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Rockets Streak Sky Over Southern Israel; Israel Massing 300k Reservists Near Gaza Border; Israeli Government Cite Babies and Toddlers were Found with "Heads Decapitated". Aired 11-11:30a ET
Aired October 11, 2023 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:00:00]
UDI GOREN, FAMILY KIDNAPPED BY HAMAS: Showing how Hamas terrorists knocked on their door, tried to force themselves in, and luckily, God knows why they didn't kick the door down. But they knocked on the door, they hid and they kept going to the next house.
KATE BOLDUAN, CO-ANCHOR, CNN NEWS CENTRAL: It's -- in hearing your story, it's so clear how no one is unaffected. Everyone knows someone, more than -- more than one person that is kidnapped, dead or just missing in this moment. You even have another connection to this. You were telling my producers about a family who is staying in your home now because they evacuated their Kibbutz, and I guess I should say, part of a family because their parents have been kidnapped as well?
GOREN: Yes. So as soon as we realized this was going to be an ongoing event, I have a 5-year-old at home, and I felt the urge to flee from home to save her, because this was very clear that it was not going to end any time soon. There were dozens or maybe hundreds of armed militants with trucks and motorcycles roaming through Israel, and nobody knows where they are.
So once we did, we immediately tried to make use of our home which was just standing empty, and my sister-in-law, a day later called me up and said that there is a family, there are three girls from Kibbutz Be'eri, which is one of the Kibbutz scene that were most affected to the extent that right now, people are saying there is no more Kibbutz Be'eri.
And there are three girls, adult girls, since they're adults, they have their own rooms in the Kibbutz, so they live separate from their parents and their parents were kidnapped. The last that they've heard from their parents was a text from their dad in the shelter, texting them --
BOLDUAN: Udi --
GOREN: Saying --
BOLDUAN: Udi, I am -- I am -- I am so sorry I have to cut in. And we will continue this, but we have to get over to Jeremy Diamond right now, Udi, he's in southern Israel. Jeremy, what's happening? JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we just had
several rockets that we just saw being fired from Gaza. The Iron Dome is intercepting overhead. We are less than 10 kilometers, about 6 or 7 miles from the Gaza border, this happened really right above our heads.
And behind us, what is happening here, too, is you have these armored personnel carriers that are in a formation. Again, this is -- these are the scenes that we have been seeing all across these communities in southern Israel across from the Gaza border is preparations, preparations. This massive mobilization that is happening of troops, 300,000 troops that are all starting to mobilize here, I'm just going to get up as we -- as we -- yes, making sure that everything is good here.
But these are the armored personnel carriers -- again, we don't know yet, that a ground invasion is happening for certain. But what we do know is that all of the preparations that would typically be made in that kind of a moment as you prepare for a ground invasion, we are seeing that. We are seeing armored personnel carriers staging in specific locations along the Gaza Strip.
We are seeing this massive mobilization of troops, perhaps preparations for that. And what we also saw today was a key political moment as well with this emergency government announced between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the former Defense Minister, a member of the opposition, Benny Gantz. All of this could potentially be a prelude to a ground invasion.
We know that the prime minister has said what will follow the Israeli response to Hamas' terrorist attacks will be unprecedented, it will be unlike anything that Israel has done before to Hamas. And so, that has a lot of people here in Israel thinking that a ground invasion is what is likely coming next.
JOHN BERMAN, CO-ANCHOR, CNN NEWS CENTRAL: Hey, Jeremy, it's John Berman. You're out in the open right now. If you need to move, you and your crew as you were talking to us, please do so. And again, we're not giving your exact location --
DIAMOND: Yes --
BERMAN: Just so people know, we're not -- we're not putting a town or anything, we're just saying southern Israel, so there's no identifying way of telling people where you are, which is good, you would never want to reveal that. But talk to us about what you are seeing and how close do you think those explosions were?
DIAMOND: Yes, I mean, it's hard to tell exactly, but I mean we saw the rockets -- we actually saw the rockets physically with our eyes coming from this direction where my cameraman, Mattias Zhom (ph) is shooting right now, and then from the other side, from the right side of your -- of the camera, we saw those Iron Dome intercepts heading up into the skies and going into the clouds.
[11:05:00] We didn't actually see the intercepts this time, because it appears to have been hidden by the clouds, but typically, you will see those intercepts, you hear that loud boom and then you see that plume of smoke in the air indicating that, that rocket has been intercepted. Now, one of the things that I was concerned about initially when I saw that is, you know, where is the potential shrapnel going to fall? But it seems like we're good at this moment.
