Jake Tapper Confronts Former Israeli PM on Civilian Death Toll in Gaza: ‘Is Netanyahu Going to Continue to Ignore President Biden?’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper confronted former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, before asking him whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would “continue to ignore” President Joe Biden on the matter.

During an interview with Bennett on The Lead, Tuesday, Tapper said:

I want to ask you about Israeli strikes on Gaza, because ultimately this pause in hostilities is going to end, and Israel is going to continue to try to destroy Hamas. The one thing I continue to hear from Israeli supporters in the U.S. government, whether it’s the Biden administration or Congress, whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans, I keep hearing that the IDF needs to be much more careful when it comes to Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That the IDF needs to use more precision munitions, that the IDF needs to take fewer risks. Even if the conservative estimates are right, with 15,000 killed, even if 5,000 of them are Hamas, that’s still a 2-1 ratio of civilians to Hamas. That’s a lot of civilians who have been killed.

He then asked, “Is Netanyahu going to continue to ignore President Biden on this issue of civilian casualties?”

Bennett replied:

Well, Jake, we’re not magicians. There is no magic way to dramatically reduce collateral damage when Hamas’s deliberate goal, intentional goal is to increase Gaza casualties in order for you to ask me that precise question. Hamas wants to stop the war in a cynical way by effectively killing its own people, by placing them in harm’s way. If there were some magical solution where we could tweezer people out and just hit the rocket launcher that’s shooting rockets at Israelis, we would do it.

We do try to reduce unnecessary civilian casualties, but the reality is that there is no magic. The current ratio is lower than what it was at the beginning and lower than international standards from World War 2 through Iraq and Afghanistan. You will see that Israel has one of the lowest ratios.

After Bennett said that Israel’s plan was to “denazify” Gaza after its conflict with Hamas, Tapper asked, “Don’t you think the last six weeks have done a lot to incite and inspire a whole new generation of terrorists? I mean, all the civilian deaths? I mean, don’t you worry that that in itself is going raise and inspire a whole new generation of Palestinians who hate Israelis?”

Bennett declared, “It depends what we do next. I want to remind you that Nazi Germany, in the final months of the war, there were many, many civilian casualties. Yet Germany was denazified after the war and we had a new Germany.”

Watch above via CNN.