Morning Joe - Morning Joe 10/10/23

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Deaths top 1,600 in Israel-Hamas War

I could hear people speaking in Arabic outside their door. And they broke in. And the last thing I heard was the youngest, who's 12, saying to them, I'm too young, don't take me. And that was it. That was the last time I heard from them. Well, the army is now getting in touch with families, I know. And I'm keeping my hopes up that they're alive and well.

I know that their father and his spouse were taken also, because we've seen one of the videos that Hamas put on. So we know that they're alive, and I'm hoping that they're with them. An Israeli mother sharing the story of her sons who were taken hostage by Hamas. The terrorist group is now threatening to execute. Dozens of people they have captured, quote, without warning, meaning Israel is promising a complete siege of Gaza, launching more airstrikes overnight while cutting off the area from basic necessities. We're going to get

a live report for the latest on all of that straight ahead right here on Morning Joe. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, October 11th. According to Israeli authorities, more than 900 Israelis have been killed since the fighting began on Saturday. The health ministry in Gaza says more than 700 Palestinians are dead. 11 Americans are also among those killed. This brings the total number of deaths to at least 1,600. Hamas says it has kidnapped more than 100 people from Israel. It is believed some Americans are among those being held captive. The terrorist group is now threatening to execute a civilian hostage every time Israel targets civilians in Gaza without warning. Willie.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to destroy Hamas. In a televised address yesterday, Netanyahu said the military operations against the terrorist organization are, quote, just beginning. He called on Israelis to unite, saying the country has difficult days coming, but that Israel will be victorious. Yesterday, Israel announced a complete siege of Gaza, cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to roughly two million residents there. Since then, airstrikes have bombarded the border. Israel says it has restored full control of the communities Hamas militants had stormed in the surprise attack over the weekend. The country also activated 300,000 military reservists, a potential sign Israel could be preparing for a major ground invasion of Gaza. The last time

ground forces entered there was in 2014. And joining us now from near the Gaza border with Israel is NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. Richard, what are you seeing there? Well, good morning. We are now on day four of this war. And you mentioned that death toll among Israelis that is being reported in the Israeli media, 900. And it has been going up every day because, frankly, the Israelis don't know exactly how many people were killed. We are now in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza. It is right on the border with Gaza. This was one of the first places that Hamas militants entered.

They managed to break out of the Gaza Strip and come into this community. Israeli troops, and you can see some of them around here, have just secured this area, but they don't know exactly what is in store for them as they're going through homes. They've brought in the ambulances here. They've brought in recovery teams. We've seen teams coming out with body bags. They are looking for Israeli bodies bodies and they believe there could be dozens in this village. This is still an active fire zone, so it is possible that there will be

incoming fire in this area. There are a lot of troops around the perimeter. So this is the first mission that Israelis must do, is to try and reclaim and secure their own communities before they can potentially go into the Gaza Strip. So here are some of the soldiers. They're taking a knee, taking a break right now. And they've been going through houses like this to check for booby traps, but mostly to look for Israeli victims. We've also seen ourselves many Hamas fighters. Their bodies are on the ground. Some of them are under trees. They've been wearing the ones we saw, camouflage, fatigues. And now because it's very hot,

the bodies are starting to decompose. So there are scenes like this all throughout the border communities because this attack didn't just take place at the concert venue, didn't just take place in Zderot where we were yesterday. There are many Israeli kibbutzes and towns all along what they call the Gaza envelope, the area surrounding the Gaza Strip. And those were the places that took the brunt of the Hamas assault. And we're talking about a very large assault. Hamas was able to create about 30 different holes in the border fences, breach communities, breach the border, come into communities like this and go on their killing and kidnapping rampage. So, Richard, as someone who has covered the region so closely for so many years, spent so much time there, what is your sense of the challenge Israel now faces if it does send ground troops into Gaza? They're attacking from the air now in response to the terrorist attack of the weekend.

