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Israeli Prime Minister Says Second Stage Of War Has Begun; Near Total Communications Blackout Following Israel's Intensifying Bombardment; Egypt's President Warns Middle East Will Become Ticking Time Bomb; Americans Trapped At Hospitals In Gaza; Mike Pence Suspends His Campaign For President; Maine Suspect Found Dead From Apparent Self-Inflicted Gunshot; CNN Speaks To Relative Of Family Kidnapped by Hamas. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired October 28, 2023 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:11]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jake Tapper. I'm standing on a rooftop looking out over Tel Aviv. It's just after 2:00 a.m. here and in Gaza, as a new phase of war begins. It has been 22 days since the horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas caught this country and frankly much of the world by surprise.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. We are also following breaking news back in the United States including former Vice President Mike Pence's stunning campaign suspension, and new details about the horrific mass shooting in Maine that killed 18 people.

TAPPER: But we start with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this evening a new long stage in the Israel-Hamas war. Israel's military says its troops and tanks are inside Gaza right now in what promises to be a bloody and complex battle in order to rid the Gaza Strip of the terrorist group responsible for the horrific October 7th attack that killed at least 1300 Israel Israelis.

Inside Gaza, Palestinians are trying to shelter and they are mourning in darkness amid a near total communications blackout. As the Hamas controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health is estimating hundreds of Gazans have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in just the last two days. Meanwhile, the families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are growing more terrified by the hour.

Earlier last night, they pressed Netanyahu to make a deal that would secure the immediate release of each and every person held hostage while one pointed a photograph of their loved ones toward the wartime leader.

We're going to start this evening with CNN's Nic Robertson who's live in Sderot, Israel.

Nic, as Israel says it has started the second phase of its war against Hamas, you've been seeing huge explosions and hearing heavy machine gunfire tonight where you are, which is not far from the Gaza border.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, the second phase to us sounds radically different to the first phase. The first phase was artillery and missiles. Tonight, we're hearing absolutely every munition I think that could be used being used. We've heard helicopter gunships firing intense rounds of heavy bursts of fire into the battle area. That area between the border fence and the towns inside the Gaza Strip.

You're hearing the detonations there. We've seen missiles fired and different types of missiles that come from low altitude that we haven't seen before. In the midst of all of this, Hamas is still and other groups are still going to fire rockets out to different parts of Israel in the middle of all these strikes. Heavy, heavy tank rounds as well. There were flares in the sky above us a few minutes ago.

There are these munitions that sort of drop and scatter red submunitions or red tracers down towards the ground. There's just an intense cacophony of different types of fire. The helicopter gunship is perhaps the newest thing that we've heard and that's sort of come over here in the last couple of hours or so -- Jake.

TAPPER: And Nic, how is this intensifying assault impacting the hostage negotiations?

ROBERTSON: According to the Qataris, or at least one Qatari official who's well-informed about the negotiations, he says, look, what you really need is trust and a period of calm. But he said despite that we're continuing. What other choice do we have, he said when he was speaking to CNN's Becky Anderson earlier today. And he made this point, and it's an important point when it comes to negotiating for the hostages.

He pointed out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said that one of the two primary aims here is not only to rid the Gaza area of Hamas, but also to get all the hostages back. And we've also heard, and this was another point being made by one of the Qataris connected to the negotiations, said that the Hamas' military wing, the Al Qasam Brigade, have said that they believe that they have so many hostages they could empty the Israeli jails of Palestinian prisoners in return.

They clearly think and are saying and the Qataris understand that Hamas still wants to continue to negotiate and talk. So despite the fact that there's a sort of an aura and a moment where trust on the battlefield does not exist around the negotiating table for hostages despite difficult and trying conditions, there is still some hope, Jake, tonight.

[19:05:02]

TAPPER: All right. Nic Robertson, thank you so much.

Thousands of people, thousands in Gaza, are in the dark right now following more than 24 hours of Israeli bombardment and airstrikes. Thousands are dead. Most of them no doubt innocent civilians. Virtually all communication is cut off and a dire humanitarian crisis is being made all the worse.

