Israel is invading Rafah regardless of what Trudeau says
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Summary
Elon Levy has become the face of Israel to the English-speaking international media since shortly after the attack on October 7th. He has done radio interviews, print interviews, and has even become the person to go to for what is happening. And he agreed to take some time to speak with us.
Transcript
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When Hamas struck Israel with their deadly and barbaric terrorist attacks on October 7th,
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there was an outcry of support from around the world. Even countries that didn't normally back
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the Jewish state offered condolences to absolutely back them in what they planned to do. But since
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then, things have changed. Many nations have backed away. And of course, there has been the outpouring
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of support for the Hamas side in this. We're not seeing pro-Palestinian marches in the streets of
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Toronto or Vancouver or elsewhere. We're seeing pro-Hamas demonstrations. And that is what I myself have
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seen. Like, on October 9th, just days after the attack.
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Israel, a terrorist state! Israel, a terrorist state! Israel, a terrorist state! Israel, a terrorist state!
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Well, today on the Full Comment podcast, we're going to look at how Israel is defending itself,
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not in the war effort, but on the media front, in getting its story out there. Elon Levy has become
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the face of Israel to the English-speaking international media since shortly after October 7th.
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He's popped up on TV stations around the world. He's done radio interviews, print interviews,
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and has become the person to go to for what is happening. And he agreed to take some time to speak
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with us. Elon, thanks for the time today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
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You were a spokesperson in the Israeli government before, but in a much different role. What has it
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been like over the past several months having to be the name, the face, the voice that defends Israel
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to the international English-speaking media? It's actually my first time as a government spokesman.
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I was President Herzog's international media advisor for the first two years of his presidency. But in
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Israel, the president is the equivalent of the king or the governor general in Canada. He plays
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a largely ceremonial role, a very different branch of government from the executive. And when the
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October 7 massacre happened, I was a private citizen, not involved either with the president or with the
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government of Israel. And such was the chaos in the first week of the war. Such was the civilian
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mobilization when everyone scrambled to do whatever they could, understanding that we had to win this
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war and bring back the hostages that in a week I found myself putting on a suit and tie. I've taken
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it off because it's late here in Tel Aviv and running and suddenly getting recruited as a spokesman for the
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government. Yesterday, I crossed a rather grim milestone. I've now given as many international media
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interviews as hostages. Hamas took on October 7th, one for every 253 hostages. And it's been a roller
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coaster. It is not easy to make the case for Israel because the media battle is not an even playing
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ground I have against me. That's what I wanted to ask you because on October 7th, and at least for the
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first few days after, there was a lot of sympathy for Israel. Although I can tell you here in the
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streets of Toronto, I witnessed the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protests come out immediately. I think
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October 9th was the first major one that I saw. But what was the shift like in terms of both media,
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but also countries? Because some countries, like Canada, started backing away.
