MSNBC’s Reid: Even if Hamas Is Using it as a Shield, Israel Is ‘Bombing a Church’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “ReidOut,” host Joy Reid reacted to an Israeli airstrike targeting what it says was a Hamas command center that caused damage to Saint Porphyrius Church by saying that even if “the church is hiding munitions, you’re bombing a church? And, at the end of the day, there is international law?”

NBC News Correspondent Hala Gorani noted that “[T]he Israeli military has said that because Hamas hides among the civilian population, because they have networks and perhaps stockpiles of weapons that they will hide in schools, that they will target those stockpiles and those weapons wherever they are. There are claims that, perhaps, this church was used for that. Although, on the ground, we’re not hearing that.”

Reid then asked, “[I]sn’t the challenge here that saying the church is hiding munitions, you’re bombing a church? And, at the end of the day, there is international law? And in the case of the bombing of [a] Baptist hospital in Gaza, the archbishop of Canterbury might be surprised to find out that they’re run by Hamas. The doctors there who are trying to save lives might be surprised to find that they’re a legitimate target. Isn’t that the challenge here, that this is a small, compact area, and people can’t leave, in part because the Egyptian leadership has said, … ‘What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refuge and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted.’ ‘Egypt rejects any [attempt] to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians’ there’s nowhere for them to go, and their neighboring countries are saying, you can’t force them here to become refugees in Egypt.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett