Summary
Transcript
Thanks, admiral. On the death of those world central kitchenaid workers, which includes one American who was killed, Netanyahu’s reaction was, quote, it happens in war. What is your reaction to that comment from Netanyahu? I don’t think it’d be useful for me to get into a tit for tat here with the prime minister of Israel from the podium. We’ve been very clear about our expectations for this investigation. We noted that the prime minister said himself there will be an investigation.
So has his military said that we look forward to that investigation being thorough and swiftly done. And as I said, that it will be transparent, the results of it, and that if there’s accountability that needs to be had, that it will be had. How can you take Netanyahu at his word? As Nancy was saying, this was a deconflicted zone. They had marched their car, they had even coordinated their movements with the IDF.
Yeah. And as I said in my opening statement, obviously setting aside this incident because this isn’t the first one, there are issues of deconfliction that clearly need to be fleshed out and improved. So how can the US continue to send aid to Israel without any conditions? Yes, they have a right to. We’re not sending aid to Israel. We’re sending aid into Gaza. And that’s how can the US continue to send military aid, military assistance without any conditions? Is there no red line that, you know, we’ve had this, we’ve had this discussion, you and me, quite a bit from up here.
They’re still under a viable threat of Hamas. We’re still going to make sure that they can defend themselves and that 7 October doesn’t happen again. That doesn’t mean that it’s a free pass, that we look the other way when something like this happens or that we aren’t and haven’t since the beginning of the conflict, urged the Israelis to be more precise, to be more careful, and quite frankly, to increase the amount of humanitarian assistance that gets in.
You know, I haven’t been asked about it yet, but I expected I would be. You know, there was a discussion just yesterday with our israeli counterparts about Rafa. Now this one was done virtually. We expect there’ll be an in person meeting here in a week’s time or so. But the whole reason to have that meeting was to talk about our concerns over a major ground operation in Rafa and to present viable alternatives for them to be more precise and more targeted.
So the idea that we’re, we’re some plaster graveyard here and we’re not paying attention to the civilian casualties or the civilian suffering. It’s just not true. Right, but these are verbal urgings, verbal commitments. There’s no other incentive besides the urgency. I know you want us to hang some sort of condition over their neck, and what I’m telling you is that we continue to work with the Israelis to make sure that they are as precise as they can be and that more aid’s getting in and we’re going to continue to take that approach.
John, I just wanted to follow up. Do you guys have confirmation of the nationalities of the victims who were killed in the strike? And that one was a US Canadian? I can confirm that one was a dual national american citizen, but I don’t. I couldn’t speak with authority about the nationalities of all those. And as I understand it, I mean, there could be additional casualties coming in terms of the count.
I just don’t know. Do you know if there’s been any outreach to the family of that dual national citizen from the White House? The state Department has done some initial outreach, and I would fully expect you’ll see outreach from us at the appropriate time. .