CNN's Jomana Karadsheh is in Beirut, Lebanon.

And Jomana, it's hard to imagine the condition of emergency services being made even more dire but no doubt it is.

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is, Jake. Just catastrophic by all accounts. And as you mentioned, it is all happening almost in the dark. Because of that near total communications blackout, it is getting harder for us and for everyone to get information out of Gaza. But the little that is trickling out paints a very grim picture of the humanitarian situation on the ground where you have people saying that there's nowhere safe in Gaza.

They have no food, no fuel, electricity, water, and now communications have been cut off. People of Gaza have been almost cut off from the world, from each other. People inside Gaza don't know if their loved ones are dead or alive.

And Jake, even before the intensification in the airstrikes and bombardment over the last 24 hours, the humanitarian situation on the ground was already devastating and we have to warn viewers our report they're about to see is graphic and they may find it disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARADSHEH (voice-over): It's hard to believe this was Gaza just a few weeks ago. Little Noor (PH) dressed in his finest, dancing with his brother at a wedding. His mother Wesal still can't believe her boy is gone. He was holding my hand as I took him to make him a sandwich, she says. He didn't get to eat it. A shrapnel cut through his neck. He's now in heaven. God give me strength to deal with this.

The airstrikes that took 6-year-old Noor (PH) and other relatives left her with injuries all over her body and the unbearable pain so many Palestinian mothers are having to endure. There is a void in my heart, I can't even cry, she says. I really want to cry. But the tears are not coming out. Why can't I get it out? I want to cry for my little boy. Recovering at a hospital, she just wants to get back to her three other children, now homeless sheltering at a school.

Hell is raining down on Gaza. Israel says it's going after Hamas and doing what it can to spare the innocent. But it is the innocent who are paying the heaviest price. The few hospitals still barely standing and the pictures are too graphic for us to show. But faces here tell of the horrors they've survived and this living nightmare they can't escape.

Three-year-old Judy hasn't uttered a word in 16 days. She won't eat or drink, her father says, still in shock with a piece of shrapnel lodged in her head.

What did these children do? We have nothing to do with resistance, he says. They're just targeting Palestinians. They're killing children because they're Palestinian. To them we're not humans. They don't know if she'll be able to walk again. Judy is one of the lucky ones, if one can call them that. She still has her father by her side. Baby Arwa (PH) keeps asking for her mom. She's too young to understand, her uncle says. Arwa lost her mother, her brother, and her sister, too. She shows the camera her ouchy.

Every corner of every hospital so many heart-wrenching stories of loss so hard to comprehend. Didi (PH) only wakes up to cry, her aunt says, in a room with her 7-year-old brother Kinan (PH). The two were the only ones to survive an airstrike that killed their mother, father, brother, and dozens of their extended family. Kinan (PH) doesn't say much these days. He asks me if we have internet here, he says I want to call mommy and daddy, his aunt says.

Doctors in these overwhelmed hospitals say every day brings a constant stream of children with no parents and a flood of injured they just don't have enough to treat. With the little they have they do what they can. But how do you begin to deal with so many going through so much?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARADSHEH: And Jake, there are growing calls for many in the international community for an immediate, urgent humanitarian pause, for a cease-fire, and warnings that what is happening in Gaza is violations of international humanitarian law.

[19:10:13]

TAPPER: Jomana Karadsheh in Beirut, Lebanon, thank you so much.

Egypt's president Al-Sisi warning today that the Middle East will become a, quote, "ticking time bomb" as the war between Hamas, which is the government of Gaza, and Israel rages on, threatening to expand across the region. This as the Palestinian Authority president in the West Bank is calling for an emergency summit with Arab leaders.

CNN's Melissa Bell is in Cairo, Egypt for us right now.

And Melissa, how is the Arab world reacting to Israel's latest phase of the war in Gaza and what do we know about where negotiations to release the hostages held by Hamas stands?

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there was across the Arab and Muslim world already a great deal of anger of what's been going on in Gaza, but this latest ratcheting up, the start of that ground operation has led to a fresh round of condemnation from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from the UAE.

