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At Least 260 Bodies Found At Music Festival Site In Israel; U.S. Navy Moves Carrier Strike Group To Eastern Mediterranean; Israeli Security Cabinet Declares State Of War; Interview With Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) About Hamas' Attacks Against Israel; One-On-One With Witness To Tel Aviv Rocket Attacks; Interview With Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) About Attacks On Israel. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired October 08, 2023 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:37]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: I want to welcome you to CNN's breaking news coverage. I'm Abby Phillip here in Washington.

And today scenes of terror, heartbreak and utter desperation as Israel officially declares war on the terror group Hamas. Just moments ago CNN has learned that three Americans have been killed in fighting according to the U.S. government in a memo. The Biden administration officials are also looking into reports of additional American deaths and Americans who are among the missing, some of them possibly kidnapped by Hamas fighters.

We are also just getting in some horrible, gruesome news. And I do want to warn you, what we are about to show you is graphic. An Israeli search group and a rescue group says 260 bodies were found at a music festival site in Western Israel near the border with Gaza.

These are the images. They show some of them piled up into a tent. The survivors describing Hamas fighters storming that festival yesterday morning attacking civilians with rifles, with RPGs, killing or kidnapping anyone they came across.

Now this is just one of the atrocities that we are learning now were committed by Hamas over the last two days against Israel. In response, Israel has now ramped up its attacks on Gaza. The area controlled by Hamas which was -- this was the scene there just a few hours ago as Israeli forces carried out a round of airstrikes.

Now it's hard to know how many civilians were killed in Israeli, although a top Israeli minister tells CNN that the death toll is now likely over 600. That number we are expecting to rise. Thousands of Israelis have also been injured. Civilians have been killed in Gaza, including at this flattened apartment building where a girl's body was pulled out of the rubble. The health ministry in Gaza says that the number of dead there is more than 400.

Now today Israel is also opening a missing persons command center for family and friends to register the people who are now unaccounted for. We've heard some reports of Hamas terrorists stripping children away from their parents, abducting the elderly, and in some cases raping innocent Israeli civilians. An Israeli minister confirmed to CNN that Americans are among the hostages.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that the United States is working quickly to figure out if that is true but he has described some of the abductions on CNN earlier today. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: This, a massive terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilians, thousands of rockets. Men and women and children dragged across the border into Gaza, including a holocaust survivor in a wheelchair. People gunned down in the streets, civilians. So you can imagine the impact this is having on Israel and it should be something that revolts the entire world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Our coverage starts now with CNN's Nic Robertson, who is in Sderot, Israel.

Nic, I first want to start with that brand new information, the horrible news, 260 bodies found at this music festival site in Israel that was struck yesterday by these attacks. What do we know today?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: We know that there were a lot of abandoned shot-up vehicles along the road, the highway around where that music festival was taking place in Re'im, which is about 20 miles or so south of where we are in Sderot. It had been going through the night, a lot of young people there enjoying themselves, dancing, enjoying the music as the sun was coming up.

And then the missile strikes, the intercepts, Iron Dome going off, and all that confusion and out of that confusion it appears that Hamas ran on there and were just killing in a frenzied way anyone that they could reach, anyone that they couldn't sort of pull back and take away and get back to Gaza.

I was speaking with a doctor who's been here in this area for the last 36 hours or so treating casualties, treating the wounded. He was down to that music festival afterwards to try to help with the casualties there and what he describes are scenes of -- and putting this in context, this is a doctor who deals with aftermath of terrorist attacks on a routine basis in Israel.

[16:05:10]

He told me that this was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SHLOMO GENSLER, HELPING CASUALTIES AT THE MUSIC FESTIVAL ATTACK: We're finding everything. I had like a 90-year-old woman with a bullet wound to her breast. ROBERTSON: A 90-year-old woman?

GENSLER: They are shooting everyone. Like there's no mercy at all. A 90-year-old woman with a bullet wound to her breast. I've had people with -- like, you know, there are RPG hit close by. They basically had terrible wounds and I had to like decompress their chest from that. But beyond that, there's like every type of injury you can imagine. People lost limbs, people with bullet wounds all over the place. It was bad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: So he was talking about people being stabbed as well, and the RPG, the rocket propelled grenade, this is a weapon normally used to break down buildings, to -- you know, to get into armored vehicles. Hamas using that, using those weapons he said on the civilians. So finding out that the death toll where all these young people were outside enjoying themselves through the night, 260, just gives you a sense of the awful scale and the level of brutality.

