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Huckabee Rips CBS News For Selectively Editing His Remarks About Israel To Mislead Audience

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee denounced CBS News for selectively editing an interview with him on its way to savagely attacking Israel.

Huckabee was interviewed by CBS News’ Debora Patta, who has been critical Israel for years, whether interviewing members of “Breaking the Silence,” an organization that has accused Israel of occupation and apartheid and routinely attacks the Israel Defense Forces, or interviewing an anonymous Israeli soldier attacking the IDF for supposed crimes it had committed in the war against Hamas.

He released the full transcript of the interview to illustrate how it was chopped up by the network to “give you a different story” than what actually took place.

Huckabee links to both the aired segment and a full transcript of the interview posted on the ambassador’s website.

The actual interview with Huckabee started with him speaking of the futility of negotiations with Hamas, saying, “I’m not sure there is a way to revive negotiations with people who were so savage that they would rape women in front of their families, burn elderly people in their wheelchairs, in front of family, and do the hideous things that they not only did on October 7, but they continue to do in torturing hostages that have been in these tunnels now for almost 22 months. So, if I believe that there was a way to sit down and reason with people like that. I would love to see it happen, but you have to look at who they are and what they have done, what they’ve done to their own people. How many of their own people they’ve murdered in Gaza and ask yourself, are these people that really want a conclusion? Do they want some level of stability? I see no sign of it.”

Patta asked, “So, the alternative is?”

“I think the alternative is to recognize that they understand one thing: they lose, they have to be defeated. And President Trump has repeatedly said, Hamas has no future in Gaza, and they can’t lead it. I think that’s exactly right. It would be the equivalent of saying, well, the Nazis can stay in Germany after World War II and continue to be a party and maybe have a role in government.”

None of that was aired.

After discussing the possibility of Israel taking control of Gaza, with Huckabee saying, “The United States has respect for the nation that was attacked on October the seventh. We understand that they’re the ones who have to make some of these tough decisions. So it’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” Patta segued to undermining the Israeli war effort, claiming, “I have spoken to many families of the hostages interviewed in countless times, and there is real frustration, though, with Netanyahu and his government, the feeling that they could perhaps be beholden to right wing factions in the Cabinet who don’t want the war to end, who have said that they don’t want the war to end until Hamas is completely defeated.”

Huckabee responded:

Now some people would want it to end regardless of the outcome, even if Hamas gets to stay, but that’s an outcome that ultimately, Israel has to ask itself, can we live with that? Can the world live with that? Does that not just invite another October 7, which is what Hamas has pledged, promised, guaranteed, they would do again. How many more hostage families will there be in the future? If Hamas gets to stay, they get to chalk this up as a victory.

Patta then claimed, without providing any documentation or evidence, “You’ve seen the protests, over half of Israelis want the war to end.”

“I think 100% of the Israelis want the war to end. I would venture to say I couldn’t find somebody in this country that wants it to continue. But I don’t think that there is a consensus as to whether or not the war should end with Hamas getting a victory,” Huckabee fired back. “Do you allow these savages who did what they did and continue to do it? … October the seventh wasn’t the only time they ever did something that was absolutely a massacre, the number of deaths that they inflicted would have been the equivalent of 40,000 people in America killed on a single day by a terror organization. I can’t even begin to tell you what would be the reaction in the United States. So, from the perspective as an American who’s here watching in the middle of this, I can tell you that Americans, if 40,000 of us, would have been slaughtered, massacred, mutilated in front of our families, I don’t think Americans would say: ‘you know, we just want this to be over. We’re just tired of this.’ If the people who did it were going to claim a victory and put a flag up and say: ‘And we’re going to do it again.”

None of this was aired.

Patta then turned to what appeared to be her real agenda, asking Huckabee if he was “moved” by alleged starvation in Gaza.

“I’m moved when the photos are verified,” Huckabee stated. Then he continued in a section that was not aired: “I mean, we’re all moved when you see someone, especially a child who’s starving. But the New York Times published a picture on the front page of what was purported to be a starving child. Turns out the child had a birth defect and had not been starving. There were other pictures, for example, that were published of starving children in Gaza. Turned out one of them was from Yemen.”