But it's a very small space with two million people as they look for those hostages, Israeli hostages being held there. How difficult a challenge will that be? I think it is an enormously difficult challenge and more so now because Israelis have realized how much time Hamas has spent in preparation. Hamas just put out new videos this morning showing them, showing their fighters erecting mock Israeli border fences, blowing them up, crossing these mock fences with breaching tools in order to train for this assault. The Palestinians are calling this the flood, the Al-Aqsa flood. And that was the symbolism that they're using, that the people from Gaza, the fighters, were flooding into Israel.

So if the Israelis do go in and engage in street-to-street fighting in the Gaza Strip, which they've done in the past and has been difficult in the past, it is very likely to be even more difficult this time because Hamas has the initiative. They chose the timing of this assault and they clearly are prepared based on what we've already seen over the last four days. Richard Joe here. You mentioned the training, the Washington Post talking about the massive security failures and military failures on the Netanyahu government's part. And they're talking about, as you were saying, how Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists had been training for weeks, drilling in rocket launchers, practicing kidnapping soldiers, storming settlements. Talk about the Israeli people and how shaken they are by their government's failure not only to protect them from the initial attack, but also in coming to rescue them from their homes hours after these terrorists had stormed over the gates.

There is a lot of uncertainty here. I can say that Israelis are shaken by this. They are much more nervous than I've seen in previous conflicts. They were taken by surprise. They were also, Israelis were also angry that it took a long time from their perspective for the army to react. The concert that has taken, has received so much attention for good reason. There was the overnight rave that hundreds of Israeli youngsters were attending that was attacked. When I first heard about this assault, I thought it was a relatively quick thing that the Hamas went in, they opened fire on people, they grabbed as many as they could, and they went back over the border.

That's not what happened. We've spoken to people who were there, we've spoken to people who were on the phone with relatives who were there during the assault. It lasted about four hours. And the Israelis have told me time and time again, where was the rescue operation? Why weren't forces coming more quickly uh there was a long gap between in the initial phases of this assault when the the israelis uh seemed to be caught fought uh caught flat-footed and there is anger about that but now

i think this country is pulling together and i've spoken to people who previously didn't like uh benjamin netanyahu previously were opponents and they yes, we're going to address all of these issues. We're going to look into it. We're going to have an after action analysis of what went wrong. But right now, with Hamas militants still on the loose, they say it's not the time to focus on that, that the truth will come out over the course of investigations in the coming days, weeks, months, potentially. But right now, they say we need to pull together to secure this country and try and get the hundreds, 100, maybe 150 hostages out of Gaza. They still really don't know how many hostages there are.

They still don't know exactly how many bodies there are because in places like this, they're still doing clearing operations, recovering people. So if that death toll is 900 now after they go through this kibbutz right now, it could go up by a few dozen. And this is not the only clearing operation. NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, thank you very much. We'll talk to you again soon. Let's bring in the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, former chief of staff at the CIA and Department of Defense, Jeremy Bash. He's an NBC News national security analyst. Thank you all for being with us. David Ignatius, we've all been wondering how this happened. We've all been wondering how the Israeli government was caught asleep so badly, especially as your newspaper is reporting that they've been practicing for weeks in plain sight of Israeli soldiers of basically committing these heinous acts. And now, as Richard Engel reports, the concert, the massacre, the concert over four hours long.

We've heard from Israelis locked in their homes for hour after hour, wondering where the army was. In all your reporting, David, have you been able to unpack over the past couple of days how this could have been such a massive security failure and military failure by an Israeli government that has long been considered one of the best, one of the strongest, one of the swiftest, one of the most secure. Joe, the only thing I've really been able to focus on clearly is our own experience after 9-11, when we realized that every indicator that an attack was coming was in the system, but our intelligence analysts didn't see it. In the famous phrase, they couldn't connect the dots. They didn't see what was in front of their eyes. And there must be some of that going on in this case. I think