We know -- we understood that there were about because Hamas has given this number, we don't know for sure, but they say there were about a thousand of them with weapons that came out of Gaza. Even with that number of people, that is a very, very high death toll. It speaks to the brutality. It speaks to the defenseless nature of all the people who were being killed. They couldn't run fast enough.

They had no weapons to fight back. They were no threat to those gunmen. They could have run past them and then nothing was going to happen to the gunmen. So this is extreme brutality that was executed upon these people. And the numbers keep growing because the discoveries keep happening. And it's the shock of the numbers that I think is just stunning Israel right now -- Abby.

PHILLIP: Yes. It is barbaric really. One of the other stories that we are following here, Nic, is the situation with hostages. What do we know about how many Hamas may have taken and what Israel is doing now to get those individuals back?

ROBERTSON: Well, one of the other terrorist groups inside Gaza, Islamic Jihad, say that there are about 30 hostages held there. We don't know if they're fabricating that number. We don't know if it's a lie. Is it bigger? Is it smaller? The number is understood to be large-ish. Hamas wants everyone to believe that because the bigger the number of hostages they have, the bigger the amount of leverage they have over the Israeli government.

Israeli officials and the IDF, Israel Defense Forces, are being very careful about the language they use, about the number of hostages. They're saying it is in the order of dozens but I was speaking here early this afternoon to a major in the Israeli Defense Force, a spokesman, and I asked him how are you going to get these hostages back.

PHILLIP: All right, Nic Robertson, thank you.

ROBERTSON: And what he told me was --

PHILLIP: Go ahead, Nic. Tell us what he told you.

ROBERTSON: I'm sorry, Abby. He told me that they were going to do everything in their power to get them back. No one would be left behind, he said. But I think I picked up from him the extreme difficulty that it presented here because Hamas won't give them up and where they're scattered, where they're being held, underground tunnels, bunkers scattered across Gaza, it is an almost impossible task.

PHILLIP: It's going to be a critical story as we go forward here, Nic. Thank you very much. And I hope you continue to stay safe where you are.

I want to turn now to CNN's Clarissa Ward who is on the Israel-Gaza border and sharing some of the most heart-wrenching images of the Hamas attack. A warning again, some of this video is disturbing as well.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Just in the last minutes we heard a major barrage of rockets landing in the distance not too far over in that direction. We also were driving up along and down the border with the Gaza Strip earlier. We came across one area where we had to turn around the car because there was an active firefight going on.

And I think it's important to sort of stress to our audiences that this is not at this stage an operation that is solely focused on dealing with the issue of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip and the hostage situation in the Gaza Strip. This is about dealing with Hamas militants who are continuing to run amuck here.

[16:10:05]

Now we actually went earlier today, and we're going to show you some footage now. I want to stress to our audiences again it's quite graphic footage. This is the place where that open air festival, the Supernova Music Festival, was taking place, where hundreds and hundreds of young revelers had gathered to celebrate the end of the holidays, to dance the night away. And at about 6:00 in the morning, it began with a barrage of rockets, very quickly then Hamas fighters infiltrated the dance party, and began grabbing people, murdering them, kidnapping them, grabbing them, trying to drag them on to motor bikes to get them back into the Gaza Strip.

And when we went today, we could only stay a short time because it's very, very tense around there, the bodies have been collected of those who were the innocent victims in this, but the bodies of those Hamas militants are still lying strewn by the road. You can see lots of vehicles shot up, abandoned. You can see one truckful of Hamas militants where an Israeli police vehicle had clearly just T-boned right into it, slammed into it to try to put a stop to the attack. Now we know that many people were killed. Many also were taken

hostage. The Israeli government took an unprecedented step today and actually released a photograph on Twitter of a tent with just scores and scores of dead bodies who have been gathered, who they have been working through the process of trying to identify them. And they said in the tweet, you know, we really struggled with whether or not we should show these images because they are so horrifying.

