Israeli Soldier Has Perfect Answer to ABC News' Question About Civilian Deaths in Gaza
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Americans have watched leftists in major cities rally in support of mass murderers.
They’ve seen Ivy League universities brim over with support for brazen killers.
But they might have missed less than a minute of video from Monday that set off the clear contrast between the sides in the Israel-Hamas war.
Rarely has a question been asked so much by so many — and answered so perfectly by one.
Check it out here:
ABC to IDF members: “There are those voices there, across this region and elsewhere who say the price of military action is too great, that too many civilians are now dying. Too many Palestinians dying.”
Israeli solider: “We are in a full war here. The responsibility isn’t on… pic.twitter.com/n8HX5poIHC
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 16, 2023
The moment was part of a report called “Band of Brothers” on ABC News Live, the network’s news stream. It focused on members of an Israel Defense Forces reserve unit.
Reporter Ian Pannell interviewed the men, including one described as a 38-year-old Chicago resident and Israeli reservist who left the United States to fly to Israel immediately after the slaughter in southern Israel last week.
The full six-and-a-half-minute report on Pannell’s time with the men, conducted amid preparations for a ground assault on Hamas strongholds in Gaza, can be seen below. But the real lesson came at about the five-minute mark.
“There are those voices there, across this region and elsewhere, who say the price of military action is too great, that too many civilians are now dying,” Pannell said.
“Too many Palestinians are already dying,” he said.
The question is being treated on some conservative media sites as a kind of “gotcha,” where Pannell himself was espousing the view that Israel was responsible for the Palestinian civilian deaths, but given the context, it appears more likely that Pannell was posing a question he knew needed to be answered by the unique voice of an Israeli serviceman.
Regardless, the Chicago reservist had the kind of bracing take Americans need to hear.
“Did anyone in our border towns receive a text message from Hamas announcing what time they have to leave their towns by?” he said. “No, we didn’t get those messages.
“But that’s what the IDF is doing.
“None of us want to engage in war. We are here because we have no other choice. … We have a responsibility here to work according to international law, but we’re in a full war here.
“And the responsibility isn’t on us. You should take that question straight back to Hamas.”
“You should take that question back to Hamas.” Those are words to remember.
The whole world — or any part of the world that cares — is well aware of what happened on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel without warning on a mission to kill Jews — military or civilian, young or old, as many as possible — and bring back scores more as hostages against the retribution they had to know would be coming.
It was an undeniable act of war — and is being treated as such by the Israeli government, which is now engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Islamist terrorists, who enjoy the support of international pariahs such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the murderous mullahs of Iran …
… And American leftists in the halls of Congress, on university campuses and in the streets of Democrat-run cities.
If normal, sane Americans have not been repulsed before now by the leftward tilt of the current Democratic Party, with its false religion of climate change, its frankly insane beliefs about the supposed malleability of human gender or its stomach-turning, nihilistic contempt for life itself, the equivocation by some of its most prominent members in the face of a literal massacre should do it.
Not only do leftists defend the Hamas atrocity, they attack Israel for the temerity of defending its people by taking steps to eliminate their killers.
Those killers have a documented history of hiding behind innocent civilians, which means, almost inevitably, innocent civilians are going to die.
Critics of Israel call that unacceptable and claim, as Pannell put it, that “the price of military action is too great, that too many civilians are now dying.”
But the critics, and all Americans, should remember the response: Israel has gone out of its way to warn civilians of danger — more than the Hamas killers have done or would ever do.
Israel did not seek out this war, the terrorists did — knowing full well what was going to come.
“We are here because we have no choice,” the IDF reservist told Pannell.
Hamas had a choice and made it. American leftists have a choice now, to decide which side they’re on.
They can watch this video and decide — it will take less than a minute to do it.
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