the biggest surprise for the Israelis and for analysts looking from outside is not the intense hatred that Hamas has, the terrorist tactics. We knew their malevolent feelings about Israel. It's their competence in executing this operation, their ability to keep secrets. The operational secrecy that preceded this is extraordinary. There are reports that even the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, may not have known the details of this operation in the weeks before. It was done with that degree of caution. I'm also struck, Joe, by the question, if the Israelis didn't know this, with their incredible focus on Gaza and Hamas, what else didn't they know? And I think intelligence services all over the world are going to be asking themselves in the wake of this, if our Israeli brothers and sisters,

who were supposed to be the best of the best, missed this, what are we missing now? What is America missing about China and China's intentions? What are we missing about Russia? Just talking to intelligence professionals over the last couple of days. That's what I'm hearing. What else don't we know? Well, and David, you you you're as we talk about the miscalculations and the failure to connect the dots, also reporting that Netanyahu and his government had come to the conclusion that they could somehow manage Hamas, that they could work with Hamas, that they could pay off Hamas. And their focus was primarily on the West Bank and the settlements. How could they have made that grave of a miscalculation, this terrorist group that the world has known to be a terrorist group for so long? So, Joe, I think the biggest nightmare for the Israelis today is the recognition that deterrence

hasn't worked with Hamas. The Israelis have gone in repeatedly again and again to Gaza. The level of violence back and forth has been extraordinary. We've had several decades of it. And there was a belief that Hamas was deterred from this kind of major action. That turned out not to be true. So if you're Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister, you have to decide how you restore what's deterrent. It's a level of fear and intimidation. How do you restore that? What action will be strong enough, in his words, will reverberate through generations in a way that will prevent future acts like this? And the problem for Israeli attack planners today is they've got to plan this overwhelming, intimidating operation, perhaps invasion of Gaza,

with more than 100 Israeli hostages in tunnels, buried in places the Israelis probably don't know where they are. Tunnels are probably booby-trapped. For an Israeli operations planner today, right now, this is a nightmare, trying to think through exactly what to do in coming coming weeks. So, Mika, this is Washington Post interviewed former head of Israel's National Security Council. And he said the modus operandi was that Hamas would take care of Gaza. Israel would allow it to prosper with a relatively small price that Israel paid every so often. And that was considered the best that Israel could hope for. Now that strategic equation has been completely violated, that they somehow could manage a terrorist group like Hamas.

It just, like Iran, Hamas can't be managed. No. And Jeremy Bash, what are the questions the United States administration is dealing with this morning? You have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to destroy Hamas. And as David Ignatius pointed out, there are some 100 hostages whose lives hang in the balance and their location is not completely known. Yeah, Mika, first of all, first and foremost, we may have American hostages in harm's way. And I think the U.S. government is going to be intensely focused on that. Second, of course, is to prevent a wider war, to prevent any mobilization by Islamic jihad or Hamas elements inside the West Bank to go after the Palestinian Authority leadership or to try to infiltrate Israel. Because, of course, Israel's main population center is right there next to main population centers in the West Bank.

Third, of course, is to keep Israel's northern border quiet, where Hezbollah has about 250,000 rocket artillery and mortar pieces. You know, we talked about 9-11. I think this is worse than 9-11 for Israel in some important respects. First, just in sheer proportionality, it's about like 25,000 Americans being killed, if you take the proportions of our populations respectively. Second is, you know, we didn't have hostages being held after 9-11. Third, we didn't have rockets raining down on our entire country.

Our entire country wasn't in bomb shelters. And fourth, we didn't have a mass mobilization of every military age male over the age of 18, which is what Israel is undergoing right now. So in so many respects, this is so much more devastating for Israel than even we experienced after 9-11. So, John, President Biden's going to make a speech at one o'clock this afternoon. He's going to talk about Israel. He's going to talk about the terrorist attack on the country there. He's been in close contact with Prime Minister Netanyahu, offering unequivocal support for the Israelis in this fight as they seek now to respond and destroy Hamas, in the words of Netanyahu. What do you expect to hear today from the president?

What more should we expect from the United States in terms of support for Israel? And we're seeing the White House in terms of support for Israel? And we're seeing the White House here lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag that happened last night, that blue and white still on this morning before the sun rises there in Washington. Yes, we heard from the president Saturday. He stressed the nation in the hours after the attacks. We didn't see him in public the last two days, but we will again today. But he has been busy behind the scenes. White House aides tell me he's working the phones.

