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Arab Leaders Cancel Meetings with President Biden as He Flies to Israel to Meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Israel Claims Explosion that Destroyed Hospital in Gaza Caused by Rocket Misfire from Palestinian Militants; U.S. Solidarity; At Least 17 Journalists Killed in Gaza Fighting. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 18, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: It is the top of the hour. We're so glad you're with us on this breaking news this morning. I'm Poppy Harlow with Phil Mattingly in New York.

Erin Burnett, Clarissa Ward, our Kaitlan Collins all live in Israel where President Biden is on the ground right now vowing to support Israel as its war with Hamas takes quite a turn.

Outrage and protests across the Arab world after the explosion at a hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Officials in Gaza claim it was an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military insists it was a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian militants right near the hospital. CNN has geolocated, look at this, this video. This is the moment of blast.

This morning President Biden appearing to take Israel's side. Listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I have seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there's a lot of people out there who are not sure. So we have to overcome a lot of things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Shortly before President Biden landed in Israel, the Israeli military laid out evidence blaming the explosion on the Islamic Jihad militant group, including intercepted audio of Hamas operatives allegedly talking about the misfired rocket.

Despite Israel's denials, a wave of anti-Israel, anti-American, pro- Palestinian protests have erupted across the Middle East. In Lebanon, hundreds of protestors tried to break through security barriers near the U.S. embassy. Police fired teargas and water cannons to drive them away.

HARLOW: We have team coverage across Israel and across the region.

Erin Burnett joins us live in Tel Aviv. Erin, the president, President Biden, has flown into an incredibly volatile situation and a very different set of meetings than he expected even 24 hours ago.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Certainly very different, right. He was thinking he would be able to meet with both Israelis and the Arab countries at the center of this. Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan as well as El Sisi of Egypt. That meeting, of course, canceled.

And obviously, I know Kaitlan is with the president and will talk about what actually he can achieve. But it is these protests across the region that have now risen the stakes. The stakes have gone up and up, and those protests are going continue even today in Tunisia during the day. They started last night around 11:00 p.m. Eastern in Beirut, in Amman, in Baghdad. We have seen them.

As you say, Phil, they are anti-Israel, they are pro-Palestine, and they are increasingly in some cases also anti-American, which is just proof of how closely President Biden is now tied to this.

Of course, historically -- of course, always in perception. But showing up at this moment and only meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu with that great embrace certainly adds to an image that the United States, as Biden says, has Israel's back and is inextricably linked to whatever Israel does next.

And as we are waiting on Biden to speak, Kaitlan, that is what is at stake. And I know he has been in these closed-door meetings, made some comments in between. Where are we in his meetings right now?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, just to remind everyone what has transpired here since President Biden got on the ground, which he has only been here for a few hours. He's only going to be here in total for a few hours. This is not a very lengthy trip for him.

Right now, he is still meeting with the wartime cabinet, that is that new cabinet that has been formed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. They, of course, are talking. One thing that the president came here to find out which is what Israel's objectives are going to be in the war. What is it going to look like if Israel does go into Gaza, what are their stated goals.

Those were the tough questions that the White House said President Biden was going to have for his friend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while he is here on the ground.

We will see what that look like, but of course, the other thing that is complicated what was already a challenging trip for this White House is that explosion at the hospital in Gaza.

And just to set the scene for our viewers, it had not been that long that President Biden had been here on the ground. He had greeted Prime Minister Netanyahu. He had embraced him in a hug. And then he came here, and almost one of his first remarks was about the explosion, where he embraced Israel's denials. He said that based on what he has seen, he said it was, quote, "the other team, not you." And when he said "not you," obviously, that was a reference to Prime Minister Netanyahu who was sitting next to him.

We know the IDF has blamed a Palestinian militant group for this, a terrorist group. That is who they say is to blame. Of course, authorities in Gaza have said it is the Israeli Defense Forces that is to blame. That is something that Israel has strongly denied here, and President Biden siding with Israel in that.

Now, we have asked the White House, is it evidence that he saw, what was it made him buy into those denials. They have not yet clarified that statement. But it is an important one that he was making. And then of course, Netanyahu himself later denied it.

