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IDF Chief: War "Will Not Be Short"; Jonathan Conricus, IDF Spokesman, Discusses Israeli-Hamas War; U.S. Currently Assesses Israel "Not Responsible" For Deadly Hospital Blast In Gaza; Spokesman: Jordan To Keep Going Despite Second Loss; Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) Discusses Jordan's Speakership Battle & Israeli-Hamas War; Hamas Social Media Following Surges On Telegram App. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired October 18, 2023 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:31:04]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: The chief of the Israeli Defense Force says its war with Hamas, quote, "will not be short." During a visit with soldiers, the chief told the Israeli armed forces, if other enemies get involved, Israel will have to expand its fight.
Joining me now is Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus of the IDF.
General (sic) Conricus, appreciate it -- Colonel Conricus, appreciate you being with us.
A U.N. spokesman is declining to acknowledge Israel's demand that the U.N. chief declare Palestinian terrorist organizations responsible for the Gaza hospital blast. I'm wondering what your reaction to that is.
LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, IDF SPOKESMAN: I think the whole fake story by Hamas is sad and dangerous. I think how it was reported and amplified in much, not all, but much of international and Arabic media is very dangerous and reckless.
We've seen the consequences of it. It could have gotten much worse had we not gotten evidence out to debunk it.
I think now is the time for moral clarity for organizations that claim to be humanitarian and claim to be on the good side, to be on the good side, and stop providing diplomatic and international cover for Hamas and their atrocities.
COOPER: The current U.S. assessment is the U.S. does not believe Israel is responsible for the deadly blast at the hospital. Officials have said to CNN they do believe it was an errant missile from Islamic jihad.
Can you say if the U.S. provided the Israeli military or the other way around any intelligence that led them to make the conclusion? I know Israel shared -- there was reporting that Israel shared its intelligence with the U.S.
Do you know how much extra intelligence the U.S. had and did they share that with Israel?
CONRICUS: I'm not aware, no. I know we shared our intelligence, which is obvious because we're the ones in battle. We're the ones focusing our censors on this area of the world and focusing on those enemies.
I think it's natural that the basis is on Israeli's intelligence. I'm not aware of additional intelligence. But I wasn't part of the conversation. So I'm not refuting it.
COOPER: I think -- you and I talked about misfires by missiles before. I think you said that it's -- the percentage is roughly 30 percent. Correct me if I'm wrong on that. But that's what you say missiles coming from Gaza, about 30 percent of them fall into Gaza itself.
In your experience, has Islamic jihad or Hamas ever accepted responsibility for a misfire that's killed people?
CONRICUS: Not only have they not accepted responsibility ever for the killing of Palestinian civilians, I remember personally an event almost two years ago.
And there are many other documented instances that have been caught on camera, including Al Jazeera cameras, that were gazing at the sky and following the trajectory of a rocket that, all of a sudden, went wayward and landed inside Gaza.
Then the cameraman was told to point the camera upwards because the rocket landed in the sea, which is code word for "you're exposing what Hamas is doing and we'll get into trouble for showing it."
Not only have they not taken responsibility, they actively undermine international reporting of it. They try to obfuscate and hide the fact that so many of their rockets fall short.
[14:35:00]
That, I can understand because they're a terrorist organization that has no morals.
What I fail to understand is, how are they not held accountable? How is this not an important, the most important report?
But why isn't it vocal when it comes to speaking about lives of Palestinians, many people who care they're humanitarians and care for Palestinians.
I haven't seen statements of Hamas, you're firing rockets from built- up areas at the Israelis, which is a war, and some of your rockets fall short, which is extremely bad. What are you doing about it? I haven't seen anything about that either.
COOPER: The intelligence that Israel has put forward shows rocket trajectories from -- I believe it was a cemetery in Gaza or from a location relatively close to the hospital, arcing over the hospital or very nearby the hospital, some of the other rocket trajectories. I assume the U.S., having satellite capabilities as well, had similar
rocket trajectories, which I assume led to their conclusion that Israel is right in their assessment of who is responsible for this.
If that is the case, it is a sign just of how extremely irresponsible and dangerous the firing of rockets is from any civilian population.
I've been in Gaza City and seen rockets fired near locations from where I was. They're fired from buildings in residential areas.
CONRICUS: Yes, they are. That is where Hamas operates. That is the infrastructure that they use.
The rockets, they are launched from civilian areas. They get there -- the rockets are brought there by a tunnel system under the civilian areas.
Once they're fired, of course, that area is exposed to threat because we'll try to retaliate so they won't be able to fire again. That puts civilians at risk. That's typical Hamas operations.
It is extremely regrettable that they choose these tactics to constantly put at risk their own civilians, the Palestinians who live there, in order to fight against us.