You mentioned Mahmoud Abbas in his words in that call for an emergency session of the Arab League here in Cairo, really reflecting a lot of what the leaders have said today or the representatives of the countries' foreign ministries that far from leading to that cease-fire that the world is so urgently calling for, Friday's resolution of the United Nations has simply apparently prompted Israel to bomb more and destroy further.

And I think that has been reflected in a lot of the words. We've also heard today from the Turkish leader speaking at a large rally in Istanbul in favor of the Palestinian cause, repeating his words that Hamas are not terrorists but freedom fighters and that Israel is an occupying force, words so strong in fact that Israel has sent Turkish diplomatic representatives home.

There is of course in the middle of all this growing tension and anger, the question of the hostages. Now the families of the hostages who met earlier today with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said earlier on in the day, look, we need him to look us in the eye and tell us that this latest escalation is not going to put our family members in danger. In fact, what we've been hearing over the course of the evening not just from the Israeli prime minister himself who said that that was one of the main aims of the operation, but also saying that he believed they could be brought home.

We've also been hearing from a representative of Qatar's Foreign Ministry speaking to Becky Anderson who earlier along explaining that the Qataris and the Israelis were keeping a close eye also on Hamas' willingness and that he believed there was still a great deal of room for him and negotiation. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAJED AL ANSARI, SPOKESPERSON, QATARI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Mediation only works when you have calming periods. Under this kind of conflict, this kind of confrontation between both sides, it becomes more difficult. But it's still ongoing, and we can't give up.

Becky, I can tell you that really we can't give up on this on all sides. Nobody in the region can afford to give up on this and just leave it to the military people to decide what happens in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BELL: So encouraging words there from the Qataris who have been spearheading these efforts. Of course they were instrumental in getting those four hostages out so far. The fate now of 229 very much in their hands since they are the ones leading those negotiations hoping that once it is those tunnels in which the hostages are being kept, Jake, that are be so ferociously bombarded by Israel again tonight, that still the negotiations continue and they could yet yield results.

TAPPER: All right, Melissa Bell in Cairo, Egypt. Thank you so much.

As we learn of increasingly dire conditions of hospitals in Gaza, some Americans are among the medical staff. My next guest has connections to a doctor at one hospital. What he's hearing, next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:18:08]

TAPPER: And we're back live in Tel Aviv with CNN's continuing breaking news coverage of Israel at war with Hamas. Israel's stepped-up military action in Gaza has of course had

devastating consequences. We want to warn you that some of the video you're about to see is graphic and disturbing. Video obtained by CNN shows doctors today operating on a young man right on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza. The journalist who shot this video told CNN that Israeli artillery shelling, quote, "did not stop today."

There are U.S. citizens working at many of the hospitals in Gaza. One of those Americans is Suhaila Tarazi. She's been the director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza for three decades. Her father -- I'm sorry, her friend, Father Nicholas Porter, joins me now.

Father Porter, thanks for joining us. When was the last time you heard from Miss Tarazi?

REV. CANON NICHOLAS PORTER, CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, JERUSALEM PEACEBUILDERS: Thanks for letting me join you tonight, Jake. I last spoke with Suhaila on Thursday evening. And --

TAPPER: And what had she been telling -- go ahead.

PORTER: Sure. Sorry about that. So she has been telling me that she is under constant bombardment. Like many others, she's sheltering in a private home with many other individuals. They are in fear of their life. We know all it takes is one of those precision guided missiles to miss from one direction or another, and it's the end. She's an older person. And she along with many other American citizens is hoping and praying for a way out.

[19:20:01]

TAPPER: And Dr. Tarazi has been the director of the hospital since the late 1980s. Tell me why she thought it was so important to serve the people there.

PORTER: So Suhaila has been the director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip since the 1980s. Frankly, Jake, she is really the Mother Teresa of the Gaza Strip. She has dedicated her life to healing and serving the sick, the poor, really the poorest of the poor. She has given up opportunities to have a family and be married to serve others. For her, this is service to the people and service to her god.

Suhaila Tarazi is a Greek Orthodox Christian and is a regular worship at the church just nearby that was also struck by a missile earlier last week.

