Return to Transcripts main page

Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

New Fears About American Jihadis Returning to U.S.; Mortars Hit Another Gaza School; As Many As 80 Bodies May Still Lie at MH-17 Crash Site; Investigators Reach Crash Site; Israeli Jews Oppose Cease-Fire

Aired July 31, 2014 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: How much of a recruiting weapon is that for the groups now fighting in Syria?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I think that in their own mind, they must think, Jim, that it's pretty effective because we knew, I think, that this tape was going to come down the pike with this half an hour videotape with the man from Florida.

And I think he makes three points that are designed to attract potentially militants, whether they're in the United States or in Britain or anywhere in the English-speaking world. One is he says, hey, it's really ea to come here. I only had 20 bucks in my pocket. And I got to Syria very easily by traveling to Turkey.

Two, he says you know, my life as a holy warrior here in Syria is a lot more interesting than my life in the west. In the west, everybody's working 50, 60-hour weeks. You know, I'm having -- he basically presents life as a jihadi as kind of a fun thing to do.

Finally, he says if you get martyred, if you get killed, you'll encounter beautiful women in paradise, trees will bend over and give you fruit. And so he paints a very attractive picture of this whole project.

Now, of course, that's not going to appeal to very many people. As you said in your piece, Jim, 100 Americans have gone, not all of them have fought with al Qaeda.

But, you know, 100 is still 100, and as you also said in your piece, there's very substantial number of Europeans that have gone.

SCIUTTO: And that message aimed at young men, appeals of paradise, appeals of being real men and fighting this battle.

You make the point about 100 Americans. There are hundreds more coming from Europe from visa waiver countries as we call them, France, the U.K., et cetera, that could come to the U.S. via Europe, say, without even applying for a visa. They could easily hop that flight to here as well.

How much does that expand the threat and the potential that some of these returning fighters will attempt to carry out attacks here?

BERGEN: Well, certainly U.S. officials, you know, counterterrorism officials are al paid to worry about it. It's not a given that somebody goes to Syria, look at this guy that we're discussing. He went there. He committed suicide. It's a one-way ticket for him.

Other people, we've had Americans go over there and get killed because they have no idea what they're doing. It's a very dangerous civil war that's going on. It is a concern.

But so far, the only example we've seen of somebody attacking in the West was an attack in Brussels which killed four people at a Jewish museum, so it is already happening. But many governments are really concerned, and they are monitoring this carefully.

SCIUTTO: And I can echo that, because intelligence officials I talked to, they are, as you say, very much all-Syria, all the time.

Thanks very much to Peter Bergen.

Now back to our top story, the war in the Middle East, and a horrific reality of that war, innocent civilians seek refuge inside a school only to have bombs rain down on them.

Their story is just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The United Nations says it has strong evidence that shows that Israel was responsible for the carnage at a Gaza school that was serving as a shelter, sheltering some 3,000 Palestinians, in fact.

The U.N. is also blaming Hamas for violating the rules of war, and the Palestinian leader has written a leader to the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, accusing Israel of war crimes, in his words.

Our Karl Penhaul looks at the civilians bearing the brunt of the conflict, a warning, this can be very difficult video to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Northern Gaza, around 5:00 a.m. the U.N. school turned shelter for 3,000 people just attacked, a U.N. employee took these cell phone images.

Breathing heavily, he races classroom to classroom, body count by flashlight, mutilated limbs swaddled in bloody rags.

We saw the shells when they hit and shrapnel was falling like rain. I was so scared in the school filled with smoke. We poured water in our eyes just to see, she says.

One round crashed through the roof into the top floor. I just want to give you a point of reference about how big this hole is. The diameter is about the length of an ordinary broomstick.

Another round ripped through the latrines in a classroom, opening a hole about the same size as the other. Witnesses say this is some of the shrapnel that peppered the school. The U.N. says it repeatedly notified Israel and Hamas of the coordinates of the shelter, most recently just eight hours before it was hit.

CNN asked the Israeli military if their forces fired on the school that was supposed to be a safe haven.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL PETER LERNER, ISRAEL MILITARY SPOKESMAN: What we found is that there were mortars launched from nearby the school, and there was a crossfire, and indeed the IDF engaged those mortar firing.

We are currently reviewing the outcome and the tragic footage that we've seen from this area. We haven't ruled out that it was a Hamas mortar that actually landed within the premises.

PENHAUL: But U.N. investigators tell CNN they have sufficient evidence to conclude Israel was to blame.