But we decided we need to show what terrorism looks like. So very intense on the psyche of ordinary people and very intense in terms of the tempo of what we're seeing on the ground and that really just continuing to ratchet up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP: Clarissa Ward, thank you for that.

Let's bring in now Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann.

Oren, a U.S. carrier is headed to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea right now. What is that intended to signal on the U.S. side?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: President Joe Biden and other members of the National Security apparatus promised sort of unflinching U.S. support for Israel. This is part of that. This comes in on the message of deterrence. There is no expectation that any of these forces will take part in any Israeli operations. This is a message of deterrence and a follow on what Biden said yesterday when he said that other parties watching this, and that's a reference to without naming them Hezbollah in Lebanon, militant groups in Syria backed by Iran.

That's a message to them not to get involved. And that's the purpose of this strike group. It is a message of deterrence and it's not just the strike group, which also includes the carrier as well as a guided missile cruisers, a number of guided missile destroyers. Also a number of U.S. fighter jets operating in the Middle East. Those squadrons will be boosted. They'll be staying there longer. Some will be even sent sooner.

Not headed to Israel, but again some of those were headed and went to the Middle East specifically to deal with increased Iranian aggression both in Syria and in the Gulf of Oman, so that's their purpose there. It is a message of deterrence to Iran, to Hezbollah, and to Israel's adversaries that may see a moment of weakness.

PHILLIP: Yes. Because this is a critical moment not just for Israel but for the region as well. We're also learning that according to the U.S. internal government memo, three Americans are among the dead here. Is there anything more we can take away from that information?

LIEBERMANN: Unfortunately it's at least three. And that's a number that could very well rise. It also says, according to this internal memo obtained by CNN, that there are a number of missing and it's the question of how much could that number rise and how much will it rise. The challenge in part here is that Israel doesn't have a number that it's been willing or able to put out, and how many hostages were taken, how many might be alive and how many have been killed.

So it's difficult for the U.S. to be able to get a firm number on that. What's challenging here is that there are a large number, a very large number of American citizens in Israel, many of them dual Israeli-American citizens. But it is a very large -- one of the largest overseas communities of American citizens.

PHILLIP: Oren Liebermann, thank you very much. You spent a lot of time in Israel yourself so a perfect person to be with us on this story.

I want to turn to now retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt over at the magic wall for us.

General Kimmitt, tell us about this surrounding possible threat from other countries in the region. Where does that stand right now?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Yes. I think we need to be, as Oren said, looking at some other threats potentially to Israel, if they get swept into the fight. If you take a look at the countries surrounding Israel right now, we're also talking about potential militants here in Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah in this area.

[16:15:10]

Certainly there could be some concerns about the Palestinians coming out of the West Bank, and there still remains down here in Gaza an al Qaeda threat so the worst possible thing for this would be that those military threats are pulled into this fight and now you have Israel completely surrounded as part of a military operation.

PHILLIP: Well, what about the possible threats outside of the region?

KIMMITT: Yes. That's a very good question as well. The threats are more diplomatic than they are military. All the risk to the work that's been done over the past couple of years. Yes, there's a small fight going on down here in Gaza. You have the concern about the military threats there but everything that the United States and the other countries have been trying to do over the past few years, bringing peace to Syria, the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia, and of course the concern about the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

All those could be swept in, the military threats, the diplomatic threats, and of course the counterterrorism risk that we have going on right now inside of Gaza.

PHILLIP: So we've talking since we began here about the issue of hostages, and as Nic Robertson pointed out, it's a key piece of potential leverage that Hamas may have. For the Israeli Defense Forces, as they're considering dealing with this Hamas threat, how do the hostages factor into what they can and cannot do on the ground?

KIMMITT: That's everything, Abby. The fact remains is the major constraint to the Israeli Defense Forces right now is that whatever actions they take could be met with response against the hostages. And so can you imagine those young men and women of the Israeli Defense Forces that are concerned that any action they take could result in the death of a hostage. So that's going to severely limit the types of operations that they conduct inside of Gaza if they decide to go in with large military forces, but even the special operations trying to do hostage rescue will be at tremendous risk as well for fear of in fact resulting in the death of a hostage.