SARA SIDNER, CO-ANCHOR, CNN NEWS CENTRAL: Jeremy, this is -- this is Sara Sidner. I'm curious because at this time yesterday, there was a barrage of rockets coming over from Gaza, and what have you seen in comparison with yesterday because you were out in it. You were hearing it, you were seeing the Iron Dome work. What have you seen in comparison?
Have you seen that many rockets that have been coming over this morning or has it been different? And this is sort of the first new barrage that's now started to come over from Gaza into Israel?
DIAMOND: I don't have the exact numbers, Sara, but yesterday, we certainly saw a pretty heavy barrage -- and in particular, in a lot of different parts of Israel, we saw rockets yesterday being fired in the direction of the usual suspects, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot, the towns that are closest to the Gaza border. But we also saw rockets heading in the direction of Jerusalem and of Tel Aviv as well.
Today, I know that earlier this morning, we had rockets in Ashkelon, some of which actually made impact, we saw some pretty dramatic images, and we know that there were injuries from those rockets, which isn't always the case, of course, given the fact that the Iron Dome system is so effective. Today, we were in a different part of southern Israel and we didn't get any rocket interceptions when we were there.
But again, you know, it can pop up at any time, and that really is part of the psychology of this war that is beginning now, and it feeds into this war footing that the country does seem to be on. You know, in talking with Israelis, both civilians as well as soldiers and reservists who are being called up, there is so much emotion, it is so palpable the effect that those terrorist attacks over the weekend had, not only the surprise element, but the brutality with which Hamas carried out these attacks.
And mowing down civilians who are simply attending a festival or killing women and children in their own homes. Reports of beheadings, truly atrocious, and when we talked to some of these reservists today, they said this moment is different. We feel a sense of responsibility to defend our country. These are the words of the reservists and they feel motivated to go into Gaza if that is what they are called to do, and to try and decimate Hamas.
How that can be accomplished and what kinds of preparations Hamas has made for a potential Israeli invasion are major questions, and if perhaps, why we're seeing this buildup take place, you know, over a period of days, and we don't know how much longer it is going to go on? Are these armored personnel carriers ready to go into Gaza at any minute? Are they here, simply staging for a later date? We just don't have those answers, but certainly, driving around here,
we are seeing more armored vehicles. We are seeing Humvees and we are seeing tanks as well very close to the Gaza border. Again, we're only about a dozen kilometers away from the Gaza Strip.
BERMAN: Hey, Jeremy, stand by, if you will, and I mean that. Don't go anywhere, keep us posted as what you're seeing. We're just going to bring retired Army Major Mike Lyons into this discussion, he is here with us, and also, if people can get a map up, you know, we're not again showing exactly where Jeremy is, but he is in southern Israel near the Gaza border --
SIDNER: Right --
BERMAN: And all these rocket attacks from Gaza have been happening in that region right around. Does it have any strategic --
SIDNER: Right --
BERMAN: Value for Hamas right now? Are they actually accomplishing anything by shooting those rockets out?
MIKE LYONS, RETIRED U.S. ARMY MAJOR & SENIOR FELLOW, TRUMAN NATIONAL SECURITY PROJECT: Probable not. No, there's no strategic value, this is clearly a tactical battle that's taking place right now. But he's in what we call an assembly area from the military's perspective --
BOLDUAN: Yes, that's what I was going to ask, what are --
LYONS: Yes --
BOLDUAN: We seeing?
LYONS: Yes, so -- and so, and frankly, that commander is confident that there -- his troops are protected because if not, you would see those Israeli soldiers with helmets on, and those vehicles are kind of too close together. And so, we saw the Iron Dome go off to protect it, so they are confident that they're going to be protected from any rocket fire that comes in.
The thing is you hear though, every once in a while that louder, deeper sounding explosion. That's Israeli artillery. That's Israeli artillery responding to that rocket attack, because every time that rocket goes off, that has a return address, Israel is tracking where that is, and they're firing heavier artillery back to that target.
SIDNER: Can you give us some sense of when you look at the reservists, you talked about the vehicles being so very close together. We saw some of the reservists literally standing, no helmets --
LYONS: Right --
SIDNER: And somebody who was just drinking a drink and quite relaxed, because listening to rockets is something that these reservists and the people of Israel deal with a lot, but this is different. [11:10:00]
LYONS: Right.
SIDNER: What would give you the clue that this ground incursion is about to happen? What will we see?