And it is, of course, in contradiction to international law. You're supposed to have your weapons away from civilians and fight military only.
We, the military, are a legitimate target. Our civilians are not. They're constantly threatened.
The last air raid siren was maybe an hour ago in Tel Aviv, where I am. And there have been rockets fired at southern Israel a few times today already. And it's just the reality.
Again, when people ask themselves and when pictures of the unfortunate situation in Gaza are shown, the disruption, et cetera, that needs to be explained. That's part of the context.
When we fight an enemy heavily embedded in urban terrain and uses civilian houses to fire rockets from, that's where we have to retaliate.
It's an unfortunate situation. In so much reporting, that piece of context is missing.
COOPER: Colonel Jonathan Conricus, thank you.
We'll be right back. Stay with us.
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[14:42:48]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The House remains speakerless. Congressman Jim Jordan coming up short today in his second bid for the gavel.
He lost more support from his own party this time around. But a spokesman for the Ohio Republican says he will keep going.
Joining me now is Georgia Congressman Austin Scott, who lost the conference nomination to Jordan last week but is now firmly behind Jim Jordan.
Sir, thank you for being with us.
Should he keep going? Should Jim Jordan continue as his aides say he will?
REP. AUSTIN SCOTT, (R-GA): Yes, I think he's going to continue. If you remember what happened last time, it took Kevin McCarthy around 14 rounds, Brianna.
We shouldn't be in this position. I mean, 208 Democrats voted with eight Republicans to put us here.
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KEILAR: Sir, he was never McCarthy was never in a -- (INAUDIBLE).
SCOTT: I'm sorry?
KEILAR: McCarthy was never in a hole.
SCOTT: But Speaker McCarthy was elected. He was the speaker of the House. He was the largest Republican fundraiser ever for us as House Republicans.
The Democrats knew what they were doing when they put up 208 votes to take him out of the speakership. That's what created the current situation that we're in.
And then we got --
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KEILAR: They didn't take him out of the speakership. You guys are the majority.
SCOTT: Sure they did.
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KEILAR: You guys are the majority, right?
SCOTT: And 96 percent of the votes came from Democrats, Brianna. Factually speaking, there were only eight Republicans and there were 208 Democrats. I mean, 208 Democrats --
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KEILAR: But, sir, who's in the majority? SCOTT: Well, the Democrats were the majority of that vote. And when we
--
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KEILAR: No. Who's in the majority in the House of Representatives?
SCOTT: The Republicans are in the majority. But the Democrats provided the majority of the votes to take Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership. In fact --
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KEILAR: But Republicans --
SCOTT: -- the vote.
KEILAR: Republicans provided the key votes. They're in the majority. They can provide enough votes to put a Republican speaker in place.
SCOTT: The Democrats provided 96 percent of the votes. And 208 Democrats voted to remove the Republican speaker of the House. Eight Republicans voted to remove the speaker of the House. So 96 percent of the votes come from --
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[14:45:00]
KEILAR: I will say, I find it -- it's some interesting verbal gymnastics. I'll give you that.
I want to talk about the future here.
SCOTT: What do you mean gymnastics? I'm just talking about the facts. So 208 Democrats voted. They were the vast majority of the vote to take Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership.
KEILAR: I'm talking about how it works.
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KEILAR: That's that the majority in the House of Representatives, your party, is responsible for electing a speaker. Not the Democrats.
SCOTT: We are. But --
KEILAR: Do you think there's going to be another vote today?
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KEILAR: We're uncertain on that.
SCOTT: I absolutely believe there will be another vote today. I don't know what time that will be. But I'm not sure what I'm missing here with you. Because 208 Democrats voted with eight Republicans to take the largest Republican fundraiser out of the speakership. This was a pretty calculated decision by the Democrats.
I get --
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KEILAR: It was a --
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KEILAR: Here's why, sir. Because it was a Republican who filed the motion to vacate.
SCOTT: It was. It was a Republican that had very personal differences with Kevin McCarthy.
KEILAR: All right. So Jordan lost 22 Republicans. That, at this point is his net. He's lost three more. He gained one from the vote before. What's your message to the 22 still against him?
SCOTT: I think it's time to get a Republican speaker. We have work to do. We need to seat a Republican speaker.
Nobody is going to get -- everybody's not going to get the person they want. We have people voting for Kevin. We have people voting for Steve. We have people voting for people other than the Republican nominee.
What got us into this position is people who did not abide by the rules of the Republican conference.
Those eight people that voted with the 208 Democrats to create the current scenario were not following the rules of the conference.
Our rules are that you should abide by whoever wins the conference. That didn't happen this past week. Now we're in this situation that we're in.