He's spoken to Netanyahu at least twice. Yesterday helped rally a pretty extraordinary statement of support from European partners, putting out a joint communique yesterday saying they stand completely behind Israel and condemning this Hamas terror attack. I suspect today aides have previewed that it will be more full-throated support, suggesting that the U.S. stands with Israel. It's been an ally for four decades and that they will do everything it can to help. Now, there are complications here, of course, the biggest being there's no speaker of the House. So, therefore, it will be challenging to put together the funding that Israel will need, the military and security assistance. There's some that the U.S. can do immediately. We saw some over the weekend, some weapons transfers. There are some

short-term solutions they can do even in this interim moment with the House in chaos. But if this is a longer, prolonged conflict, as Netanyahu has suggested, at a certain point, the U.S. won't be able to help as it wants if they can't get a Speaker of the House elected. And there's some sense that that may not come quickly this week. We are going to be back in 60 seconds when I ask David Ignatius whether we can expect Israel, along with the United States, to possibly strike back at Iran for their role in these terrorist attacks. That's when we return in 60 seconds. I want this administration to tell the Iranians, any escalation using Hezbollah to attack Israel or killing of hostages, we will hold you accountable. I can only stress this so much.

The Iranians depend on all revenue for their livelihood. The money to sponsor terrorism comes from the oil industry owned by the Ayatollah. Destroy it. There are four refineries. Destroy it. Tell the Iranians you escalate any further, then we're going to destroy your oil industry. And eventually we're going to have to deal with this regime by taking it down. David Ignatius, let me bring you in on that point. Obviously, it is oil that helps the Iranians remain the epicenter of terror in the world as they've been since 1979, whether they're funding Hamas, whether they're funding Hezbollah, whether they're funding the Houthis, whether they're funding Islamic Jihad. The question is, can Israel afford the long term to stand back and allow Iran to sponsor an attack against our country this way without striking back at military targets or, as Senator Graham said, their oil infrastructure,

which at the end of the day funds their terrorism across the globe. So, Joe, I want to be careful here. Israel and the United States are both stressing that they do not see evidence of direct Iranian involvement in these attacks. David, do you believe that or do you believe that Israel and the United States doesn't want the truth to be that explicit because then they may be forced to respond in a way? Because from what I hear, you know, there's a lot of skepticism in the intel community that those denials come from Israel and the United States. So I share the skepticism. I'm just noting that there is an effort to put that case out for an obvious reason,

that they don't want to be pushed into a situation where they have to expand the war, are then pushed by public opinion into attacking Iran. That would be a much bigger and more complicated war. But when you think about the dilemmas that the Israelis have in this siege and urban warfare in Gaza, you can imagine that Israelis might think much more discreet military targets are available in Iran to, using the phrase that's very common in Israel, cut off the head of the snake to go directly at the funders and encouragers of this kind of terrorism. You'd be going after military targets. Hostages wouldn't be involved. In some ways, it'd be a more simple military operation for an IDF planner to think about. So there are reasons to think down the road,

if this isn't resolved, that might be a tactic that Israel would choose. Again, everything that we're hearing, both from Israel and the United States, is cautioning us that they don't see the evidence, they don't see the smoking gun. And so that kind of expansion of the war is unlikely. The problem with attacking Iran is that Hezbollah in Lebanon would immediately retaliate with its thousands of rockets. And these are precise missiles. These are not like the missiles Hamas fires from Gaza. These could do real damage to the cities of Israel. So obviously, Israelis will think twice before anything that radically expands the war. Well, and really, that has been the main concern among the Israelis will think twice before anything that radically expands the war. Well, and really, that has been the main concern among the Israelis.