LYONS: Sure. More dispersed vehicles, you would see more of what we battle rattle. You would see things tied down on equipment. You would -- you can kind of tell as this kind of fist is about to wind up is really what I saw when I was participating in something similar to this, right?
And so -- but for right now, they're in this preparation stage. They're looking at different ways that they might do this incursion, the -- because this border also has a protective -- it's got a wall to it.
SIDNER: Right --
LYONS: There's only certain areas where they can go in with the shock effect they want to have, and to the point that the enemy has probably defended those very well, so they don't want to be walking in to a death trap themselves.
BOLDUAN: Is there any shock effect though when we have clearly this gathering of reservists on the border, we have correspondents that are with them. Is there any shock or surprise to what would -- if there is a ground incursion, what would be coming at Hamas?
LYONS: Yes, there are probably two different things, right? Because --
BOLDUAN: OK --
LYONS: The shock effect is coming when it happens, right?
BOLDUAN: Shock and surprise are two different things.
LYONS: Right --
BOLDUAN: OK --
LYONS: But the element of surprise is something that, that commander is going to hold very close, right? Because same as the prime minister. That comes from the top. And they're going to decide to do this, because when they go, there's no turning back.
BERMAN: All right, Major, please stick around because obviously --
BOLDUAN: Thank you, Major --
BERMAN: Things are developing before our eyes --
BOLDUAN: Yes --
BERMAN: In southern Israel. We mean that, stay close. Sara?
SIDNER: We have some really disturbing new information --
BERMAN: Yes --
SIDNER: Out of Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister spokesman just confirmed babies and toddlers were found with their heads decapitated in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after Hamas attacks in the Kibbutz over the weekend. That has been confirmed by the prime minister's office. Let us go now to CNN's Hadas Gold in Jerusalem.
This news is beyond devastating, and for the families listening, for the people of Israel, for anyone that is a parent and who loves children, I don't know how they get through this, but this kind of thing and the way that this has happened has really changed any possibility of a relationship, a peace accord between Israel and Gaza and Hamas.
HADAS GOLD, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: I mean, how can you when you're dealing --
SIDNER: Yes --
GOLD: With people who would do such atrocities to children, to babies, to toddlers? We knew that children and babies and toddlers had been killed. We knew that they had been abducted, we knew that they had seen their parents killed before their eyes and left by themselves in the middle of nowhere in their houses to be hopefully rescued by a neighbor.
But now we're hearing that it's even worse than we could have imagined, that we had been hearing reports that this had happened, but now we are getting this confirmed directly from the Israeli Prime Minister's office that babies and toddlers did have their heads decapitated by these terrorists when they came into Kfar Aza.
This is a small Kibbutz near the northern part of the Gaza Strip. It's part of that, you know, envelope of communities that sit right on the border right there. The Israeli Prime Minister's office has not given any sort of number on the number of children that this happened to.
But I mean, when any Israeli hears about, you know, innocent lives like this being taken in such a brutal fashion, this is why I think we're hearing the rhetoric from the Israeli military and from the Israeli government the likes of which I have never heard before. And that's why I think whatever the Israeli military is planning to do in Gaza is going to be, again, the likes of which we have never seen before because Israel, I mean, has never experienced anything like this literally since the days of the holocaust.
That's why you hear so many people refer to the days of the holocaust -- this is bringing obviously, a lot of sadness and shock to Israelis, but also a lot of anger.
SIDNER: Absolutely. And I just want to let people know what you're looking at. You're looking at a video from Tuesday, we've been looking at a video from Be'eri Kibbutz where the Israeli Prime Minister's office now says that they discovered toddlers and babies with their heads decapitated. We also saw there was a crib turned over. Hamas today is denying this.
They're saying that they're false media reports, and that they strongly dismissed the claims by what they said, western media outlets. This is now coming from the prime minister's office. We are looking at body bags there. There were so many people killed in that Kibbutz in particular, and this news is absolutely devastating to hear the confirmation of the decapitated children.
Do you have any sense of whether or not the families have been told there are so many people that have died, but there are family members waiting to understand what happened at these Kibbutz?
[11:15:00]
GOLD: Yes, I mean, there's plenty of families out there that are still waiting for information about their loved ones. The Israeli government has set up sort of central command centers where people can come and try to get more information. And you know, the unfortunate reality of what's happening now is they're also being requested to bring DNA samples of their loved ones to hopefully be able to match them with remains or potentially if they were hostages.