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Yeah, we had sympathy. But the massacre also set off a wave of jubilation and celebration
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around the world as the anti-Semites wriggled out of their holds like termites out of woodwork. And
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it's been really horrific to see how that massacre gave people excitement. And that excitement has morphed
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into the protests we're seeing around the world that have been calling on Israel to essentially abandon
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the hostages and leave Hamas in place after the October 7 massacre. And people are forgetting about
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the massacre. I can't tell you how many interviews I've given where I'm waiting to go on air for 10
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minutes. And there isn't a single mention of the fact that on October 7th, Hamas brutally massacred
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1,200 people. It incinerated families alive. It committed barbaric acts of gang rape. And that's the
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reason that we are in this war. We're in this war because Hamas invaded Israel by air, land and sea,
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sending in death squads to murder as many people as possible, as brutally as possible. Now, for us,
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it's been very clear from day one why we are fighting. We are fighting to bring the Hamas terror regime to
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justice so it can never perpetrate an atrocity like that, as it tells us it wants to do again and again,
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to bring back the hostages. And to us, it's obvious that we are fighting for humanity on the front lines
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of humanity. And that anything short of a total Israeli victory, anything that would leave Hamas
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on its feet, would be a terrible danger to the whole free world. Because the message it would send
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to terrorists is you can perpetrate brutal atrocities, hide behind civilians and get away with it. So I think
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we feel disappointed. We feel disappointed that certain friends and allies haven't been more
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full-throated in their support of our right and obligation to defend our people. You know,
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I saw, for example, the Prime Minister of Canada giving a joint statement with the Prime Ministers of
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Australia and New Zealand, in which they said that Hamas must lay down its arms, release the hostages,
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and there is no room for it in a post-war Gaza. But the question then is who is going to make Hamas
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lay down its arms? Because it doesn't want to surrender. The option of surrender has been on
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the table since the beginning, and it wants to continue fighting down to the last person. So that's
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why we find ourselves having to fight to destroy Hamas, because otherwise it will do this again,
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as it tells us it wants to do again and again. And we really would prefer to have more international
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support as we do that. I'll ask you specifically about Justin Trudeau because there was that famous
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statement and then a Twitter thread from Prime Minister Netanyahu. But I want to play a quick
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clip first. And this was the one I think you told me when I mentioned Tel Aviv that this is the one that
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turned you into a meme because the look on your face when you heard the woman say that obviously Israel
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doesn't value the lives of Palestinian hostages because you were giving up three of them for
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every one Israeli hostage you were getting back, or sorry, Palestinian prisoners. We're going to play
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that clip so people can see and hear it. And then I want to ask you about that kind of media pushback.
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I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning. He made the comparison between the 50
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hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians
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that Israel has said that it will release. And he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact
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that does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives.
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So, I mean, your eyes there, the look of horror on your face was quite something. You could hear the
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disdain in your voice. But is that a common element with your media interviews?
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Oh, absolutely. But the reason that that moment struck a nerve inside Israel and made me a celebrity in
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this country overnight was that it reflected the common feeling that sometimes it doesn't matter
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what we do. It doesn't matter what we say. People are always going to twist it against us and use
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even the evidence of our morality to bash us with. The fact that we are willing to put three violent
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criminals back on the street to get every one stolen child back somehow is evidence that we are the
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immoral ones. And that's a pattern that we're finding all the time in the international media
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and from international institutions, that it doesn't matter what Israel does. It's always in the wrong.
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Hamas is trying to use civilians as human shields. It built a tunnel network one and a half times the
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length of the London underground with tunnel shafts poking out under schools, hospitals and mosques. Now,
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we want to get to those military targets. So we want civilians to get out of the way. That is what
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a responsible law abiding army does. It gives civilians time to evacuate a war zone where terrorists are
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trying to use them as human shields. And instead, we have a chorus of an alphabet soup of UN agencies
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accusing Israel of forcible displacement for doing what it is supposed to do under international law and
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give civilians warning in order to evacuate areas that are going to get dangerous because terrorists are
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trying to hide behind them. And that's one of the immensely frustrating things, being a spokesman
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for Israel, that sometimes it really does not matter what we do or say. People are going to perform
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all sorts of intellectual somersaults to make us out to be the bad guys when we are simply exercising
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our natural, inherent, inalienable right and duty to defend our people in the wake of the bloodiest massacre
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of Jews since the Holocaust and the deadliest terror attack in world history after 9-11.
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It was back in November, I think it was about five, six weeks after October 7th, when Justin Trudeau
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made his impassioned, you know, he went full drama teacher mode and made his impassioned speech for
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Israel to stop killing babies and that going after a hospital is wrong. I mean, we knew the hospital
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bombing story was a hoax by then. And he should have known that the El Shifa hospital, which was under siege
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then, had become a Hamas headquarters, which has since been proven. There are whole areas of the
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hospital that no one could go. So the response from Netanyahu was swift. And I know sometimes
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Canadians will think, well, we don't matter on the international stage, especially now under Trudeau.
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But when I made a background briefing in Jerusalem with Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials,
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and they said that Canada does matter. And of course, Canada has the fourth largest Jewish population in
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the world after Israel, the US and France. So it should matter. So what was the reaction like? I mean,
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are people sadly disappointed with Canada, or at least with Prime Minister Trudeau?