TAPPER: You were just in Jerusalem when the war broke out. I'm told you traveled through Amman, Jordan to get back to the U.S. What was that like for you to leave behind friends in the region?

PORTER: In a word, heartbreaking. These are women and men and younger people that I, too, have dedicated much of my life to serving and caring for, and seeking to give a better future to. When I left early in the morning, I could, I had that sense, Jake, that whatever did end up happening and we're watching that unfold now, it would never be the same when I come back. It's heartbreaking. Like so many others trying to cross, it was chaotic. Fortunately, some

friends met me on the other side, but many others are not that fortunate. Particularly Suhaila and about 600 other Americans in the Gaza Strip. They've been advised by the State Department earlier in the week to go to the Rafah Crossing. They went and nothing happened. The gate never opened.

TAPPER: Yes. Yes.

PORTER: And you know now --

TAPPER: We've been advocating for them to get out for a while. Yes.

PORTER: And please continue to advocate. They, you know, now that there's very limited communications, it's even harder now to see or even imagine how they're going to be, you know, given the right instructions to exit the country or exit Gaza into freedom in Egypt. You know, it strikes me that we need to hold the State Department accountable in its care for all American citizens.

You know, we are all equal under the law. And we are all equal citizens and just as citizens have been evacuated very promptly from Jerusalem in Israel, so it should be from Gaza.

TAPPER: Absolutely. I'm going to have the National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on "STATE OF THE UNION tomorrow and I will absolutely ask him about the 500 to 600 American citizens, many of them Palestinian Americans but others just plain Americans still stuck in Gaza. You have my word on that, sir.

Father Nicholas Porter, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Godspeed, sir.

PORTER: Thank you, and Godspeed to you.

TAPPER: Much more ahead live here from Tel Aviv but we're also following the 2024 presidential race and a major Republican candidate has just suspended his campaign. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:28:23]

BROWN: Well, as we continue to monitor developments in the Middle East, we are also staying on top of a major political development right here in the U.S. today. Mike Pence announced he is suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination for president. The former vice president made the announcement at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit in Las Vegas.

MIKE PENCE (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Now I'm leaving this campaign, but let me promise you, I will never leave the fight for conservative values, and I will never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land. So help me God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Let's bring in CNN's Kristen Holmes who is in Las Vegas.

So, you know, in many ways, Kristen, the writing has been on the wall for Mike Pence, right, with his lackluster fundraising, trouble garnering support ahead of the next debate. Talk a little bit about the lane Pence was trying to carve out in this race that ultimately was not successful for him.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam. I talked to his advisers a number of times when he was entering the race and they really believed that there was this lane for a Reagan Republican. A traditional conservative Republican who could show up on conservative social values. People who could appeal to people who found the events of January 6th appalling. And one of the things that the adviser said to me tonight was that they just learned that this lane did not exist.

And when you talk about the fact that he was not raising the money, he had not yet qualified for the third Republican debate which is just in two weeks, we are told that that was a big part of this. But the other part of this was the fact that he, as you mentioned, you know, he had no lane to go down. He saw the writing on the wall and what's really significant about this moment is it shows just how far the Republican Party has come.

[19:30:10]

Back in 2016, Mike Pence was put on the ticket to essentially relieve some conservatives who didn't believe that Donald Trump was a true Republican, was a true conservative. He was supposed to be the conservative voice in the White House.

And now here we are, two turns of the wheel later, two cycles later, and there is no room for Mike Pence within the current Republican Party, that is really the party of Donald Trump.

And I will say Donald Trump spoke about an hour after Pence, did not mention his former running mate dropping out of the race, but he is going to speak again later tonight in Las Vegas. We'll be listening very closely to hear if he does address that.

BROWN: We sure will. Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.

And we turn now to CNN political analyst, SE Cupp, so SE, what does it mean for the Republican race now, for the White House, now that Pence has bowed out?

SE CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, something like this does tend to shake loose fundraising dollars, it can shake loose some staff, some infrastructure, some resources, some surrogates. So we could have a minimal effect on the race, but the energy is still with Donald Trump, so I'm not sure that that is really affected by his dropping out.