But there are still people out there who do not know what has happened to their loved ones, do not know if they were killed or if they were taken or what the status of their situation is. Now, back to that Hamas statement, I find it, you know, kind of unbelievable because they also said they denied the Palestinian freedom fighters were killing children and targeting civilians when we literally have video --
SIDNER: Right --
GOLD: Of these guys, of these militants, of these terrorists doing that -- doing exactly what they say they're not doing to civilians --
SIDNER: Right --
GOLD: And to children.
SIDNER: And they probably have, obviously, have proof of this. There is video of so much of what happened and the terror that unfolded there. Hadas Gold, thank you so much for bringing us this really difficult news.
BERMAN: Yes --
BOLDUAN: Go ahead, John --
BERMAN: Sara, we just want to give people a sense of where this is taking place. Kfar Aza right here, you can see on your map just outside Gaza. This is now where officials from the prime minister's office say they have seen proof of babies decapitated. Kfar Aza right there. This is the site right here, Re'em, which is where the music festival was, and Ashkelon, the Israeli city right here is where we saw so much of the rocket activity yesterday.
And of course, this is Gaza. I just want to give people a sense of how -- the small space with which everything is taking place right now, Kate?
BOLDUAN: Major, you are sticking here with us and I saw your face when we reported the news. What even question do you formulate other than what is the point? I'm sorry, it's just like, what is the point?
LYONS: So, Israel is at total war now. They are fighting not only a kinetic war. They're fighting now into propaganda war. And what Eisenhower did during the holocaust, he brought those reporters in and he let them see it. The soldiers that came upon that, no words. You can't describe it, but that's what the Israeli government has to do now.
They have to let the world see what's going on here because this information will travel with this accelerant, recall social media and Israel has got to recognize that they're in that war too as well.
BOLDUAN: It's just --
SIDNER: It's --
BOLDUAN: I mean, I'm losing it now because I just can't --
SIDNER: Just the thought of it when you think of what that means --
LYONS: Yes --
BERMAN: Well, two things --
SIDNER: To the family, but I do want to ask you, when you hear that Hamas has been deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and others, it is still the government --
BERMAN: Yes --
SIDNER: Of Gaza.
BERMAN: Yes.
SIDNER: So, how do you deal with them? How do you -- how does this -- what's the end-game here? Because that is something -- and we've heard this from the Israeli government -- from the Israeli reservists and those who are fighting. They said, look, this is -- this is ISIS-style --
BERMAN: Yes --
SIDNER: Executions. These are ISIS-style --
BOLDUAN: I mean, is everything OK?
SIDNER: Action. So what now? LYONS: Yes, you know, we're good. U.S. and Israel and all these
bigger countries are good at this conventional warfare. But we've been fighting this kind of war with these non-nation states, fundamentally, for the past 30 years, 30-plus years. They're backed, we don't have a deterrent against them. But frankly, you know, I listen to that report about the Iranians are not involved, please, that does not pass the red face test on any level. They've been supporting them, they've been supporting all these terrorists --
BOLDUAN: Do you know if there's a distinction between directly involved in the planning of this, and what is obvious in reality, which is --
LYONS: Yes --
BOLDUAN: They have been funding and helping --
SIDNER: OK --
BOLDUAN: Them for years.
LYONS: Sure --
BOLDUAN: They are exact -- they've been funding and helping them --
LYONS: Yes --
BOLDUAN: For years. This is part of what just led to this news --
LYONS: Right --
BOLDUAN: Of what we've just learned about these babies.
LYONS: Yes, I'll say we don't have a deterrence, right? We have nuclear deterrence. Mutual-assured destruction between us and Russia and China and all that. But what's the deterrence against these countries like Iran to keep them from doing something like this. We've got to come up with some level of deterrence, and frankly, to me, is it some kind of conspiratorial type of deterrence, where if we think that you're going to do this -- like if we think that what your progress is going to lead to something like this, we're going to look at that as an existential threat.
This is clearly all fingerprints are on Iran, I don't -- you know, there are -- intelligence department says one thing, but it doesn't pass the red face test --
BERMAN: Right, Major Mike Lyons, stick around. Again, we've got a lot of developing news right now. Our Jeremy Diamond seeing rocket attacks over his head in southern Israel, and then this news, Israeli government officials saying that babies and toddlers were found decapitated in the Kibbutz of Kfar Aza just outside of Gaza. Some of the 1,200 people killed in this Hamas terror attack over Israel. Disturbing new details, our live special coverage continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:20:00]
BERMAN: Sorry, our Nic Robertson is right over the border from Gaza in Sderot. Nic, why don't you tell us what you're seeing right now.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, in the last few minutes, there's been a barrage of heavy artillery fired into Gaza. I'm going to ask John if you can pan just a little bit over there, just over the roofs of those houses there, just a couple of miles away from what you can see the black smoke rising up there, just being caught on the breeze.