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Of course Canada matters. It's a prosperous liberal democracy which has historically stood by Israel's
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side. And we know that we're defending ourselves against bloodthirsty terrorists who would have no
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compunctions about exercising the same sort of violence on the streets of Canada, and that terrorists
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will emerge emboldened and encouraged if Hamas survives this war and we don't finish the job.
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And so we expect all of our allies, especially the liberal democracies, to understand that we are
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doing exactly what they would do in similar circumstances if, God forbid, their people were
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subjected to such barbaric atrocities. And let's remember it was in 2014 that 86 nations banded together
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to destroy ISIS. They said, we can't destroy an idea, but we can remove it from power. And
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the Islamic State should not control vast swathes of territory in Iraq and in Syria in order to
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perpetrate attacks against the rest of the world. And by the time that that alliance of 86 nations was done
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with Raqqa and with Mosul rooting out ISIS, those cities looked a lot like what Gaza looks like today.
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And you were fighting not against an enemy that was firing rockets at Canadian cities,
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and not against an enemy that was holding 253 Canadians hostage, and not against an enemy that
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had spent 16 years embedding itself deliberately under civilian facilities in a sick strategy to
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try to render its sites immune from attack. And so we know that other countries that have
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participated in counter-terrorism wars understand how difficult that is and understand the unique
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challenge that Israel is facing in an open battlefield that no country in the world has
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ever had ever had to deal with. And we would expect more solidarity and understanding from our allies.
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But know that we don't target civilians. That know that the only reason, tragically,
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heartbreakingly, that people have been killed since October 7th is that Hamas launched a war.
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And Hamas decided to fight that war from fortifications underneath urban areas. And that no one else needs to be
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hurt if Hamas surrenders, releases the hostages, lays down its arms, and turns over its war criminals.
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And that is the message that we expect to hear from our allies. The best and swiftest way to bring this
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war to a conclusion is to pressure Hamas to surrender. Because a terrorist army that burns whole families alive
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should not emerge unscathed, and it certainly should not do so, thinking it has the support of the
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international community and of liberal democracies. Well, I'm glad that you remember that Canada
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started as part of that coalition against ISIS. But sadly, under Justin Trudeau, we withdrew our planes.
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We became a non-active part of that alliance. And maybe that's a sign of why he is the way he is
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when it comes to Israel. He seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth. There was a lot of
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eye-rolling that I'm not used to when I said I was from Canada. People would roll their eyes about Trudeau.
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I don't know specifically about the prime minister, and I don't want to
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try to analyze his positions, and that's not for me to do so. But I certainly understand
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why people in Canada would take a very different perspective from people in Israel. Because Canada is
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vast. It's enormous. It's surrounded on either side by vast ocean, in the north by the Arctic,
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and in the south by the greatest superpower in the world, its close ally, the United States. And Israel
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is not that. Tel Aviv is only an hour's drive away from Gaza. If you take out the West Bank, Israel is only
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nine miles wide at its narrowest. It's nothing. We have a very different sense of proportion and scale and
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how close the threat is. The threat is not all the way on the other side of the world. It is literally our
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backyard. And therefore, the reason that we have to finish off Hamas is because we don't have a room for
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maneuver. It's not like we can leave Hamas in place and then retreat to vast prairies surrounded by ocean, the
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United States and the Arctic. We have to live in this region. And we need this region to be safe for
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the liberal democracy that we are trying to sustain and maintain here. And our civilians who were brutally
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slaughtered and abducted on October 7th cannot go back to homes that are only meters away from the
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Gaza Strip, as long as the Hamas terror regime is their neighbor. And that's why if it won't lay down
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its arms as Canada, Australia and New Zealand have politely asked it to do, we are going to have to
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force it to do so because we have no choice. We'll take a quick break here, Ilan. And when we come back,
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I want to ask you about UNRWA and about the war. Is Israel making progress? More with Ilan Levy when we
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come back. UNRWA, of course, has been exposed through all of this. And Ilan is one of the most
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amazing things. You know, I've been writing about UNRWA for a decade or more, saying that we shouldn't
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be funding them. I pushed back against the Trudeau government when they reinstated UNRWA funding,
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saying, oh, we have special assurances. Don't worry. But it was fascinating when I was in Israel to hear
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from everyone how much UNRWA was a part of the problem and a bigger part than I even understood.
