 miles outside of Hiroshima in Iwakuni, and I saw the devastation that has not been corrected. And I'm talking about the devastation of people's soul and how you ruin families when you bombed them to that point. I think this, it shows I already knew that this guy didn't have a spine when he [00:03:03] allowed Donald Trump to talk about John McCain in the way he did, and didn't stand up for this guy who was supposed to be his best friend. So what do you think of Lindsey Graham's comments, and tell me how disgusted you are with them? >> Like you said, it's almost consisted, he's really, [00:03:21] really good at that othering and really not caring about people, and I think that when somebody shows you who they are, believe it. There's this outrage, why are the pro Palestinian supporters talking about accusing Israel of wanting to commit genocide? [00:03:40] Well, you hear somebody like that saying there's no limit to the killing, what does that mean other than genocide? And if you don't mean that, well, maybe you shouldn't say that, and this is the problem here, [00:03:56] is there's nobody here in this country is addressing that The civilians. There's a child who was interviewed, and she said to a reporter in Gaza, a child in Gaza said, we are overpaying for a sin we did not commit, and that I think [00:04:16] is a perfect explanation about what is happening to these civilians. This collective punishment, this conflating Hamas with the people, is the idea that you are limiting their food, [00:04:34] their water, it's horrendous. There's no place they can go that's safe, you told them to go to the south, now you're bombing the south. We are not in the Dark Ages, we're not even in this stage of after World War II, when nuclear bomb was our best weapon, [00:04:50] we have really sophisticated tactical weapons. We have sophisticated commandos, why are we not asking Israel to use those kind of weapons? I mean, if the Hamas is mostly in the tunnels, why are they not going in and [00:05:06] just bombing the tunnels, why are you bombing the hospitals, why are you bombing the Christian Church? The Orthodox Christian Church that was bombed, the third oldest church in the world was around for 1600 years and was bombed by this. [00:05:21] Why are they not using the more sophisticated intelligence they have, the more sophisticated weapon you have? And that's why there are so many people who think that the reason is actually wanting to kill more Palestinians and kill more genocides, and [00:05:37] I'm not in a position to know whether or not that's true or not. But when you see so many civilians being cured and then you hear Lindsey Graham really saying he's fine with killing all of them, that's what no limit means, then the people calling it a genocide don't sound so unreasonable anymore. [00:05:54] >> Speaker 1: Exactly, especially when there are people leading the Israeli government who have been convicted, criminally convicted in Israel for spreading hate speech about Palestine. And on record saying Israelis have no, I'm sorry, Gazin, Palestinians have no rights, [00:06:13] that him and his wife and his children are obligated to respect. When you couple these three things and seeing that this person is controlling the military, we are left to think about that in a real way. And also, I would say, when we're talking about the cost, the toll, [00:06:28] we see I have to go back to this, when you're talking about children, it's important that we're saying children. Since October the 2rd, more than 3,648 children have been reported killed, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza and Israeli respectfully. [00:06:45] The number of children reported killed in just three weeks in Gaza is more than the number killed in any armed conflict globally across more than 20 countries, did we hear that? And this is according to Save the Children International, [00:07:01] in this one space that's the size of Detroit, they have the hurt, they have the cost of owning the space, that 3,600 kids have been killed. That's more than 20 countries across the world, a space the size of Detroit, [00:07:17] what does that do to a community, how do you rebound? When we're thinking about that, children make up more than 40% of the 8,796 people killed in Gaza, and more than a third of all fatalities across the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. [00:07:33] With a further 1,000 children reported missing in Gaza assumed buried under the rubble, the death toll is likely much higher. Again, that is according to a press release by Save the Children, Dina, I'll let you have the last word on this because it's a bit rough. [00:07:49] >> Speaker 4: The death toll, Biden tried to walk away from it and say he didn't know how reputable it was. The UN has said that it is most likely much higher because they haven't counted people in the rubble, and that to me what Biden said was almost one of the most upsetting things. [00:08:08] I get he's going to maybe be pro military, but to not even acknowledge the people who have died, is that classic dehumanization. I think to start a conversation about what peace looks like in that region, [00:08:24] we have to actually start with recognizing the humanity of all the civilians in that region, and we aren't even close to recognizing the humanity of the Palestinians. The fact that Biden could say that he couldn't know whether or [00:08:42] not that was the real death toll, when we have seen how many bombs, like you said, in a small space like Detroit, they bombed. I mean, in the first ten days, the number of bombs that was dropped in Gaza equal the number of bombs that Russia dropped on Ukraine in a year. [00:08:59] So we are not surprised about the Palestinian civil toll, we agree that UN, that it's probably much larger, and for him to walk away from that, I thought was a classic dehumanization technique. And sadly, that's the conversation we need to be having is recognizing, just [00:09:18] starting by recognizing the suffering, the humanity of the Palestinian people, and maybe then people like me can feel like they can be seen in this country. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should also say that, again, supporting Israelis' right to life and also Palestinians' right to life, and [00:09:38] not putting one over the other does not make us anti-Semitic, right? We also recognize, we should be obligated to recognize that the Semitic people are both of these people, and it is anti-Semitic to talk about Hamas as if they equate to all of the people in Gaza. [00:09:55] So I think that is an important statement to make as we close it out