That's the aftermath of the impact of those heavy artillery shells, and these are changed days over the past couple of days.
[11:25:00]
The artillery also being used by the Israeli Defense Force as well as the air strikes on Gaza. We saw huge fields with perhaps half a dozen to a dozen heavy artillery pieces in today. Other fields full of infantry and armored fighting vehicles. You -- when you're around this area right now, the security is much tighter, had about a 30-man foot patrol go past this building here just in the past few minutes.
The security is much tighter on the roads, getting access to places -- I don't know if you caught that, but that was the impact of one of those artillery shells. We're a couple of miles away from it, so I think you get an idea of just how loud it might be down there. It literally rattles the windows on this building that we're in a couple of miles away.
So you have those artillery units out on the field, you have a lot more troops out in the field. There's a lot more security on the roads around here. A lot more troops around this town as well. It's not a civilian area, it's a military area and you feel things amping up, building up for whatever the next military step is.
A lot of people say it might be an incursion, but what you're seeing with that artillery, typically we've seen in the past, artillery used in this way to soften up the ground ahead of an incursion of some type. We don't know when it may happen or even if there's been an order made for it, but this is the tempo of the battle that we're getting here tonight, this almost continuous, step-by-step artillery strikes over into Gaza. John?
BERMAN: Our Nic Robertson again is in Sderot, which is literally overlooking Gaza here. And Nic, the sequence as was just described to us by Major Mike Lyons is, occasionally what happens is rockets come -- rockets come out of Gaza, and he says they come with a return address and Israel can then shoot artillery in to target where the rockets are coming from. How much of a back and forth have you seen today?
ROBERTSON: Yes, I think as well, what you get is that you can wait until they shoot or you know where they shot from last time, and you want to prevent them shooting because you'd rather use artillery shells than let's say Iron Dome missiles which are more expensive and more complex. So rather than wait and attack the site right after, you deny them the site, you know where they used last time, you know where they've been using over the last few days.
You know where they use historically, so you deny them those fields. You continue with this barrage of artillery so they cannot get out and launch them. So it feels at the moment, it's less a tit for tat. It's less rockets from Gaza and then artillery fired in at the moment, because when the rockets do come, they're intercepted by the missile defense system, the Iron Dome.
But you know, this is fluid. It will go both ways. I mean, we hear fighter jets coming on station over here right after rockets are fired from Gaza. So they're doing the same thing. They're looking for those launch sites. This -- as launch site is the signature of where you may have Hamas on the ground, and even if you miss them, you can deny them that position in the future.
They have to -- they want to fire these weapon systems with a degree of accuracy. So they do have designated positions that they want to fire them from on designated trajectories and calculated designated angles of elevation for the rocket to take off, it needs to go so many degrees if it's -- if it's firing at this location. So many degrees higher, perhaps if it's going to Tel Aviv.
All these sorts of things, Hamas has to have some certainty about its locations of fire, its precision of fire, and right now, artillery will help interrupt that, fighter jets and guided ammunitions will also be part of that package as well, John.
BERMAN: All right, Nic Robertson for us since broadly, we just heard one last explosion there, keep us posted, Nic, as to what you see. In the meantime, let's go back to Kate.
BOLDUAN: All right, thank you, we're going to keep a close eye on that. But also let's go back to the House of Representatives because house lawmakers, they just wrapped up a classified briefing on the attack on Israel. What is known, what they're learning. Joining me right now is the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Greg Meeks.
Congressman, thank you so much for jumping on, obviously, in classified briefing, there's a lot you can't tell me, but can you give me a sense of what your sense is and what your headline is coming out of that briefing with top officials?
REP. GREGORY MEEKS (D-NY): That the United States and presidential administration is focused on making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself. That -- there's some -- and I'm still, Kate, you know, hearing reports on these babies that have been beheaded --
BOLDUAN: I know, congressman, I was going to ask you about --
MEEKS: I've got to say -- BOLDUAN: That. Let's just -- let's just -- we're just -- I mean, I --
yes, your reaction to that. Did you -- just your reaction or if you've heard anything more about that or if you were able to --
