White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby stated that the White House convinced Israel to limit operations in northern Gaza and urged them to do more to limit civilian casualties.
Kirby pointed to specific evidence of Israel’s receptiveness to the message about civilian casualties and reducing damage to civilian infrastructure, including sending military generals to talk to Israel about their plans and dropping leaflets and publishing maps online to explain where people in Gaza can go to be safe.
He emphasized the need for Israel to do more to limit civilian casualties. (Trending: Tucker Carlson Reveals ‘Secret’ Project He’s Been Working On For Months)
“Admiral, you have made this point, top officials across the administration have made this point repeatedly, particularly over the course of the last several weeks. Can you point to specific evidence that your counterparts in the Israeli government have been listening to the concern?” CNN’s Phil Mattingly asked.
Kirby answered, “They have been, Phil, receptive to the message about civilian casualties and reducing damage to civilian infrastructure.”
“So, here [are] just a couple of examples: And I’m not going to — I’ll caveat it by saying we know there’s more that needs to be done and the President talked about that last night.”
“It’s something we constantly urge our Israeli counterparts to do, to be as careful and deliberate as possible, but, for instance, when they went into north Gaza, we sent over a couple of military generals with ground experience to talk to them about their plans.”
“They had a much larger force planned. They went in with a much smaller force in a much more targeted way. I’m not suggesting they didn’t cause civilian casualties, of course they did, but they did limit the scope of their operations a little bit and went in in a more precise way.”
John Kirby slams an Arab reporter for saying Israel is "acting like a terrorist state" inflicting "collective punishment" on Palestinians, and "killing journalists" pic.twitter.com/HZ4hO3d158
— AnalyzingAmerica (@AnalyzAmerica) December 9, 2023
“Then, in just recent days, they’re dropping leaflets, they’re publishing maps online to explain where the people of Gaza can go in the south where they can be more safe from combat operations.”
“That’s basically telegraphing your punches. And there [are] not a lot of modern militaries that would do that, that would lay out a map for the whole world to see about where it’s safe to go and where it’s not safe to go.”
“Again, Phil, I want to come back to what I said, we know there [are] too many civilian casualties. We want them to do more to limit those civilian casualties. Each one is a tragedy.”
“We want the number to be zero and that’s what we’re going to continue to do and continue to press with our Israeli counterparts.”
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