BROWN: Right. I mean, you know, he asked the question, what does it say about the Republican Party? It just reaffirms, right, that this is the party of Trump, right? That his former vice president is dropping now.

CUPP: Yes.

BROWN: Do you think that Pence might speak out more now that he is not a candidate, as the criminal trials against Donald Trump play out and might he have more influence, have an influence on the race from the sidelines now?

CUPP: No, I mean, as Mike Pence said, it is just not his time and listen, I've known Mike Pence, I've covered Mike Pence for a very long time. Mike Pence came to Congress in 2000 as a deficit hawk. He was eager to cut spending, but he had missed the Republican revolution.

George W. Bush and House Republicans went on to spend trillions. And he said at that time, I was like the frozen man, frozen before the revolution and thawed out after it. It wasn't his time then either and it's not his time. Now, after abandoning his commitment to slash debt and deficits. He went into an administration that blew up the debt and the deficit and did all kinds of things that were anathema to the Mike Pence that I had covered and known.

So for a lot of fiscal conservatives, he abandoned his principles, and for a lot of MAGA Trump voters, you know, he was seen as traitorous for not overturning the democratic election in 2020. So that left no one left for Mike Pence. There are no real other lanes of Republicans for him to get.

So this was sort of baked in the day he decided to join Donald Trump on the ticket in 2016.

BROWN: Do you think this would put more pressure on others to bow out?

CUPP: Listen, I think there is a desire and a feeling like the field must consolidate if it's going to have any chance of, you know, ousting Donald Trump or taking Trump down from the top spot and very few people are willing to do that, even though the writing is pretty clear, and they know that they'll have to shrink the field if any of them are going to have a chance.

And the energy is really with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Everyone below them is real far below, and so it would be a smart thing to do to start shrinking the field.

BROWN: Alright, SE Cupp, thank you so much.

CUPP: Sure.

BROWN: An update now on the deadly mass shooting that killed 18 people in Maine. Authorities say the body of the suspect, 40-year-old, Robert Card was found Friday evening with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound ending a two-day manhunt.

Residents of Lewiston say they are relieved. However, victims like Elizabeth Seal who lost her husband said she has mixed feelings. Here's what she told CNN through a sign language interpreter earlier today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

INTERPRETER FOR ELIZABETH SEAL, WIFE OF SHOOTING VICTIM, JOSHUA SEAL: I wanted him to be found, apprehended. I wanted to ask questions that will not be answered. Why did you do this? What was the motive? Why would you hurt so many families?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has this update on what officials in Maine are saying about a possible motive.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Police releasing more information than they have for several days. They said they're able to do that because the suspect in this case is dead. The shooter is dead.

And so what they tell us is that they're leaning towards mental health issues as one of the motivation behind this shooting. They say that the shooter was hearing voices. He believed that people were talking badly about him at these locations that he targeted.

[19:35:10]

They say they also found a note. And in that note, they didn't describe it as a suicide note, but certainly what this shooter talked about and what he was telling family members sort of gave the impression that when this note was found, that the shooter thought that he'd be dead.

And in that note, he talked about bank accounts -- information for his bank accounts. He talked about his cell phone, the passcode for his cell phone that family members would be able to access, and all of this is happening as law enforcement and the FBI and other law enforcement officials are continuing to pour over the crime scene, gather evidence, they say that's going to go on for several more days.

And then now comes the healing of course for these people, for the victims, and the people who live in this community. That is something we're going to start seeing in the next couple of days as the vigils all across Maine are planned to give an opportunity for the victims, for the families, and for those who have truly suffered in these neighborhoods to get together and share their memories and share their grief.

TAPPER: Our thanks to Shimon Prokupecz for that report.

Tonight, the Israel Defense Forces are now saying that they're aware of 230 hostages held by Hamas. That's one up from 229, two hundred and thirty.

A man desperately waiting for word on his wife and daughter who were kidnapped will join us ahead as our breaking news coverage live from Israel continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [19:40:44]

TAPPER: Moshe Leimberg last spoke to his family on the morning of October 7th when his 17-year-old daughter Mia called to check on his safety shortly after the Hamas rockets attacks began.