[08:05:07]

That is an undertone, though, for this entire trip, because, as you noted, it has changed what this trip is going to look like. There is no follow visit to Jordan. And I should note, you can see a lectern here behind me. President Biden will be here once he finishes up with his meetings today, making remarks, and we will see, of course, what is the culmination of this historic visit of which I should note Netanyahu said he is the first U.S. president to ever visit Israel while Israel was at war.

BURNETT: All right. And of course, we are going to await that. Kaitlan is in the room and we'll hear it and bring all of that to us.

The blast on hospital in Gaza that disrupted this trip and changed the trajectory of this story, sparking mass protests across the region and raising huge question marks about where this goes from here. In Jordan, local security forces were seen using tear gas to disburse huge crowds. Those crowds were gathering near the Israeli embassy, that was in Amman.

I want to go to our chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward in Ashkelon, south of here in Israel. And Clarissa, this tragic blast at the hospital in Gaza, it is -- and history, of course, will show what other points come. But at this moment this is an inflection point in this war.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is an inflection point. I think that the hope of President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was that they were going to be able to announce some kind of a tangible deliverable in terms of humanitarian aid, opening up a corridor, opening up potentially humanitarian zones as Blinken had talked about.

There is no longer a strong sense that that's going to be imminently feasible. The fact that President Biden has had his meetings with the Egyptian leader, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, and also with the Jordanian king canceled means it becomes all the more challenging to see how on earth there can be any kind of consensus built around how to deal with the humanitarian catastrophe that is playing out in Gaza.

And as the world is kind of arguing back and forth, he said, she said, and finger-pointing, I do think it bears reminding our viewers that the situation there is at absolute crisis point. The hospitals are no longer functioning. We have been talking to doctors who are performing operations without anesthesia.

We have been talking to aid workers to the U.N. who say no water, no electricity, only enough food to potentially last four or five more days. The U.N. says 600,000 people displaced from their homes in northern Gaza in the last -- well, since Friday, since the announcement was made that by Israelis that people in northern Gaza should leave their homes.

Meanwhile, you have seen strikes continuing in southern Gaza, making it frightening for people to leave their homes because they don't feel that there is anywhere where they can find refuge or respite.

And I would say now we hear strikes continuing throughout the day. Very little prospect from any side on kind of budging on sitting down at the table and taking a collective deep breath and trying to work together to deliver something in the form of respite for the people who are trapped in there. Many foreign nationals also trapped in there, I should add.

The U.S. embassy in Cairo estimates more than 250 Americans who have been camped out by that Rafah border crossing now, Erin, for days on end trying desperately to get out.

But with the situation, with these inflamed tensions, with these protests, of course, you have to take into account that for Arab leaders right now it is very difficult to sit down and meet with President Biden if they can't offer some guarantee or something that they can then show to their people and say, look, see, we are fighting for the Palestinians as well.

So it becomes a really complex issue, a very dangerous potential inflection point, and the risk, as always, as we have talked about many times with this conflict of this becoming a broader regional conflagration, Erin.

BURNETT: Yes, and Clarissa is talking about those explosions. And you see the smoke over Gaza. Just to show it again, and we continue to show it when we see it so that everyone understands the constant state of bombardment that Gaza is over.

Clarissa talked about some of those Americans, one of them in touch with her family whenever she can given the power issues at a place of the U.N. compound. Sometimes it's once every 24 hours, saying that -- looking where we are right now, that would be two days of water left. And that's the U.N.

To give you a sense of the fact that this isn't just a humanitarian crisis, it is a humanitarian crisis that could become something even bigger and even worse, and we are hours away. Something must be done. And Clarissa Ward, thank you so much, in Ashkelon. Phil, back to you. [08:10:03]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: And Erin, Clarissa mentioning the acute difficulty, complexity that comes on the diplomatic side of things right now between the president and those canceled meetings with Arab leaders. An accelerant to that difficulty, that complexity, obviously, was the blast the hospital in Gaza.

Now, at this moment in time we have seen from the IDF their rationale for why they were not responsible. Obviously, you have seen the protests as well of people in the Arab world that don't believe that.

