White House national security spokesman John Kirby fielded aggressive questions from journalists on Thursday who were concerned about the impact of Israeli airstrikes as that country fights a war of self-defense against Palestinian terrorists.
When a reporter asked if it had been “harsh” for President Joe Biden to say that some civilian deaths were inevitable, Kirby said:
What’s harsh is the way Hamas is using people as human shields. What’s harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families anxious, waiting, and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are. What’s harsh is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon. I can go on and on. That’s what’s harsh. That is what’s harsh.
And being honest about the fact that there have been civilian casualties and that there likely will be more is being honest, because that’s what war is. It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s messy. I’ve said that before. The President also said that yesterday. Doesn’t mean we have to like it, and it doesn’t mean that we’re dismissing any one of those casualties. Each and every one is a tragedy in its own right, and each and every one we should try to prevent.
And that is why we’re in close contact with our Israeli counterparts to do everything we can to help them minimize the risk to civilians that are in harm’s way. It would be helpful if Hamas would let them leave — leave their homes, leave the — leave areas, not shelter in tunnels underneath their houses and in hospitals. And let them get out — let them get out of Gaza if they want to leave. We know that there are thousands waiting to leave Gaza writ large. And Hamas is preventing them from doing it. That is what is harsh.
Kirby’s position is more assertive than the one he took last week, when he said the number of civilian deaths should be “zero.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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