Let's not forget 208 Democrats voted to vacate the speaker's chair.
KEILAR: Yes, as you've said.
How would you describe this -- as you mentioned, in the party, they're not following how they normally do things.
What is going on? How do you describe this? Do you worry it's going to cost your party the majority?
SCOTT: I absolutely worry it's going to cost us the majority. It is -- part of this has to do with outside groups raising tremendous sums off the chaos.
Part of it has to do with a lack of journalism. If someone goes to FOX News, they'll see one thing. If they go to CNN, they see something opposite of that. So part of it is symbolic of the times we're living in.
Part of it is symbolic of how the districts are drawn. We have people in districts that Trump won by 20 points that want people who are in districts that Biden won to vote the same way they do.
Part of this is just democracy and democracy's messy, but it's better than anything else out there.
KEILAR: I want to ask you separately about Israel.
You're on House intel. You got a classified briefing today on Israel. I know you can't talk about the specifics. Very pressing right now. There are many Americans in the region.
I want to ask you specifically about Palestinian-Americans who are stuck in southern Gaza. Because time may be of the essence for this group, trying to get them out.
Any word on how the U.S. government is helping them?
SCOTT: We should be doing anything and everything we can to help every American citizen without regard for religion or race or any other stereotypical criteria.
If they're an American citizen, we need to be doing everything we can to help them get out of there.
My heart goes out to all of the people in that region.
This terrorist attack has killed a tremendous number of people. A tremendous number of innocent people lost their lives.
Right now, we want to do everything we can to get Americans out of the war zone. We want to do everything we can to help Israel with the intelligence and the weapons they need to carry out the mission against Hamas.
We want to help Israel stamp out Hamas and, at the same time, make sure they're getting the intelligence to handle and prepare for any other threats that may be coming their way.
I'm hopeful we're able to isolate this to Hamas. I think that the worst thing that could happen would be if Iran and Hezbollah openly came into the conflict.
I'm not naive to the fact that Iran has given weapons, training and provided support. But we do not need other organizations to openly come into this conflict.
We need to -- on behalf of the people in Israel and the people in that region, the best thing for us is to isolate Hamas --
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[14:50:00]
KEILAR: Are you confident the U.S. government can get those Palestinian-Americans out?
SCOTT: I'm telling you the United States government is very good at what they do. We're very good at this.
They're doing everything they can, I believe, in a tough situation, to make sure American citizens' lives are respected and that they get them out of there.
KEILAR: Congressman, we do appreciate your time so much. Congressman Austin Scott, thank you so much.
SCOTT: Thank you.
KEILAR: And we'll be right back.
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[14:54:59]
KEILAR: So while Hamas is banned by nearly every major social media network, its social media following surged on Telegram. This is a messaging app that was founded by a Russian entrepreneur.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: In the days since the terror group attacked Israel, its followers tripled on the platform.
CNN correspondent, Donie O'Sullivan, is tracking the story.
So, Donie, what have you learned?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so look, Telegram -- for many of the American people watching in the United States might never have heard of Telegram, but it is a huge app elsewhere in the world. There's more than -- 800 million people use this app.
KEILAR: Wow.
O'SULLIVAN: So it's pretty big. But it is, right now, the home of Hamas on the Internet.
And I want to show you some of these graphs here just to show you how big their followers increased in the days after the attack.
You will see there, October 7th, the day of the attack, went from 200,000 all of the way up to 700,000. And other accounts with similar growth.
So what we're seeing here is this is where Hamas is getting all of their messaging out, their propaganda out.
And this is also the same platform that ISIS used about a decade ago.
You mentioned the Russian entrepreneur, who founded this company. He is very committed to, quote, unquote, "free speech."
He did, in the past, however, take some action against ISIS. So there is pressure mounting that he might take action against Hamas here.
I will just say, however, that despite its being on this platform, in terms of families, who have hostages -- who have loved ones who are being held hostage and things like that, that is where we're getting the videos about the hostages. And that sort of information is still coming through that channel.
So, although there are a lot of calls for that to be taken down, some people would argue there is a value there in being able to still hear from this group, despite the propaganda.
KEILAR: And other social media apps?
O'SULLIVAN: And other social media platforms, and even on Elon Musk's Twitter, or now called X, Hamas is officially banned and, of course, you know, as are other terror groups.
Here in the U.S., Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization. So, for the most part, the big tech platforms have them kicked off.
I will say recently new Internet laws in the European Union could really hold these big platforms liable if Hamas sneaks on to their platforms.
SANCHEZ: Another angle of the story.
Donie O'Sullivan, thanks so much.
Stay with NEWS CENTRAL. We're back in moments.
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