‘No, They Are Not Being Shot’: Trump Ambassador Insists Gaza Killings Aren’t Happening When Confronted by Fox News Anchor
U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee claimed in a new interview that civilians in Gaza “are not being shot” by Israeli forces, contradicting widespread reporting on weeks of deadly shootings at aid sites in the enclave that international groups warn is on the brink of famine.
Huckabee joined Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on Thursday to discuss the administration’s stance towards the war, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new interview with Fox News in which he blamed the devastation in Gaza on terror group Hamas.
MacCallum asked about the ample evidence that as the enclave descended into a hunger crisis, Gazans have been shot by Israeli forces while trying to get food at aid sites: “These reports that people are getting shot, and when Bill Hemmer was there – and I know you were just there recently with Steve Wikoff – he said he could hear gunfire, and he asked the IDF about it. Are civilians, Palestinian civilians, being shot at these humanitarian sites where food is being distributed by the IDF?”
Huckabee was unequivocal. “No, they are not being shot,” he replied. “There are all kinds of stories that they are just being massacred.”
Huckabee then appeared to concede such shootings were occurring, but that only in certain circumstances: “The only time that has happened is when a large group overruns an Israeli position, and they ignore verbal warnings, then they ignore shots fired in the air, and they ignore shots fired at the ground.”
He continued:
But this idea that there is massive killing, I would only tell you it is but when I asked the Gazans, here’s what they told me: They said ‘Yes people are getting killed going to the feeding sites’– not the GHS sites that has not been the case. But they do get killed– but they killed by Hamas and every sing Gazan I spoke to told me that they had a family member that had been murdered by Hamas.
These are the people that are supposed to be their government instead they’re their tormentors and they are the ones who are responsible for the deprivation. They’re the ones who are responsible for the disastrous consequences of now 22 months of this nightmare.
There have been countless verified reports — as well as documented evidence — of civilians being shot and killed at aid sites.
On Tuesday, UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told the AFP news agency that “[a]s of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organizations’ aid convoys.”
He stated that the victims had been “killed by the Israeli military.”
Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. special forces veteran who recently returned from Gaza after working with the U.S. group running the aid sites in Gaza, said he repeatedly witnessed soldiers shoot and kill civilians, including children, at random.
Watch above via Fox News.
