CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Claims Israeli Hostages Were ‘Probably Being Treated Better Than the Average Gazan’
CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour said Israeli hostages were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan” on Monday, hours after Hamas released 20 living hostages. Another 28 hostages who are presumed dead are still being held by the terrorist group, her own network reported.
Amanpour made the comment after colleague Kaitlan Collins asked for her “big picture” thoughts on the Israel-Hamas deal spearheaded by President Donald Trump during a special edition of CNN’s News Central.
The veteran reporter said it has been “unconscionable” that she and other journalists have not been able to “tell the full story” from inside Gaza, before sharing why she believed the hostages had a better experience than the Palestinians over the last two years:
I pretty much can assure you that one, that once those doors are opened, it will be a scene of absolute, abject horror. And I think for sure, people who start to talk to the hostages who have only just been released, will find that it will take a long, long time for them to recover physically, but also mentally. It’s been a terrible, terrible two years for them, because not only are they there — you know, they’re probably being treated better than the average Gazan, because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had. Now, Hamas has given up all of its leverage, by the way, by giving them all up. So that is a victory for the Israeli side.
But they will have had so much horror and terror as well, because they were also in the war zone, many of them underground, we understand.
Richard Grenell, President Trump’s special envoy and the interim president of the Kennedy Center, caught the comment on TV and was disgusted by it.
He skewered Amanpour in an X post, calling her a “sick woman” who is “literally pro-Hamas.”
The release of the hostages comes a little more than two years after Hamas terrorists broke into Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people, and took hundreds of hostages back to Gaza.
Israeli lawmakers on Monday broke into a chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” when the president appeared alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before giving a speech to the Knesset.
Amanpour, a little earlier in her segment, said Monday was a “day for real joy” because the living hostages had returned. She also said it is a good day because the “killing has stopped in Gaza as well,” before saying a moment later than Israel had caused “almost total extinction of Gaza.”
You can watch her comments above, via CNN.