And one of the reasons why they don't want this Wall Street Journal report that broke Sunday night, one of the reasons why they don't want it to get legs, they don't want to confirm that Iran was involved because any action against Iran ultimately rains down hell from the north from from Hezbollah. And so then they're they're facing a two front war, which right now they're still trying to actually figure out the scope of Hamas's abilities. Yeah. And as David said, Hezbollah has more sophisticated weapons permanently trained on targets deep inside Israel. So that obviously would open up an entirely new set of problems. So, Jeremy Bash, you know, the United States and Israel may not say explicitly that Iran was behind this,

but we know as a matter of fact that Iran funds, trains, supplies weapons to Hamas. And in fact, some of the leadership of Hamas said explicitly over the weekend that, yes, Iran gave us the green light here. So if you're in the Pentagon, if you're in your former job at the CIA, how are you managing this this crisis now from the American side? Yeah, I have no access to current information, Willie, but I will say common sense dictates that, of course, Iran supported Hamas. Of course, Iran has been a patron of Hamas. And so they bear extensively, in my view, a lot of the responsibility for fomenting an attack like this. Now, how Israel chooses to respond. Look, we didn't actually go into Afghanistan for a full month after 9-11. It's not like we rushed into combat operations the moment the towers fell down.

No, I think the dynamic that Israel needs to think about is we will respond at a time and place of our choosing. It may be overt. It may be covert. It may be conventional. It may be through other means. So I think Israel has a lot of options on the table. And I think the Israeli government is going to have to talk to its American counterparts, its colleagues in Washington, inside the Pentagon, inside the intelligence community, about exactly what response against Iran is merited. So, Jonathan Lemire, we saw last night a joint statement from France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States making a joint statement in solidarity of the Israeli people. And it was it was for those for those five countries. It was a pretty remarkable statement of support and a strong condemnation against the terrorist attacks.

I think we're seeing some unity from Europe that we don't always see. And of course, in the face of these heinous terror attacks, you would certainly hope hope to see that. I'm curious, though, how how much forward do we expect President Biden to lean today? How aggressively today do we expect to hear President Biden speak out against the terror attacks and talk about his support for Israel? Extraordinarily aggressive is the sense of it. He will be a full-throated defense of Israel, and it's right to defend itself. Now, let's remember, President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu have a pretty complicated personal relationship. The two men have known each other

a long time. There have been ups and downs. We know that the president condemned Netanyahu's recent push to reshape the judiciary there in Israel. But all of that will be set aside right now. In the short term, U.S. officials tell me the United States understands Israel is going to respond and they're going to respond with overwhelming force. Now, what comes next is an open matter. Depending how long this conflict lasts, depending what Israel's further steps would be, that might be when we have some more nuance, when we have some more complications emerge, when the U.S. tries to get them to tap the brakes. But that is for down the road. That is not going to be the message from today. And in the president's phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu over the weekend, when Netanyahu did suggest that they would be going

into Gaza with a ground support, I'm told the president didn't push back in that. And Jeremy, if I could just bring you in on that idea real quick, if that could happen, if that is going to happen, and certainly signs suggest that Israel is going to go in, what would that look like? Tell us what that would be, that block to block fighting, how long it would last, what the consequences, ramifications would be. Well, I think it's to David's point earlier. I think Israel needs to try to reestablish deterrence. If the theory is that deterrence had slipped, deterrence has weakened. In essence, what that analysis kind of yields is a sense from the Israeli military establishment that Gaza and the leadership of Hamas there

haven't felt enough pain. They haven't felt directly threatened. That airstrikes can target buildings and structures, but they have enough warning. They can kind of get into bomb shelters and they can move out of harm's way. A ground operation would have to be heavily armored. Obviously, Israel does not want to take additional casualties. And I think some of it is going to be geared towards trying to figure out where Hamas command and control exists, where Islamic Jihad command and control exists, and where the hostages may be held. There's no sense, I think, that I'm hearing that Israel wants to reoccupy Gaza for all time.