PIERRE KRAEHENBUHL, UNRWA COMMISSIONER-GENERAL: Based on the initial elements is that we have clear indications in the first assessment that we have that three projectiles hit the school and are presenting and analyzing the pieces of shrapnel.

We believe that we have all the elements in place to conclude that it was Israeli artillery fire.

PENHAUL: Israel has batteries of howitzers aimed at Gaza. These huge guns are capable of firing 100-pound, high-explosive shells the entire length of the Gaza Strip.

Israel admitted misfiring a mortar into another U.N. school shelter less than a week ago, but the Israeli military says the explosion could not have caused deaths.

A CNN visit showed multiple shrapnel marks and large quantities of blood. Hospital staff told CNN 16 civilians died in the incident.

KRAEHENBUHL: Enough is enough. Now measures have to be taken. People who go to these places expect that they go there because they will be safe, and here is the confirmation that it appears that there is nowhere where you can be safe, and therefore measures have to now be taken by the IDF to ensure much better protection.

PENHAUL: The U.N. has also condemned Hamas for violating the rules of war, accusing its fighters of storing rockets in three other vacant schools.

KRAEHENBUHL: Whatever was the case with these weapons, certainly cannot be used as a justification by anyone to explain why another school in which people were sheltered, displaced people were sheltered, had been targeted.

PENHAUL: Israeli military says it does not deliberately target civilians.

At the school gates, this bloody footnote to the tragedy. Donkeys and horses had ferried dirt-poor families here when their homes turned into a battlefield. But war plodded in behind them.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: A sad view inside the conflict in Gaza.

In the middle of another war zone, there is an eerie silence and reminders that 298 people lost their lives when their plane was shot down.

CNN's crew makes its way to the crash site of the Malaysian Airlines jet in eastern Ukraine. We're going to show you what they found there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Two weeks ago today, almost to the very minute, we all learned that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had gone down in eastern Ukraine.

Today just a couple of hours ago, observers at the site stopped their investigation for a moment to reflect on the 298 people who perished when someone fired a missile from the ground and blew that plane out of the sky.

And now just into CNN, word that as many as 80 bodies may still be on the ground in and around the wreckage. That is according to Australia's foreign minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JULIE BISHOP, AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: There have been some international forensic experts who have actually been on the site who have indicated to me that it could be as many as 80. But we won't know until our investigative teams are on the site and combing the crash site for remains.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: One small step forward is the ability to even comb the crash site for remains, as the minister was saying there. Observers from the Netherlands, Australia and the OSCE were able today to reach the crash site for the first time in a week. It is right in the middle of eastern Ukraine's combat zone. Fighting in all directions and reports of land mines even keeping international investigators away until now. Ukraine's military promised to stop shooting for one day to let investigators do their work. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is on the scene.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The road isn't easing. Past shelling, eerie separatist check points, but where it leads is harder still. In beauty (ph), nothing surely could spoil lies a horror still unresolved.

It's been 13 days since MH17 was blown out of the sky. And remains here, a monument to cruelty, to how 298 souls, some shipped in parts away on a separatist train have yet to find complete rest. Questions left. What or who else did they love? What did they feel in their last moments?

WALSH (on camera): The silence in these fields is that of a tomb like sorrow and loss have isolated it from the war around it. But you really have to stand here and see the things that people wanted to take them with them on holiday and horrifyingly even now smell the stench of decay to understand the urgency for relatives of those who died here must feel to get inspectors to this site and get some kind of closure.

WALSH (voice-over): In the hour we were there, no separatists, inspectors or Ukrainian soldiers at the site, just distant smoke that explains why the inspectors' large convoy has had such trouble getting here. "God save and protect us," the sign asks. Not here. Still reeking of jet fuel. Where you can see the heat of the inferno, they fell from the sky in. Strangers have tried to mourn.

The scene of this crime has been abandoned. Evidence tampered with. What must be shrapnel holes visible in the cockpit's remains. A wallet emptied. A cell phone, looted. Traces of daydreams that fell from the jet stream into a war whose daily horrors drown out that which took their lives, whose blind hatred has yet to find space for the minor dignities they deserve.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Crabava (ph), Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: A crime scene still filled with the remains of many of the dead.