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The fact that Hamas had a data center under the UNRWA headquarters and the head of this organization
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says, we didn't know, just shows that, you know, it's either lying or sustained willful ignorance.
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Where would you come down? Oh, they're lying. They're lying when they say that they only heard
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about this from the media because Mr. Lazzarini was invited by Israeli authorities to tour the
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Hamas sova farm underneath the UNRWA compound in Gaza City. And he ignored that letter. UNRWA is a
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Hamas front. It's a Hamas front because it is an agency that exists to perpetuate the Palestinians'
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demands to resettle in Israel as if they're still refugees from a war nearly 80 years ago.
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It's a Hamas front because of the way that its schools indoctrinate Palestinian children. It's a
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Hamas front because it hires terrorists, terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre, because it
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allows Hamas to build tunnels inside its schools and its facilities. And it is absolutely part of the
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problem. Now, UNRWA says that it is investigating these allegations. But just 10 years ago, and this
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is something the New York Times reported today, when UNRWA tried to investigate suspicions that some of its
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members were implicated with Hamas, its legal officer in Gaza received death threats. He received the
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delivery of a funeral bouquet at the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, and then he was sent a live grenade with the
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pin inside it. And UNRWA had to evacuate him from Gaza to Jerusalem for his own safety. UNRWA had to
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evacuate another Gaza director after he made the mistake on TV of saying that Israeli airstrikes were actually
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very precise. So, look, it's quite possible that UNRWA didn't know that there was this vast server
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farm underneath its headquarters. Actually, no, of course it did. Running off their electricity.
00:20:31.480
Exactly. Exactly. Because the UNRWA, the Hamas data farm in the basement, was leeching electricity
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from the UNRWA facility above ground. Do you think they never checked their electricity bill,
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or did they simply pass it on to Canada to pay? And the Wall Street Journal had a very telling quote
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just this week about how in 2014, part of the parking lot of the UNRWA compound began to sink,
00:21:01.880
probably because of Hamas tunnels. And it says, it quotes a senior official there who says,
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everyone knew why, but no one said it out loud. Now look, maybe, maybe you want to claim that UNRWA
00:21:15.080
didn't know how many of its members, how many of its staff were Hamas members, but it needs to be
00:21:21.560
honest that the reason it was never able to get to the bottom of that is that whenever someone tried
00:21:26.600
to investigate it, they received death threats and were hounded out of Gaza. And so it's covering up
00:21:32.840
for Hamas, and it's covering up the fact that it's covering up for Hamas. And so it's not surprising
00:21:39.000
that Philippe Lazzarini, his allegations and accusations against Israel have become increasingly
00:21:45.640
hysterical as he needs to cover up the mounting evidence of how his organization has been complicit
00:21:53.400
with, collaborating with, and in cahoots with the terrorist organization that perpetrated the October 7
00:22:00.760
massacre using money very kindly donated by the Canadian taxpayer.
00:22:06.600
The regular claims that, okay, well, we've paused funding for UNRWA. Unfortunately,
00:22:14.120
Canada sent advance payments and then hit the pause button. But we hear, well, aid needs to get in
00:22:20.760
through other agencies then. And Israel is throttling the aid. Aid can't get through. I can't tell you the
00:22:28.440
number of times I've seen the truck counts. And it's massive. Aid is being delivered. And just like
00:22:34.840
prior to the war, it is often being stolen by Hamas. So we give food, fuel, all these things to
00:22:43.480
the Palestinian people so that they can survive in the war. And Hamas takes them.