His wife, Gabriella and their daughter and their dog were visiting family at kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, a trip that he would have been on if he didn't have the flu, and that call that was -- that was the last time he heard from his wife and daughter.

He later learned that their phones along with the phones of three other relatives were traced back to Gaza.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Moshe Leimberg joins me now here on set and Moshe, first of all, I'm so sorry that we're talking under these circumstances. Twenty-one days, horrible.

I know some of the families that have kidnapped family members, beloved family members in Gaza are feeling very anxious right now, as the military campaign enters its second phase and I'm wondering how you are feeling? Are you worried? Do you wish that the ground campaign were not happening? What's going through your mind?

MOSHE LEIMBERG, DAUGHTER AND WIFE TAKEN HOSTAGE: Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to tell my family's story.

As far as my feelings go, I usually don't like to discuss that because the way I see it, I'm not the story here. I'm not part of the story. But that having been said, I will say that, of course, like all the other families, I'm just as apprehensive. And I try to keep myself busy because this is not something that's within my purview. I have no control over it and I just have to deal.

Yes, so of course, you know, you can't not be apprehensive in a situation like this.

TAPPER: So I'm told this is not what you normally look like. You shaved your head recently. Obviously, we're showing pictures of your beloved wife, Gabriella, and your beloved daughter, 17-year-old. Mia. Why did you shave your head?

LEIMBERG: Well, Mia, she's got -- as you can see from the pictures have very illustrious kind of brown hair and she is very proud of it and she is very sensitive about it.

And one of my fears is that sometimes in these situations, the captors shave the captives' heads. And I know that if that happens to my daughter, she'll take it very hard, it will be very difficult for her. So this is my joining her when she comes home and saying, look, we'll grow -- we will regrow hair together.

TAPPER: You shared a video of your sweet daughter playing with your dog.

LEIMBERG: Yes.

TAPPER: Which we're rolling that now. What do you want people to know about Gabriella and Mia?

LEIMBERG: Well, first of all, thank you for that question because it's a very important one. It's very important that the audience knows that we're talking about human beings here. We're not talking about numbers. We're not talking about statistics, we're talking about actual human beings and they have a very big effect on their surroundings.

So it's not just the families or even their friends at school, but it's society in general and it ripples outwards. Somebody always knows somebody who knows somebody, and it affects everybody.

Now, my wife, she works with young adults, young autistic adults, and they miss her dearly and it affects them in horrible ways because for them, a blow like that is very difficult to cope with. There was a little clip put out by the parents of some of these young adults that was -- where they talked to them and you see the reactions.

And you see, my wife works with both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and all of them had representatives who spoke in this video, and there was a newspaper, a local newspaper article where they discussed this and there was a mother whose daughter was formerly associated with my wife, and when the daughter found out, she started crying hysterically, and they couldn't calm her down for the better part of 48 hours. So this ripples outwards.

My daughter, she has classmates who are completely shattered. I had to go to the school and have them come to my house and talk to them and tell them certain aspects of the situation that we know that give, I can't say a positive light, but you know it's not all doom and gloom, like when the house was investigated by the military authorities.

[19:45:13]

There were no traces of blood or violence other than like a ransacking of the house. So they went without injuries, so that's a very positive and upbeat sign that I like to spread outwards.

My daughter, the kids in her class love her. There is a young woman whose video that the school made and she talks on that video, and she says in English very beautifully that Mia, will have a day where she's depressed or sad. And if she has a friend who is also not having the best of days, she'll go and console them. So she's a very giving and loving child.

When I went to have my hair cut and I spoke to the barber, Mia has a part time job in a stationery store not far from where we live and he said: My God, I was just in that stationery store a couple of days ago, had to get my toner replaced and she went and she ran all over the place, all over the store looking for the toner that he needed and she got it for him. So she just -- she touches everybody. She talks to the neighbors and she tells them how proud she is of one achievement or another. She is taking driving lessons now. And about her job, and I hear them they all say to me, you know, she was just talking to me the other day about this that and she's such a wonderful child.