Now back to our top story. War in the Middle East. Daily, this conflict brings violent scenes of bombings with civilians caught in the cross fire. And international calls for a cease-fire. But the people on one side of this battle are overwhelmingly in favor of keeping up the fight. Details on that right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: As the war in the Middle East rages on with casualties mounting and no apparent end in sight, a vast majority of Jews in Israel are rallying behind their government and their troops. They're saying no to a cease-fire, not until the job is done. Our Sara Sidner has more from the Israeli side of the border.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the Tel Aviv seashore to the Israeli/Gaza border and beyond, the show of support from Israeli Jews where Netanyahu's war effort is clear, we're with you. Hebrew signs say it with words. The people prove it with deeds. Volunteers cook free meals. The sound of war booms behind them. In easy striking distance from Gaza.

SIDNER (on camera): This is who they're doing it for, the soldiers on the battlefield. The message, we are with you.

SIDNER (voice-over): Two opinion polls done to measure support for Israel's Operation Protective Edge revealed that up to 95 percent of Israeli Jews are against a cease-fire. And what they really want is Hamas dealt with once and for all.

REZY MERY, JAFFA (ph) RESIDENT: Hamas is terrorism. And terrorism, they hurt every corner in the world. We just have to put them -- take them out from Gaza.

SIDNER: Rezy Mery says he is happy living side by side with Palestinians in Jaffa, but Hamas is a different thing. Netanyahu's plan to destroy the tunnel network in Gaza got a pat on the back in Tel Aviv.

SHILLY SEVY (ph), (INAUDIBLE) MILITARY OPERATION (ph): We have to continue because we have a lot of work to do there. Otherwise, they will find a way to come inside, you know, all the tunnels, and I don't know the name. And we have to destroy everything.

SIDNER: For this young lady, it's deeply personal. She's to be married soon, but her fiance is a soldier on the front lines. "He's in Gaza somewhere, and we're afraid. We're afraid," she says. "we shouldn't stop fighting. We shouldn't compromise."

We sat down with a former head of Mossad (ph), Israel's top intelligence agency, about what it would take to fulfill the sentiment of those polled.

DANNY YATOM, FORMER MOSSAD HEAD: It calls for conquering the entire Gaza.

SIDNER (on camera): Does it mean reoccupation?

YATOM: Which means reoccupation, no doubt.

SIDNER (voice-over): Danny Yatom says the price of that will be high, perhaps higher than the public realizes, costing lives and money.

YATOM: It means that we will have to stay in Gaza with relatively largely deployed forces for two, three, four years.

SIDNER: The former spy chief initially did not support Netanyahu's decision to put Israeli boots on the ground in Gaza, but he admits something to us spy chiefs rarely do.

YATOM: Now I understand that I was wrong because only with this ground operation we could discover those tunnels.

SIDNER: Political analyst Marcus Sheff says the support for Netanyahu and his defense and army chiefs is remarkable.

MARCUS SHEFF, POLITICAL ANALYST: I can't remember a ministry operation which has had so much support from the Israeli people.

SIDNER: But the polls did not include Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, sometimes referred to as Israeli Arabs. Those we spoke with wanted to stop the offensive.

But even Israeli peace rallies, demanding an end to the war, have been met with protesters in support of pounding Gaza until Hamas is crushed.

Sara Sidner, CNN, on the Israel/Gaza border.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: I want to share with you now one story of heroism and the broader story about the deadly Ebola virus. Nancy Writebol, one of the Americans infected with Ebola in Africa, has now received an experimental serum to try to fight the disease. This according to the group Good Samaritans Purse. Now, there was only one dose, though, of this vaccine available, and her colleague, Dr. Kent Brantley, who is also sick with Ebola, asked that Writebol get it. Writebol's son was on "New Day" this morning telling the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY WRITEBOL, MAN INFECTED WITH EBOLA: And she is a -- she's still fighting, as my dad told me. She's weak, but working through it. One good news -- piece of good news is that yesterday they were having a very difficult time getting an IV into her for proper fluids. And dad told me this morning that one of the nurses that's part of the team that's attending to my mom and Dr. Brantley was able to get an IV in on the first try. So we're really happy about that this morning.

Yes, I don't know if evacuation is possible for mom and dad. I don't believe it is right now, but there is a team of doctors and medical staff that are committed to staying with mom and dad through the duration of this. And so, we're very thankful for them and their commitment and their act of love and service to our family and to the family of Dr. Brantley as well.

SCIUTTO: Well, we'll see now if that one dose helps save a life. Thanks for watching us. Wolf live from Jerusalem starts right now.