PHILLIP: All right. Retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, thank you.

And emergency services continue responding to heart-wrenching scenes throughout Southern Israel. Up next I'll talk to a rescuer on the ground in the hardest hit areas about the anguish that they are witnesses and experienced from the terror attack.

Plus, the Iran factor in all of this. Didn't they help Hamas carry out the attack? We have new insight today about the role that Iran may have played.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:22:03]

PHILLIP: You're looking at live pictures over Gaza City where it's just after 11:20 p.m. Right now it looks relatively calm but in the last few hours we have seen airstrike after airstrike launched by Israeli forces in response to the brutal attacks carried out by Hamas this weekend. Now more than over 600 people have been killed in Israel since Hamas launched those attacks and more than 2,000 people are believed to be wounded.

With so many victims in need of urgent medical attention, many volunteer groups are stepping up their efforts on the ground. I'm joined right now from Jerusalem by one doctor, Adam Ballin, who works with United Hatzalah of Israel, a trauma and crisis response unit.

Adam, thank you for taking the time to join us tonight. I want to ask first about what your team is seeing on the ground but also how are you and your loved ones right now?

DR. ADAM BALLIN, UNITED HATZALAH OF ISRAEL: Thank you. It's very kind of you to ask. Thankfully I'm safe and sound with my family, but there's a lot of families who are going through very difficult things at the moment. We had a long night. We pulled an all-nighter and we've got some long nights ahead it looks like unfortunately. But everyone is, you know, hanging tough and doing the best they can to, you know, forge ahead and do our best for our patients.

PHILLIP: So many volunteers in your organization were able to get mobilized in the last 24 hours or so, and what kind of support are they providing?

BALLIN: So we're one of the world's largest volunteer EMS agencies and we work obviously with other national agencies and all the government agencies here in Israel. We have 7,000 volunteers. So we're a large organization. In the first 24 hours, we were able to mobilize to the are 1700 volunteers, over 30 ambulances, two helicopters, 4 by 4s, off-road vehicles, we've opened a field hospital and an improvised landing strip.

Quite surreal really walking in a wheat field that was just plowed a couple of weeks ago. The wheat stalks are still on the ground and we've got a field hospital, clinics, and helicopters coming and going, loading patients. It's really quite surreal.

PHILLIP: I can only imagine. What are you hearing from your team in terms of the types of things that they are seeing there?

BALLIN: In the first few hours the situation obviously took a lot of time to get under any semblance of control. And unfortunately the first few hours our responders are seeing streets just lined with bodies, burned out cars, cars that had been hit by RPGs. Really apocalyptic scenes. You know, I saw myself, you know, piles of bodies on the side of the road. People, you know, who've been shot, people who've been burned.

It's really quite harrowing scenes, and you know, hats off to all our volunteers and all the other responders who've given it their above and beyond. Up until now, no doubt will continue to do that for us.

[16:25:10]

PHILLIP: You talked about seeing bodies piled up on the side of the road. What is your sense of how many people have been killed in all of this? I mean, the number we know right now is 600. But based on what you've seen, what do you think we're looking at here?

BALLIN: Unfortunately there are still areas which are being -- still areas which are being cleared out at the moment so we don't know if that casualty count is going to climb. And you know, we have over 3,000 casualties. We've transported ourselves over 700 of those together with all the other national agencies. It's over 3,000. Hospitals are obviously overflowing. We are also in dire need of, you know, of restocking medications.

You know, in our organization, we've used five months' supply of anesthetics within five hours of the conflict breaking out. So we've run out of -- you know, we used combat application tourniquets for stopping major limb hemorrhage. We've run out of those altogether. I was lucky enough to receive particularly the equipment of ceramic vests and helmet, but we've run out of those.

So obviously the intensity and the intensity of the tempo of operations here has been, you know, beyond anything we were able to plan or supply for.

PHILLIP: That is really hard to imagine. For your team members that you are working with, this is such a small country and a huge number of casualties as you pointed out. Have any of them had loved ones impacted by these attacks and by the kidnappings that we've been discussing?