“I think that there are certainly people suffering in Gaza,” Huckabee continued. Then he explained why in another section that was not aired: “Part of the reason is, is because you’ve had pallets and trucks full of food that the UN won’t take in because they say they don’t want military escort from IDF, but they say it’s not safe, and 87% of their own food every time they do take it in gets hijacked and looted. That’s their numbers. Those aren’t mine. I didn’t make that up. That’s what they report. So there’s not been a lack of food or even a lack of attempt. It’s been an inefficient way of getting it in. It’s been a problem because you have a terror organization who is stealing it, looting it, and then turning around and selling it to the people who are hungry. And one thing that’s true certain is that Hamas is not feeding hostages. Where’s the Red Cross? Where’s the Red Crescent? How come they haven’t demanded that the hostages get fed?”

“We spoke to the World Food Program, and they have not been shown any evidence of this at all,” Patta insisted.

“Are you telling me they say that their food has not been looted?” Huckabee asked incredulously.

“No, I’m saying there’s no evidence that it’s been diverted to Hamas. They’re not saying it’s not being looted. What they’re saying…” Patta persisted.

“I am shocked they would say that,” Huckabee responded.

Another section CBS News chose not to air: Huckabee stated, “Hamas made half a billion dollars last year, 500 million U.S. dollars stealing food, selling it on the black market in order to finance their activities. That’s stunning. That’s a real business they have. They put it in warehouses. Yes, there have been some of the just regular population who are looting the trucks. One of the things we heard at GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) feeding sites was people, when they first started coming, they said, well, this is the first time you didn’t have to pay for the food. They were used to having to buy a food from Hamas at prices that Hamas was inflating because they stole something. And then they turned around and sell it.”

“Every single day there are people dying near GHF sites,” Patta said.

Then, this non-aired exchange:

Patta claiming, ‘They’re being shot, allegedly, according to either countless, and we have interviewed just the other day a private security contractor, not a security contractor, a private civilian contractor who drove the truck and has provided us with new video of constant shooting at these GHF sites, he says, by both Americans and IDF soldiers, live ammunition being used as a form…

“Could you show that video to me, because I have not seen it,” Huckabee answered. “ “No one in the U.S. government has seen it. And frankly, we have no reports. And we get reports every single day from all four feeding sites. When someone says something like that, I say, I don’t believe it, until you show it to me.”

“We’ve had reports that there have been incidences,” Huckabee says in the video, but then this is elided: “But we’ve also had reports one day that there were 27 people killed at a GHF site. We had the video to show that no one was even injured. Much less killed. But it went all over the world, the New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, CNN all reported it turned out as a total hoax. It’s never happened. Did those media companies come back, some of them with a tiny little correction in the fine print, but the story went out there that 27 people had been murdered at the GHF side. It never happened.”

Patta quoted the virulently anti-Israel Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, of which the notoriously vicious Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is a member, saying, According to the UN, 1400 people have been killed. Mostly, they say, by IDF gunfire, nearly 900 by GHF sites.”

Another section elided: Huckabee responded, “My gosh … who would be for people being killed getting aid but here’s what Gazans told me when I was there last week. The people who live in Gaza, the people, the ones who are going to get the food, said that they did not hate the IDF, and they loved the Americans. But they hated Hamas because every single one of them with Hamas had had some family members in their clan who had been murdered by Hamas when they were trying to get food so who’s doing the killing? That’s a good question. You honestly think it’s some U.S. contractors, or it’s the IDF just gunning people down. Or is it Hamas, who have tried to keep people from getting to the feeding sites for a simple reason, because it’s business to them. If they can keep people from getting the free food, then they can sell the food that was supposed to be given to them for free. That’s what no one seems to be wanting to talk about. Why not?”

CBS News aired Patta saying, “Increasingly strong language is being used about Israel’s prosecution of this war, including from Israeli organizations, they’ve been accused of genocide.”

They aired Huckabee responding, “If Israel is attempting genocide, they’re really, really bad at it. They could have had genocide on October the eighth.”

They did not air what followed; Huckabee saying: “They could have dropped a few bombs and have annihilated all Gazans, it’s not that big an area. They certainly had the capacity to do it, and saw that in the 12-day war with Iran. It is the most ridiculous thing in the world to say that Israel is committing genocide. That’s absurd. On its face. It’s absurd.”

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