00:22:47.640
You asked me about the challenges of being an Israeli spokesman. I go on TV. I present facts.
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I have the Palestinians, the United Nations, and a whole alphabet soup of human rights organizations
00:23:01.160
calling me a liar. And so the media end up going with the louder, stronger voice. Here are the facts.
00:23:06.760
Israel has placed no restrictions on the amount of food, water, medical equipment, or shelter
00:23:12.600
equipment that can enter the Gaza Strip. We have excess capacity at the Israeli crossings to more
00:23:18.600
than double the amount of aid if countries want to send it. The problem is the UN agencies on the
00:23:24.440
ground are struggling to distribute aid at the pace Israel is facilitating it. That's why the UN has asked
00:23:30.120
us to close the crossing on Saturdays because they still have to clear the backlog. And the reason is
00:23:37.480
that UNRWA is not an aid agency. Most of its staff are teachers. It doesn't have the experience of doing
00:23:44.920
disaster relief in emergency zones like other UN agencies. It's failing to distribute aid and it is
00:23:52.440
deflecting blame onto Israel to cover up for its own failure because the easiest thing in the world is to
00:23:58.680
scapegoat Israel. And it's worse than that. Because we know that up to 60% of the aid that is entering
00:24:05.240
Gaza is being hijacked by Hamas. And the videos of Hamas gunmen on top of aid trucks in Gaza have been
00:24:12.760
widely circulating online. Everyone in Gaza knows it. That's why you see civilians trying to loot aid trucks
00:24:19.720
because they know Hamas is going to steal the aid. And the agencies that are supposed to look out for
00:24:25.160
them are doing nothing about it. And we think it's really heartbreaking that as we are going after
00:24:31.720
the monsters who perpetrated the October 7 massacre, civilians in Gaza have been abandoned to aid agencies
00:24:38.280
that are complicit with Hamas. We think they should get the aid they need without Hamas being able to steal it.
00:24:45.400
And that's why it's time to dismantle UNRWA, to stop funding it, not only because it covers up for
00:24:51.720
terrorists, not only because it indoctrinates Palestinian children, but because it is turning
00:24:57.240
a blind eye to Hamas stealing aid. And there are other UN agencies in the world that distribute aid.
00:25:03.560
It's not like UNRWA is distributing aid in the Congo and every other disaster zone in the world.
00:25:08.600
The UN knows how to distribute aid. UNICEF, World Food Programme, etc., etc. It's time to activate
00:25:14.840
them in Gaza and ditch the aid organization, the organization that is a front for Hamas,
00:25:21.880
and has literally been covering up for Hamas, literally as in its headquarters are literally
00:25:26.760
20 meters above the nerve center of Hamas's intelligence facilities and the soha farm that
00:25:33.880
it kept underneath UNRWA's headquarters leeching electricity from UNRWA's headquarters using
00:25:39.880
the money that it received from well-meaning governments that think that they're supporting
00:25:44.520
humanitarian causes when they're simply sending electricity straight into the intelligence
00:25:49.880
infrastructure that perpetrated the October 7 massacre. I remember speaking to a retired IDF
00:25:57.160
officer who had been active in Gaza and they kept saying, well, we need more electricity and we need
00:26:05.560
more water. Well, why? And it's because everyone wanted them to turn a blind eye to the fact that
00:26:11.880
it was being pilfered by Hamas. But then I want to ask you about the journalists, because we hear journalists
00:26:18.440
killed and journalists attacked. And then we keep finding out that, well, they were riding with
00:26:24.840
Hamas soldiers or they were active. It was just a report about one of the Al Jazeera reporters. He's
00:26:34.680
active in an artillery brigade of Hamas. How many of these journalists have been uncovered?
00:26:41.320
They're legion. There's a famous list from the International Committee for the Protection of
00:26:48.520
Journalists that talks about the number of journalists killed. Just do control F and look
00:26:55.880
how many are working for Hamas-affiliated media. These are not journalists. These are Hamas content
00:27:03.080
creators. These are paid-up members of the Hamas propaganda unit. And that's not to mention the others
00:27:09.960
who aren't officially working for Hamas media, but have also been engaging in terrorist activities.