Gaza was a nightmare. Gaza was a headache. Israel has not been on the ground since 2005 in Gaza. And I don't think any Israeli politician really envisions a permanent Israeli military presence in Gaza. And I don't think any Israeli politician really envisions a permanent Israeli military presence in Gaza. It's about reestablishing deterrence, protecting Israel's south and sending an unmistakable message to Iran that Israel is going to take this extraordinarily seriously. NBC News national security analyst Jeremy Bash, thank you very much for your analysis this morning. And coming up, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chris Murphy,

will join us to talk about what Congress is doing to support Israel. Also ahead, Robert Kennedy Jr. no longer challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination, launching an independent campaign for president instead. Plus, Republican presidential candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will be our guest on Morning Joe this morning. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. A quick look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. It's 34 past the hour. Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy now says he's open to becoming Speaker of the House again,

less than a week after he was ousted from the position. McCarthy initially said he would not run for the role after last Tuesday's vote removed him from the speakership. But the California Republican told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt yesterday, quote, whatever the conference wants, I will do. We know that Republican Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio are currently the only two who have formally announced that they are running for speaker. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned his bid for the Democratic nomination this week and instead announced he will run as an independent. I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate. The Democrats are frightened that I'm going to spoil the election for President Biden. And the Republicans are frightened

that I'm going to spoil it for President Trump. The truth is, they're both right. And my intention is to spoil it for both of them. All right. So his sister, Carrie Kennedy, tweeted out, Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today's announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it be perilous for our country.

And Jonathan Lemire, fascinating that when Bobby Kennedy Jr. announced that he was running as a Democrat, Donald Trump put out a statement basically saying, fine young man. Now that he's running as an independent, of course, Democrats have been the ones that have been wetting their beds. But there's obviously some polling on the Trump side that shows that anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists actually may cut from Donald Trump, who responded to this announcement yesterday by calling him crazy. Yeah, the polls tell a remarkable story and how fast it occurred. A few months ago, when RFK Jr. jumped in the race, he drew some Democrats. And there was worries that he could, it was not that he was going to prevent

Joe Biden from clutching the nomination, but he could be a thorn in his side, at least a little bit. But every time Robert F. Kennedy speaks, he grows less popular with Democrats and more popular with Republicans, particularly on things like vaccine, but not just that. And polls suggest that now he does much, much better among potential GOP voters. So that's clearly behind this about face from the Trump campaign, who now seek RFK Jr. as independent, as someone who might steal a little bit of support from the Republican ticket. Now, there are third party concerns for President Biden.

Maybe that's Cornel West, who's also now an independent, not Green Party. Maybe the Green Party fields another candidate. Maybe no labels goes through with it. So that's the concern there. But RFK Jr., not so much. He's someone now the Trump team is worried about. And we should also just note it was a sort of a debacle of a speech yesterday. RFK Jr. forgot his speech, first of all. His mic didn't work. Then the advance work was such where people would hold up their signs and block the camera. So you couldn't

actually see him speak. So amateur hour, at least to start for this independent campaign. All right. We'll move back to our top story, the Hamas surprise attack on Israel. And in an editorial entitled Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for this Israel-Gaza War, the editorial board of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz writes in part, above all, the danger looming over Israel in recent years has been fully realized. A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time. This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligent officers who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion. Extraordinarily harsh editorial from an Israeli newspaper, literally hours after these attacks. You usually don't see that, but it seems to underline something that you've picked up in your reporting. I picked up in my reporting from talking to Israelis and people connected with Israeli intel services and military services.

And that is a deep and lingering distrust of the people that Netanyahu is surrounded by. And I had one one person I've been telling me for a year. I shared this with you last night, I won't give his name, everybody knows him, but said that what he hears every time he goes to Israel or talks to Israelis talking about the security situation there, he says, you have pilots who are secular and you have their mechanics who are orthodox. And he said, there is a divide. I've been saying this for a year. There is a split. There is a divide that runs straight through the military and that runs straight through the intel services. And this past week, sadly, I'm afraid we saw the results of