CNN has now geolocated video that shows the moment of the deadly hospital blast in Gaza. I'm going to pull it up here because as you can see, as this video plays, the sky, it lights up as a large blast erupts right there on the hospital grounds. It sends a huge crowd of smoke in the air.

It's important to note, CNN at this point cannot independently verify what caused the blast. We are working on that. But I do want to bring in CNN military analyst Lieutenant General Mark Hertling here with me at the magic wall.

When you see that in isolation, one of the things we have heard repeatedly from officials that are pointing to the IDF say no rocket could make an explosion that big, what do you see there?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: First, well, start off by saying, Phil, I've heard the expression "fog of war" about 100 times so far this morning. I'm not a bomb analyst. Neither are you. But what you see here is a very large, fiery explosion. That's not usually something that comes with a guided bomb from an aircraft.

What it seems to be -- and this is just really conjecture on my part -- is a rocket that still has fuel onboard. That's the indicator, the fuel propellant that pushes a rocket forward. When it hit the ground, the rocket exploded like they always do when they hit, but there was a lot of fuel in that rocket, too, because it had fallen out of the sky. So you see a very large blast, a fiery blast in a parking lot.

MATTINGLY: To this point, and I think this has been one of the pieces of information that we have heard from IDF officials and their view, or their -- the evidence they are presenting, which the president, President Biden, seems to agree with at this point, and that is what you are saying right now the trajectory, right, what they are showing based on their radar footage, these are rocket launches or rocket strikes headed towards Israel, and this is where the hospital was. So the idea this was a malfunction of some sort, how often does that happen? Is that something that happens with regularity?

HERTLING: With the kind of rockets that Hamas has or the Jihadist union has, yes, it happens a lot. They are shipped primarily from Iran. They are not good rockets. They are four different types. They go different distances. There are a lot of rocket failures. And Israel has said they have seen a lot of rocket failures, over 400 of them so far.

So when you see one fall out of the sky like that, it's because the engine cuts off. They are not precision rockets. They are fired out of the back of literally a box. So in this particular one you see a series of rockets coming out of a point of origin. That's where the rockets allegedly were fired from. There are about six or seven lines. That means they are going in different trajectories. This is the one that is right over the hospital, and there is another film of a rocket going up, the engine cutting off, and then seconds later you see that explosion on the ground that you just showed.

MATTINGLY: The other issue, and I think this is one that I have been -- that struck me, because you heard the IDF officials talk about it, is the craters. The location of where the rocket landed or where the explosion happened and the scale of both where it hit compared to the hospital, not on the hospital directly, but also what it created or what the kind of blast radius was compared to Israeli footage showing this is what a crater supposed to look like in one of our strikes. This does not have that. Does that track for you?

HERTLING: It does. This is the hospital building, as a satellite imagery. This is a parking lot. When we see the cars in that parking lot, most of them are burned. Not all of them. There is not kind of the blast that you would expect from a very large bomb like that coming off an aircraft. It looks more like a lot of fire, a lot of burning, some shrapnel against the building. Again, this is the parking lot. That's the explosion outside.

So evidence seems indicate, and these are facts that don't counter emotions. What we have been seeing back and forth all morning long is the emotions on both sides. Hey, we've got the facts versus the opinion. That's warfare. Unfortunately, that's what always happens in war. You have to contend with it.

MATTINGLY: Yes, and I think one of the big questions President Biden will face after he is done with his meetings when he comes to speak, if he takes any questions during his remarks, is what made him conclude based on these issues that you are laying out whether U.S. intelligence has an assessment, we don't know yet.

HERTLING: I would venture to say that U.S. intelligence has additive intelligence to what --

MATTINGLY: To this. And we know that they had obtained, or the Israelis have passed over their intelligence as well. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, appreciate, thank you. Poppy?

[08:15:00]

HARLOW: So, with us now at the desk, Editor and Foreign Affairs Columnist for Bloomberg, Bobby Ghosh. Bobby, thanks very much for being here. I want to start with something that we just heard from one of our foreign policy analysts, Rula Jabal, who has so much experience in the region.

She said this sadly could become America's war. This is what President Biden is trying to prevent, what do you think when you hear that as he's there?