BALLIN: OK, as you say, in such a small country everyone knows someone who knows someone. And I think we're at that situation now where we all know either ourselves or, you know, one of our close family members or contacts know someone who's either missing, kidnapped, or deceased, and that's very difficult.

One of our responders has been shot unfortunately. He looks like he's going to be OK. He's in hospital and he's been stabilized. So that's obviously a very heart-wrenching thing for us. And, you know, the personal toll is a very big toll but for now we just have to put the emotions to the side and keep moving forward. And whenever there's a lull in -- the casualties tend to come in waves so once if there's a kibbutz or a settlement that's been able to recapture that from the terrorists, then suddenly you have a wave of patients.

We might have no patients for an hour and then you have 20 at a time. So that's also a significant triage and a challenge for us, and we've got to ditch those, the harrowing scenes aside and stay focused on the issue.

PHILLIP: Dr. Adam Ballin, thank you for taking the time to join us and thank you for everything that you are doing on the ground. My condolences to you and anyone that you know who's experiencing tragedy this weekend. Thank you again.

BALLIN: Thank you for having us.

PHILLIP: And the U.N. Security Council is meeting right now in an emergency session over the attack in Israel. Plus there are questions about Iran's possible involvement in this terror attack. What Iran and Hamas have said about that today. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:32:44]

PHILLIP: Members of the United Nations Security Council are meeting behind closed doors this afternoon to discuss this crisis unfolding in Israel. Before the meeting, Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., called Saturday's attacks, quote, "Israel's 9/11." He also called reports of Israelis being kidnapped and taken to Gaza, quote, "blatant documented war crimes." Israel wants the U.N. to condemn the terror attacks.

And joining me now is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Ben Cardin, from the state of Maryland.

Senator Cardin, thank you very much for being here.

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D-MD): Abby, it's good to be with you. Thank you.

PHILLIP: We have been reporting all weekend on these attacks and now learning that at least three Americans have been killed. A big question facing everyone right now, how big of a U.S. intelligence failure was this?

CARDIN: You know, we're going to have time to evaluate the intelligence failures, why there wasn't more information known and better defense in Israel, but right now the depth of this tragedy is just being understood and the consequences are still uncertain. So I think our thoughts now are with how do we keep people safe in Israel, how do we deal with those that have been taken hostage, how do we account to the families, our sympathies for the families that are struggling who don't even know where their loved ones are today.

I think these are the initial concerns, also to make sure it does not spread beyond the current conflict. And I think President Biden sent a really clear message to groups around the world that they should not take advantage of this situation.

PHILLIP: I want to play for you what your colleague in the House said earlier today on "STATE OF THE UNION." This is House Foreign Affairs chairman Mike McCaul. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): We do know that Iran is behind this. They have financed this every step of the way and they've trained these terrorists. This must have been planned for months to strike on the 50th anniversary of Yom Kippur, you know, the war in 1973. And that's very evident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: My question to you is, do you believe that Iran played an operational role in this attack, not just the general support and financing that they provide to Hamas but operationally?

[16:35:12]

CARDIN: Abby, I don't know. I'm not sure we do know that answer right now but we do know there's been a long-standing support by Iran of Hamas, giving them the capacity as a terrorist organization to carry out these types of operations. So clearly Iran has some accountability here. I don't know, I'm not sure we do know yet what role they directly played in this operation.

PHILLIP: For Iran what should the consequences look like here?

CARDIN: Well, we already recognize Iran as a supporter of terrorism. We've already imposed maximum sanctions and penalties against Iran. We will evaluate what role they played in this particular operation and make our judgments that need to be made. But at this particular moment, I think our focus is to work with the Israelis, to make sure that people are kept safe, recognizing what Israel is going to be doing in regards to the Gaza.

These are the immediate steps. There'll be opportunities for us to evaluate what additional steps need to be taken. I want to make this point. We've been working under the Abraham Accords and normalization to strengthen Israel's ties in the region and to really calm things down. The terrorists would like to see that type of effort sidetracked. We have to make sure that this episode does not stop the normalization talks that have been taking place. We don't want the terrorists to win.