that. So, Joe, obviously, it's too early for us to know exactly what led to this intelligence failure and this tragedy. But in the months before these Hamas attacks, Israel was as divided politically as I've ever seen it. And I've been covering Israel for more than 40 years. The security elite, the officers of Mossad, of military intelligence, of the internal security, are, as you were suggesting, for the most part, secular Israelis. They live in Tel Aviv and Haifa. They see Israel as a modern, dynamic, secular state. And they grew increasingly suspicious of Bibi, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his alliance with the ultra-Orthodox, who were largely based in Jerusalem, who have a very different vision of what Israel should be. And that split, I think, any historian who writes this

story in future decades will look at the degree of division in Israel that preceded this horrible attack. And I think certainly for Hamas, as they watched the daily news from Israel, they saw signs of a country that was coming apart politically. Thousands of Israelis demonstrating in the streets. Army reservists saying they wouldn't show up for duty because they felt so angry at what they thought saw as Prime Minister Netanyahu's attack on the state. So I assure your concern that those divisions ended up being a prelude to this awful tragedy. Thank goodness Israelis are now all pulling together. Every sign is that those divisions are now over. Countries united in pursuing this enemy.

And David, one other thing I wanted to ask you about, and just so we can underline this, how closely many people in the United States government, the United States military, feel towards not only Israel as a nation, but to the Israeli people. I'm saying this merely just to explain to our viewers that this is deeply, deeply personal for a lot of people in the United States military who have worked alongside their Israeli brothers and sisters. Same with the intel community. Yesterday, we actually we saw Admiral John Kirby break down in tears on television, something highly unusual in this sort of setting. But but it was deeply personal to him and deeply personal for many people in this government.

So, Joe, I thought that was a rare moment for Admiral Kirby, who is usually such a controlled military spokesman for the administration, to show such intense emotion as he was asked about the videos that we've seen that just have horrible degradation of people. And Admiral Kirby just said, these are human beings. He was he was trembling as he said it. I think in President Biden's speech today that we've been talking about a little bit, we'll see Biden in a role that's pretty familiar for him as the consoler, the griever in chief. We've seen Biden so often at his best reaching out to people who've been hurt as he has been hurt personally. So I think that personal connection, Americans feeling some of the pain that is in every

Israeli's face as you watch the reporting from Israel, I think that's going to be a theme that we ought to hold on to tight. And it'll be central to how President Biden speaks to the country. And Admiral Kirby will be joining us in our next hour. Hours from now, President Biden is set to deliver remarks on Hamas surprise attack on Israel. We'll go live to the White House and speak with John Kirby. Plus, Senator Chris Murphy will join the conversation as Democrats push to confirm an ambassador to Israel. Also ahead, Republican presidential candidate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a guest here on Morning Joe. We'll ask him where he's going to be asking a lot about his campaign.

Also going to be asking him what he would do if he were commander in chief in this situation. That's straight ahead on Morning Joe. Sleep calls like a drug in God's country. Sad eyes, crooked roses in God's country. Join us now, Democrat Murphy of Connecticut. He is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator, thanks for being with us this morning. Join us now, Democrat Murphy of Connecticut. He is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator, thanks for being with us this morning. You were unequivocal in your condemnation of the Hamas attack over the weekend and in your support of Israel. As a member of Foreign Relations, what can you tell us, to the extent you can, about the work behind the scenes with the United

States is doing to support Israel here? Well, first of all, this is true evil. It's really hard to get your head wrapped around these images. And as you've talked about this morning, the operation to come in Gaza is going to be absolutely extraordinary. There's no doubt Israel has to bring to justice these perpetrators. But inside Gaza, that is going to be very, very difficult, especially while a hostage situation is pending. Listen, there are a number of really important lines of effort right now. The Biden administration has already forwarded material to Israel. Ammunition and interceptors are on their way. Second, we're beginning to build a supplemental appropriation for Israel to get them additional support and additional supplies, especially for the Iron Dome.