BOBBY GHOSH, EDITOR AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST FOR BLOOMBERG: Well, certainly that will be the perception of a lot of people that we've seen in the street scenes that you've been showing in the past couple of hours, that that would be the perception.

The fact that Biden's there at this moment seems to be giving the perception that he's giving Israel cover to do what happened last night, even if that is not the president's intention. It will be seen as America's war, but Biden has the opportunity to make it America's peace.

HARLOW: How?

GHOSH: If he can lean into Netanyahu that private conversation they're having as we speak here off camera and persuade Netanyahu to hold off on a ground offensive, to allow humanitarian aid go in. It might just it's still a very, very heavy lift, but it might just show that the United States is not there just to back up Israel, but also to try to bring a resolution to the conflict to give the people of Gaza a break.

HARLOW: Get that humanitarian aid in. Yes, you need Israel for some of the crossings, you also need Egypt.

GHOSH: Egypt is waiting, we've also seen images of those convoys of humanitarian aid waiting at the border. Egypt's made it clear they're not going to take these people; they're not going to take the Palestinian refugees. But they're ready to help, and the United States has been leaning on Egypt to help.

Now it's up to Israel substantially to allow that possibility to take a break from the shelling of Palestinian targets, to allow people to leave, or to allow aid to come in. That's basically, I suspect, what Biden's pushing for right now. Whether he can persuade Bibi Netanyahu is another question. The blood is up in Israel for very good reasons.

People are still reeling from the shock of what happened two Saturdays ago. The images even now, there are fresh images emerging of what those Hamas people did, those terrorists did when they were in southern Israel. Israelis are seeing those images, and they want something to be done about it, which is not an unreasonable position to take.

HARLOW: And that's exactly what we have been hearing all morning from Aaron in Tel Aviv, from Clarissa in Ashkelon. A real need among the Israeli people for vengeance, for revenge, for what happened to them, for this attack. Why would Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold back from that?

GHOSH: Every instinct that he has will be telling him not to hold back. On the contrary, to lean into the fight, to send in those ground troops. That's why it's such a heavy lift for Biden. Biden's going to have to press him, perhaps using the example of what happened in this country, our response to 9/11, and then the problem of going into Afghanistan without a long-term plan. Biden's going to have to use the United States as a cautionary tale

rather than as an example of what to do. It has to be an example of what not to do after you've been hit by such a horrific act of terror.

HARLOW: Bobby Ghosh, thank you for the analysis.

MATTINGLY: President Biden remains behind closed doors with Israel's war cabinet, but he is expected to speak with victims of last week's Hamas attacks, as well as families of hostages still held by Hamas. After that meeting, they're desperately searching for answers about their loved ones.

We're going to speak to a man whose son is one of the 14 Americans who remain unaccounted for, that's next.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: With President Biden on the ground reaffirming U.S. support for Israel and Tel Aviv, the families of the hostages held by Hamas continue the agonizing wait for updates on their loved ones. Our next guest spoke to President Biden last week about his son, Sagui Dekel- Chen.

He's one of the 14 Americans who remain unaccounted for following the Hamas terror attack. His family says Sagui was last seen on October 7 after rushing his pregnant wife and two daughters into a bomb shelter while they attempted to guard his kibbutz near the Gaza border.

Joining us now, is Sagui's father Jonathan Dekel-Chen. He's a history professor at Hebrew University at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jonathan, we appreciate your time. You spoke to President Biden last week. I think afterward you said the conversation made you proud to be an American. What do you want to hear from the President today when he speaks in Tel Aviv?

JONATHAN DEKEL-CHEN, FATHER OF ISRAELI-AMERICAN PRESUMED TO BE KIDNAPPED: Well, I would hope that when he's speaking today with Prime Minister Netanyahu, that there'll be a renewed commitment and rock- solid commitment that I believe that the President has to doing everything possible while Israel pursues its other war aims to keep the hostages as safe as possible and to do everything that can be done within this ongoing conflict to get them home safely.

Or at the very least, show some signs of life for everyone but one of these hostages. It's important for us I think I can speak here for all of the hostages, Americans and all of the other nationalities, Israelis included, that we understand what needs to be done with Hamas overall, but we absolutely need for the wellbeing of our loved ones to be prioritized.