PHILLIP: It's an important consideration as we go forward.

Senator Ben Cardin, thank you very much for joining us.

CARDIN: My pleasure. Good to be with you.

PHILLIP: And up next for us, we're live in Tel Aviv and I'll speak with a woman who was just 200 feet from where a rocket hit during the Hamas terror attack.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:02]

PHILLIP: And welcome back. You're watching CNN's coverage of Israel at war. I want to bring in now Rebecca Brindza from Tel Aviv. She is an American who's originally from Virginia who has lived in Israel now for the last 10 years.

Rebecca, thanks for being with us. Can you tell me a little bit about what you have witnessed in the last 24 hours there?

REBECCA BRINDZA, AMERICAN IN TEL AVIV: Yes, of course. So we woke up yesterday morning at around 6:30, 7:00 a.m. to rocket fire and then basically were notified almost immediately what was going on in the south, that Hamas militants and terrorists had come through, infiltrated the border. We had no idea basically how they've gotten in. We thought the security systems down there were pretty strong and secure.

And then almost immediately after you start seeing just news flashes all over Telegram. That's a pretty big way that people get news in this area. And the images are just horrific. There's -- no family should ever have to see pictures of their loved ones being treated that way. And so these images kept pouring in. We're seeing that there's more rocket fire and then throughout the day we get notified that there had been a music festival in the south.

Friends of friends had gone there. My sister-in-law was supposed to have left and been there but luckily our dinner had run too long the night before so she didn't go. And then next thing you know, it's in the evening. This had been a constant day of rocket fire and then at around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. there was more direct rocket fire into Tel Aviv and a rocket fell approximately 200 feet from our house.

We've never really had a shaking or booming like that before -- we have a safe room in our building, in our apartment actually. But when you feel how much that steel, iron, whatever it's made out of, and that actually shakes against the frame. It's absolutely terrifying. And, you know, so we're here today, it's been a relatively eerily quiet day. I don't know if hat that means that tomorrow will not. But, yes, so that's what's been going on on this side.

PHILLIP: You mentioned that your sister I guess would have been at that festival. Do you know if other people who experienced some of the violence here, and what are you hearing from people around Israel right now about what they are seeing around them as these attacks occurred in the last 48 hours or so? BRINDZA: Yes, so it's -- we're a small country. The population is

roughly 10 million people, so you're only -- you're never more than one to two degrees of separation from anything going on. There are -- we didn't have direct friends that were there but there are friends of friends who we've been trying to help their families figure out where their loved ones are and hopefully find them.

My sister-in-law has tons of friends that were there. My colleagues, most of my friends' siblings have been deployed off into reserve duty on some border. My own boss is there now. So everyone is for the most part affected in some manner. My partner's, a very close friend, him, his wife and their child were in one of the cars. There were near the kibbutz and basically there were Hamas operatives came and they -- sorry.

They basically came, they started attacking, they jumped out of the car. The husband and their child, he ran with the child, and they actually -- they were hiding and they found them but they haven't been able to find his wife. And so everyone knows someone who's been affected by this. And it doesn't matter where you are. Yes.

[16:45:03]

PHILLIP: Yes. And, quickly, before we go, how long do you think this will all go on for?

BRINDZA: You know, I really don't know. There is a lot of speculation. Some people are saying that it's going to be a long time and it could be a week or two with in terms of other operations we've had in the past. I don't really think this is -- like this is similar in any other way. Again, it's been relatively quiet. We thought that Hezbollah in the north might get involved, and as of now it seems that they haven't so perhaps that's a good thing.

And perhaps what's been going on now kind of put things to an end, but I don't think that there's any chance we'll have a cease-fire within at least the next 48 hours.

PHILLIP: Well, Rebecca, thank you for joining us and we hope that you continue to stay safe today. Thank you.

BRINDZA: Thank you. Thank you so much.

PHILLIP: And ahead for us, the terror attacks in Israel are the newest issue in the 2024 presidential race. Several GOP candidates are placing the blame on President Biden. I'll talk with Senator Tim Scott coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:50:33]

PHILLIP: Back now with our breaking news. More help is on the way from the United States to Israel. That's what President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today as the U.S. Navy moves a carrier strike group closer to Israel and increases its presence of fighter jets in the region. The two leaders are expected to stay in close contact as at least 600 people have been killed in an unprecedented attack by Hamas.