00:27:16.920
And I think some people around the world find it difficult to understand that some people in Gaza
00:27:22.600
will wear a press vest, but they're terrorists. Some people in Gaza will pass themselves off as
00:27:28.920
doctors, but they're members of the Israeldin al-Kassan brigades. That was the case in the Kamal Adwan
00:27:34.680
Hospital, where the director of the hospital admitted in interrogation that he had been recruited to Hamas
00:27:41.240
at the rank of Brigadier General. And there were over a dozen staff in the hospital who were paid-up
00:27:46.840
members of the Hamas military wing. Okay, so hiding in hospitals, hiding in schools, where are the cries
00:27:53.320
that Hamas is committing war crimes? Because I perpetually, constantly hear that Israel is
00:28:00.040
conducting war crimes. Where are the cries that Hamas is doing that?
00:28:03.400
None. None. And that is why our situation in the field of international public opinion is,
00:28:11.480
let me put it diplomatically, facing challenges. Because when the director of the World Health
00:28:16.680
Organization cannot bring himself to condemn Hamas for militarizing hospitals and converting hospitals
00:28:24.120
into military bases, he gives the impression that Israel is what, taking pot shops at hospitals for fun,
00:28:30.520
when the reality is that we are conducting targeted raids against terrorists who are
00:28:34.520
trying to hide in hospitals. And international law does not give you immunity as a terrorist just because
00:28:40.520
you are hiding in the basement of a hospital. International law is very clear that exploiting protected
00:28:47.240
facilities for military purposes can void their protected status. Unfortunately,
00:28:53.960
too many actors around the world have picked a side in this war. And it's not the side of the victims of
00:29:03.320
the October 7 massacre. When they fail to condemn Hamas's human shield strategy, they make themselves
00:29:11.560
complicit with Hamas's human shield strategy. They tell terrorists that if they hide behind enough civilians,
00:29:18.520
the world will swoop in to save them. And democratic countries have no right to defend themselves against
00:29:25.080
their atrocities. And to that extent, some of them have blood on their hands.
00:29:30.520
I want to end by asking you, I know that you're not a spokesman for the IDF, a spokesman for the
00:29:39.160
government. The government does, the IDF does report to the government. And you're also someone living through
00:29:45.080
all of this. How is the war going? Closing in on 600 soldiers dead, I believe. And it was a horrible day where more than
00:29:55.080
20 died while I was visiting when I was in Tel Aviv. Is the war going to come to an end shortly?
00:30:04.520
Is there a chance that as they get close to the southern end towards Rafa that Hamas will be taken out of power?
00:30:13.560
There's a misleading impression I see sometimes in the international media that this campaign is
00:30:20.200
failing to achieve its objectives. And the fact that we still have 136 hostages trapped in the
00:30:27.160
Hamas terror dungeons is a source of intense pain and frustration for all of us. But in terms of
00:30:33.080
destroying Hamas, the campaign has far exceeded expectations. Hamas started this war with 24 battalions.
00:30:40.360
We've now shattered 18 of them. It means there are men who are still fighting, but they're not
00:30:47.240
organized in a unified command structure like they were at the start. 18 Hamas battalions have been
00:30:53.000
smashed. Another two are on their last legs in Khan Yunis, and that leaves four in Rafa. The reason that
00:30:59.800
we are approaching a ground offensive in Rafa is that we've managed to dismantle the whole of Hamas's
00:31:05.640
military machine all the way through the Gaza Strip, right until the area of the border with Egypt.