We know that's true for President Biden, and it would be good to get some reassurance from our own government.

HARLOW: We're looking at pictures while we talk to you, Jonathan, of Sagui, your son, and he and his wife are parents to a six-year-old and a three-year-old, as I understand it. She's also pregnant with the third daughter. And they endured horror, absolute horror during that attack for the better part of 20 hours.

And I wonder just obviously you are comforting them through this time, but how are they coping?

DEKEL-CHEN: Well, my daughter in line, are two beautiful little girls, are like all of the other survivors from our kibbutz and I imagine all of the other border communities. They're utterly traumatized, they experienced death right outside their door.

[08:25:00]

They heard their father, their husband, in hand-to-hand combat with Hamas terrorists. When they walked out that door, they saw bodies everywhere and the kibbutz around them, this cooperative farm burnt to the ground, I guess, are doing as well as they can.

The community, of course, is rallying around them. They're strong, but it's kind of incomprehensible between the unknowns about their father and the fact that all of us have no homes to go back to, nor any property. Everything's looted from our people.

It's from the smallest toys to the largest tractors.

MATTINGLY: I think incomprehensible is such a kind of perfect word to describe the horrors and the experiences, because I don't think anybody could ever imagine that this could happen, at least broadly on the ground. Is this something you could have ever foreseen?

DEKEL-CHEN: Even in my worst dreams, to be honest, I've been part of the security team, civilian security team. And that's really important to emphasize. These border communities, it's a bunch of farmers. These are civilians, we did have security teams, civilian security teams, because we live in a hostile region with a terrorist organization that is the government in the Gaza Strip.

But this sort of scenario was never, ever on the table. And in any case, our army, the IDF, was supposed to come and relieve us after a few minutes of engaging terrorists, and it took 9 hours. It argued there are different counts, but we're about in the middle.

9 hours of the destruction of our community, the murder of dozens, and the abduction of dozens back to Gaza.

HARLOW: Jonathan, it was just a couple of years ago that you wrote this in the Times of Israel. This was during several days of unrest that left hundred dead. You wrote, "For the sake of my children and the children of Gaza, I hope for peace in their lifetimes, even if the past two decades of bloodshed make optimism difficult."

What about now? Do you hang on to that hope, even now?

DEKEL-CHEN: I hang on to that hope because there's no alternative. I don't want my grandchildren. I've kind of given up on my children, but I have ten wonderful grandchildren, some of them deeply traumatized. Right now. I can't give up hope. But what I do know what I do know is that my family and the country as a whole and the people of Gaza overall, will have no peace, not even a chance, not even a remote chance of peace as long as Hamas remains the governing authority in Gaza.

And so just for the sake of hope, if anyone had any doubt before this past Saturday or two Saturdays ago that Hamas was anything other than a savage terrorist organization set on only murdering Jews and destroying our country, then there's no more gray area, sadly.

But I believe that a grandfather my age in Gaza who's not a member of Hamas wants more or less the same thing for his grandchildren. And I just have to believe that if the government of Israel and the people of Gaza have an opportunity to look each other in the eye, truly, without the flawed leadership on both sides, to be honest with you, then for our grandchildren, there might be a chance.

HARLOW: Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. Our hearts are obviously with you and the safe return we are all hoping for of your son.

DEKEL-CHEN: Thank you, I appreciate your time.

MATTINGLY: We also want to take a moment this morning to remember the 17 journalists who have lost their lives so far reporting on the Israel Hamas war. The Committee to Protect Journalists says eight more have been injured and it's believed three are either missing or detained. 13 of the journalists were Palestinian, three were Israeli, one was Lebanese.

HARLOW: Sherif Mansour, the Middle East program coordinator for the committee, says, quote "Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heartbreaking conflict. All parties must take steps to ensure their safety."

It is not just their physical safety that is of concern. One of our colleagues, CNN journalist in Gaza, says conditions there are unlivable. The water is undrinkable.

Again, that is our colleague Ibrahim, who is trying to flee with his family and his young children. Our sincerest thanks and appreciation to all the journalists in the field.

[08:30:00]