I would argue that that package should also have some support to protect domestic Jewish communities. We're going to see a rise in threats against synagogues and Jewish community centers, so we should be there to protect them. And then, we're obviously engaged diplomatically. The best solution to this hostage crisis is for some of our allies in the region who have relationships with Hamas to be able to negotiate their release. And so that work is ongoing as well. So we have a lot of work to do in the Senate this week. We're working behind the scenes to put together that supplemental package. We're trying to figure out a way to get nominees and military promotions unlocked. And then we'll go straight

to that work when we reconvene next Monday. Senator, how do you handle the Iran question we were discussing earlier in this hour? That is that Iran explicitly supports Hamas. Hamas said some of its leadership over the weekend, it got the green light for this terrorist attack from Iran. The Biden administration hasn't said publicly that there's a link, but most people say that they don't believe that behind the scenes. They know that they did do something here that at least supported them with material support. So what should be the consequences if there is a direct link proven that Iran funded, supported and gave the green light for a terrorist attack on Israel? So it's important to state that I have not seen intelligence that suggests,

as The Wall Street Journal report does, that Iran was involved in the intimate planning details. But that question is pretty immaterial. Hamas does not exist without the ongoing annual support of Iran. All of the weapons and the training, the rockets in some way, shape or form are derived from their relationship with Iran. That's why right now the United States has a massive set of crippling sanctions on Iran, its economy and its oil industry because of their support for terrorism. And I think this is going to be a moment where the Congress will sit down and try to understand whether there are other tools like that that we can use to make clear that their continued support for Hamas or Hezbollah is absolutely unacceptable. So I do think it's important to get this question

answered as to whether they were involved in the intimate planning details. But regardless, Hamas does not exist. Hamas cannot launch this attack without Iran as its patron. Senator Murphy, this is David Ignatius in Washington. You mentioned earlier about the importance of reaching out to countries that may have contact with Hamas. Egypt obviously comes to mind. I'm curious whether you see any diplomatic path forward that might lead to freeing the hostages. That's received very little discussion. Do you think that that's an avenue that needs to be pursued? So I do. This is obviously a very sensitive moment, and so not a lot to say about this.

But let's also talk about Qatar. The United States has a deep and important relationship with Qatar. It is often fraught because we have made major disagreements with them as well. Qatar and Egypt are countries that have continued some basic relationships and contacts with Hamas. Qatar, in fact, has often been the conduit to which humanitarian money flows with Israel's consent into Gaza. These are important countries because, obviously, the priority is to unwind this hostage crisis in a way that doesn't lead to the additional loss of life. And so those are two very important lines of effort that I think will be underway this week.

Senator, returning to the idea of U.S. support for Israel, you mentioned that a supplemental could be coming. But at a certain point, I was hoping you could walk us through this, please. At a certain point, doesn't the job get complicated if there isn't a speaker of the House? And I know there's elections supposed to happen this week, but there is some sense that Republicans may not be able to coalesce around a leader anytime soon. So walk us through it. What point does it get difficult for the Senate, for the Congress to be able to get money to Israel and frankly, for that matter, Ukraine, if there isn't a speaker? Yeah, complicated probably understates the problem. It's impossible. If there's no speaker of the House, there is no House of Representatives. And so, well, this week we will work on constructing a supplemental in the Senate. We know that that

can't become law. The president can't sign it. Now, the president has what's called drawdown authority, which allows him to take U.S. equipment that's currently in our stocks and send it to Israel. But these interceptors, many of the components of Iron Dome are made in Israel or around Israel. And so we need to get them funding in order to continue that work. But as you also mentioned, we cannot lose sight of the fact that Ukraine is on the verge of running out of money. And while this week we're going to be obsessed, rightly, with getting Israel what they need, if we don't get Ukraine additional funding and supplies by the middle of November, Russia is going to start its march on Kyiv. And a failure to hold Hamas accountable is devastating for U.S. national security interests.

But Kyiv becoming a Russian city is also devastating. The House of Representatives has a huge majority vote just sitting there waiting to support both Israel aid and Ukraine aid. And hopefully this speaker conflict gets resolved this week. Maybe this crisis in Israel is what pushes them to pick a speaker. And they just have to let the will of the House do its run its course. If they allow for that, there will be 75, 80 percent of the House that will vote for both Ukraine and Israel aid. Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Thank you, as always, for coming on the show this

morning.