Here to discuss this is Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott of the state of South Carolina.

Senator Scott, thank you for being here.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, ma'am. Good to be with you, Abby.

PHILLIP: And so, Senator, this unprecedented attack has now started a war that could go on for some time. What is Congress prepared to do to support Israel and ensure that this does not become a wider conflict in the region?

SCOTT: Well, Abby, one of the things we should do as Americans is put this into context for ourselves. Number one, I've heard as many as 1,000 deaths in Israel now. In America, that would be translated into 40,000 Americans losing their lives because of evil. Evil, I can't say it any clearer. Evil attack by Hamas on Israel. Number one. Number two, we should make sure that there is no daylight between America and Israel.

Number three, we should be very clear in sending the strongest signal, and I do agree with sending assets into the Mediterranean to be in a positive aggressive, offensive posture if necessary, and we must make sure that the Americans who have been taken hostage, that we put our resources to work to bring those Americans home.

And unfortunately, Abby, President Biden paying $6 billion for Americans only increased the price for an American -- I will say, I said this several months ago -- several weeks ago, excuse me, that when you raise the price on an American head, basically, you've just created a market to take more Americans. And we have seen that play out just in the last 24 hours. Devastating news to our country and to the Middle East, and most importantly also to our ally Israel.

PHILLIP: Do you believe that the United States should send resources to help recover any Americans who may have been taken hostage?

SCOTT: I certainly think we should be prepared to send resources to Israel without any question. The good news is for the last 10 years, the last 10-year window, we have sent somewhere near $25 billion to $30 billion helping Israel build one of the greatest militaries on the planet. So they have the resources necessary, frankly, to wipe Hamas off the map. And so we want targeted attacks in order to get Americans back.

And, frankly, I think you'll see Prime Minister Netanyahu go even further as he makes sure Hamas cannot have another day like yesterday morning in the state of Israel ever again.

PHILLIP: I do want to you about just that. Would you support if Israel took these steps, a ground invasion of Gaza, even if it meant a long- term or even permanent occupation, and perhaps an insurgency that came after that? Would you support that?

SCOTT: Well, I will support Prime Minister Netanyahu doing whatever it takes to keep Israelis safe and the safe return of Americans. That must be a clear message. We have had the exact opposite from President Biden over the last two years. We now need strength. Appeasement is a terrible strategy militarily. We now need strength. We've needed all along Ronald Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength. Actually kept the world safer and kept Americans safer.

It is time for us to return to overwhelming force as it relates to any conflict that we must be engaged in.

PHILLIP: This attack by Hamas is coming against a backdrop of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel having what sounds like very serious conversations about a potential deal to normalize relationships. That would be historic. It would also isolate Iran.

If you were president, would you pursue this deal?

SCOTT: Well, the deal has really some very good points and, A, the one thing I would not do is provide a commercial nuclear program to Saudi Arabia.

[16:55:04]

To me, that leads to, B, which is an acceleration of another nuclear state potentially in the Middle East. So we should learn the lesson through the JCPOA, the nuclear deal with Israel by giving it -- with Iran, giving Iran an opportunity to have frankly a path forward towards a nuclear weapon is a terrible decision.

Giving Saudi Arabia, in my opinion, a commercial nuclear program would also be a terrible decision. But normalizing relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel is one of the ways that you make Israel safer and frankly you strengthen the bond is very hopeful throughout the entire Middle East to see that relationship.

I believe that Hamas understood that as well. And a part of their strategy was, in fact, to disrupt those negotiations, to stop them in their tracks. That is in the best interest of Hamas. It is in the best interest of Iran. And that is why Iran sanctioned those attacks.

PHILLIP: All right. Senator Tim Scott, thank you for joining us on all of this.

SCOTT: Yes, ma'am. Have a good day, Abby.

PHILLIP: And up next, more of our breaking news coverage ahead, including some new video of the very beginning of those Hamas attacks.

Plus, I will be joined by the Israeli ambassador to the United States live when we come back.

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