00:31:11.480
We have killed about 12,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. We have killed, wounded or apprehended
00:31:19.640
over half of Hamas's fighting force. Its military machine is collapsing. And so we're going to be very
00:31:27.480
close to the stage of destroying Hamas and then ensuring demilitarization. And that's going to be
00:31:33.880
a challenge to make sure that they can't regroup and rebuild themselves. And that is where we will need
00:31:39.640
also support from the international community that must understand that if the destruction of Hamas
00:31:47.480
is followed by Hamas re-arming with an appetite for vengeance, the next October 7 massacre is only
00:31:55.800
going to be around the corner. And we have to make sure that the Gaza Strip is never again going to pose
00:32:01.880
a threat to the people of Israel, not as it was on October 7th, and not as it was over the previous
00:32:07.720
20 years of rocket fire. Rocket fire when in Tel Aviv we had a minute and a half to run for shelter,
00:32:14.520
that the people in the villages that were cleansed on October 7th had five, ten seconds to run for
00:32:22.440
shelter. We somehow treated that as normal because the world didn't want us to finish the job. But
00:32:29.480
we're going to finish the job now with Hamas doing everything we can to try to keep civilians safe from
00:32:35.720
Hamas. But we're going to finish the job with Hamas because enough is enough. And we cannot allow
00:32:41.800
this terror threat by this proxy of Iran to continue to menace us on our borders any longer.
00:32:49.720
It's interesting as you get closer to that southern border at Rafa with Egypt,
00:32:56.440
there is no clamoring call for Egypt to open the gates and, you know, take in thousands of refugees.
00:33:03.800
We're about to take in a thousand people from Gaza here in Canada, which has alarmed some people I know.
00:33:10.280
But the neighboring countries, I'm not hearing about Egypt or Jordan or other neighboring countries
00:33:17.080
saying, yes, we will take in refugees from Gaza. Am I missing it or is it just not happening?
00:33:21.880
No, I think the people of Gaza have been really let down and abandoned by people they thought were
00:33:31.240
their friends who seem to be suggesting that they don't have a right of asylum from a war zone where
00:33:39.000
terrorists are trying to use them as human shields. Our policy throughout the war has been that we should
00:33:44.920
evacuate them to safe zones inside the Gaza Strip. And it's important to emphasize that point.
00:33:52.840
On every occasion that the Israeli army has moved forward on a ground offensive, our troops have
00:33:58.200
secured humanitarian corridors for people to get out of the way and remain in Gaza, in areas where
00:34:04.680
terrorists cannot use them as human shields. They were let down, unfortunately, by the aid agencies that
00:34:12.600
have been resisting our efforts to get civilians to safe zones and have been funneling them into Hamas
00:34:20.360
strongholds instead. Ask yourself, why are one and a half million Gazans reportedly now in Rafah instead of the
00:34:28.440
safe zone that we designated at the start of the war? Because the foreign international aid agencies funneled
00:34:35.880
them into Hamas strongholds, where Hamas can use them as human shields. And we think they deserve much
00:34:42.280
better. And we think that the foreign aid agencies now have a choice to make, really, as we advance on
00:34:49.880
the last four Hamas battalions in Rafah. Do they want to save Hamas or save Palestinian civilians? Do they
00:34:58.120
want to resist our efforts to evacuate civilians to safety? Or do they want to work with us to get
00:35:04.600
civilians to places where Hamas cannot use them as human shields? And if they decide to resist our efforts to
00:35:12.040
get civilians to safety and to keep them in a Hamas stronghold where Hamas is using them as human
00:35:17.640
shields, then the suffering will be unnecessarily and tragically high. And that can still be avoided.
00:35:26.520
That decision rests with Hamas, whether it's going to surrender. And on the international community,
00:35:31.000
whether it is going to help civilians get to safety or try to keep them in a Hamas stronghold and play
00:35:36.440
along with Hamas is sick human shield strategy. Unreal. As you said at the start, you have a
00:35:41.880
difficult job. But I'd like to thank you for taking the time to join me and explain what Israel's doing
00:35:48.680
and why and wish you all the best in the coming days and peace eventually for everyone. Yes.
00:35:56.120
A day off to Hamas. For that to happen, Hamas has to go. Thank you very much. Thank you.
00:36:00.360
You too. Full Comment is a post media podcast. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. This episode
00:36:06.520
was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. You can listen to the Full Comment podcast on
00:36:13.000
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00:36:18.680
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