She takes the dog out for walks regularly, which is not simple with kids that age.

TAPPER: No, I know. I have teenagers of my own.

LEIMBERG: There you go.

TAPPER: It's not necessarily easy to get them to do that.

LEIMBERG: But she does.

TAPPER: And I know that they were visiting your --

LEIMBERG: Sister-in-law.

TAPPER: Your sister-in-law, and you have other family members that are missing.

LEIMBERG: Yes, my -- they were visiting my sister-in-law on kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, which is about three kilometers from the border with Gaza. They were there after a family event in Be'er Sheva, which is further away, and instead of -- on Friday, instead of driving back and forth the same day, my wife wanted to rest up and spend time with her siblings.

So they went to the kibbutz, and they met with my -- well, my sister- in-law was also at the same event. They were there with my sister-in- law and her life partner and my brother-in-law.

So the five of them, and they're all by the way, Argentinian citizens. They were all taken.

TAPPER: All of them.

LEIMBERG: All of them and the dog was with them and we are still looking for her.

TAPPER: All right, Moshe, stay in touch. And obviously, I hope they're all back in your arms soon.

LEIMBERG: Thank you so much.

TAPPER: And you know, it's just not fair. None of this is fair. None of it is fair.

LEIMBERG: Yes. If I can say another word or two.

TAPPER: Yes.

LEIMBERG: It's random. I was supposed to be with them. I had had the flu. So I had to stay home and I couldn't even take care of the dog, so that's why they took her. This can happen to anybody at anytime, anyplace on the planet under different local circumstances, but it can still happen. People need to understand that.

This is several times the magnitude of other events. I don't want to make comparisons. But again, it can happen. This is part of our reality now. So I think it's important that the audience understands that.

And the last thing I would like to say with your kind permission, is that I would like to express my personal gratitude to the president for all of his assistance.

TAPPER: The president of the United States.

LEIMBERG: Yes.

TAPPER: President Biden.

LEIMBERG: President Biden.

TAPPER: Okay, it's okay.

LEIMBERG: Sorry.

TAPPER: He is not your president. He's ours.

LEIMBERG: No.

TAPPER: That's okay.

LEIMBERG: Yes.

TAPPER: All right. We'll be right back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[19:53:07]

TAPPER: Welcome back.

Despite most communications being cut off seemingly intentionally by the IDF, we've tried to keep in contact with some people stuck in in Gaza, Americans, mostly.

Abood Okal is one of them. He's an American from Massachusetts. He was visiting Gaza with his wife and their one-year-old son. He started in northern Gaza and he went to the south that the Israelis told everyone to go to the south near the Rafah border crossing. We've stayed in touch with him. He sent us a voice memo just today, just hours after Israel began launching the heavy airstrikes into Gaza.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ABOOD OKAL, AMERICAN TRAPPED IN GAZA WITH WIFE AND BABY: Last night was the hardest we've experienced so far. It's been a mix of sounds all night between airstrikes, explosions. Probably the most noticeable and scariest of all is the sound of missile whistles that you could hear flying over the house.

And as my wife, Wafa, mentioned yesterday in her update that fear controls us and no matter how strong one can be. The last news we so before the blackout last night was footage of what's basically carpet bombing at night, and the sky has been lit up with red and orange colors from the intensity of these bombings.

Then basically all telecoms and internet was lost completely. So no news since that moment, and we actually went to sleep, not knowing we would wake up in the morning or not given the last footage that we saw,.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: Another clip from Abood, and when you listen to this one, think about how you and your family might have slept last night.

[19:55:04]

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OKAL: We tried to go to sleep last night, but we actually didn't get much of it. The four of us, Wafa, my wife, Yousef, our son and the newest family member that we took in, Milka, the kitten.

We all huddled together, so close so that in case something happens unpredicted, we would all at least face the same fate. We would stay together or basically be gone together.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: We're going to continue to follow Abood Okal's story and behind-the-scenes, we are doing everything we can to get him and his family out.

Coming up next, how the Israeli government explains another night of bombardment in Gaza and Netanyahu's claim that the next phase of this war will be long.

Stay with us.

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