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CNN This Morning

Civilians in Gaza Suffering Under Israeli Bombardment as Military Operations against Hamas Continue; Mark Regev, Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Interviewed about Ongoing Israeli War against Hamas in Gaza. FBI Investigating Reports of Violent Threats to Judges in Trump Case; Harvard's Board Appears to Back Embattled President Claudine Gay. Aired 8-8:30a ET.

Aired December 26, 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]

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: -- this is not a snow maker. This is a rainmaker. And that will be just in time for Wednesday as people try to head home or make their way for their New Year's Eve plans coming up later on this weekend. There's the storm system and its evolution. It's going to be a wet forecast with even more snow for the mountainous regions for the end of the year. Phil, Poppy?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Holiday travelers take note. Derek Van Dam, thank you.

And our coverage continues right now.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Top of the hour. So glad you are with us. Hope you had a nice holiday. It is Tuesday, December 26th. I'm Poppy Harlow with Phil Mattingly in New York. We've got a lot to get to this morning. A source tells CNN Ron Dermer, a very close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to meet with Biden administration officials in Washington today. They are going to focus on the next phase of the war. This comes as Netanyahu vows a, quote, long fight that is far from ending.

MATTINGLY: The FBI says it is working with law enforcement officials in Colorado in the wake of threats made against state Supreme Court justices. Those threats came after they ruled last week that former President Donald Trump's name be removed from the state's 2024 presidential ballot.

HARLOW: After two weeks of no contact, Alexei Navalny's team says they have made contact now with him in a Russian prison that is 2,000 miles away from Moscow. Now the Kremlin critic is speaking out for the first time since he got there.

This hour of CNN THIS MORNING starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): If someone tells you, and they say it all the time, I hear it outside, that we are going to stop the war, that the war is over, the war is not over. It will end in total victory. No less than that. October 7th is not over. It is not over. We have to make sure that it never happens again. This requires what each and every one of you is asking for, just to continue until the end, until the end. And I'm just proud of your determination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That is what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday meeting with Israeli troops. This was his second troop inside of Gaza since the October 7th Hamas attacks. He returned to Israel Monday with a warning that the war against Hamas is far from over. Israel's defense minister calling it now a multi-arena war, saying Israel is being attacked from seven different places.

MATTINGLY: Meanwhile, tensions flaring in the Middle East with President Biden ordering retaliatory airstrikes against the Iranian backed militant group Kata'ib Hezbollah. The strikes came less than 13 hours after he the group took credit for a one way drone attack that wounded three U.S. troops in northern Iraq. And in a separated incident, Iranian officials are vowing revenge after what is an alleged to be an Israeli airstrike killed a high ranking Iranian military advisor in Syria. This as Prime Minister Netanyahu says the Israeli military is, quote, intensifying operations. And now the Hamas-run health ministry reports hundreds of people have been killed in Gaza in just the last 24 hours.

HARLOW: We start our coverage this hour with our Will Ripley. He is live in Tel Aviv with more. It's the middle of the afternoon there, and I wonder what you are hearing about the IDF strike and the destruction at that refugee camp in Gaza.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we had that U.N. resolution that was all about dialing down the temperature of this conflict, and yet right after that resolution was passed, within hours, Israel announced it was intensifying military operation in Gaza. And then we had one of the deadliest weekends we have seen since the begin of this 80-day war. You had more than a dozen IDF soldiers killed, at least 250 people in Gaza who were killed, and these airstrikes in central Gaza, and no sign of this devastation slowing down anytime soon.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

RIPLEY: Under the constant buzz of Israeli drones, Palestinians in Gaza once again dig through the rubble with bare hands. This is not a rescue mission. What they find remains of loved ones crushed under a collapsed building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): My nieces and nephews, they were all displaced. They fled the day before yesterday. It was their fate to be martyred here in their uncle's house. My nieces, Layan (ph), Lana (ph), and Runna (ph), and my nephew, Hamada (ph). Hamada (ph) was only three months old. They are still under the rubble.

RIPLEY: It's one of the deadliest 24 hours in Gaza in a war approaching its 80th day. The Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry says 250 people died in Israeli airstrikes. On the Al-Maghazi camp in nearby Bureij and Nuseirat since the start of Christmas Eve. CNN cannot independently verify the numbers released by the ministry in Gaza. Responding to CNN questions, the IDF said, "In response to Hamas' barbaric attacks, the IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities."

[08:05:00]

IDF refers to Hamas's surprise attack against Israel on October 7th. They killed at least 1,200 people and roughly 240 hostages kidnapped. Video obtained by CNN shows families still digging through the debris for missing relatives, some saying they are still buried under the concrete slabs of collapsed buildings.

"Children, children, children, innocent children," he says. This man says he lost 10 members of his family, and over the collapsed building he bids farewell to his beloved Deena (ph), the 10-year-old he says was the playful one.

In the mangle of debris, glimpses of the lives that sought safety from one place in Gaza to the other. It's up to the neighbors to find the bodies of the families trapped beneath. The injured rushed to al-Aqsa hospital through the night. The hospital already struggling with an influx of injuries and bodies from other airstrikes. By daylight, the community came together for the ritual of mourning. Bodies were what remained, readied for burial.

"I was waiting for you to grow up," he says. The family moved from one shelter to another in pursuit of safety, this man says. "My eldest son." Around every corner, families grappling with the scale of the loss.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): My daughter Amaya (ph) was martyred. My five brothers, their children and their wives, all gone. They were displaced from Beit Hanoun. There were 96 people in that building. All gone.

RIPLEY: Survivors of previous airstrikes come to the aid of the new survivors. Khalid (ph) lost his grandchildren last month.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This is utmost criminality. We are in festivities celebrating Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. People talk about human rights, mercy, the security council, the Red Cross and humanity. Where are these human rights?

RIPLEY: That is the question Gazans keep asking. Where is safe?

(END VIDEO TAPE)

RIPLEY: That is the question that so many in Gaza are asking right now, and they're also asking other questions, like where will their next meal come from? The food situation in Gaza is so dire this morning, Poppy, that all 2 million plus people living there are suffering from acute food insecurity, which means in the coming weeks and months the very real possibility if they don't die in an airstrike or they don't die from a bullet, they could very die from starvation if something isn't done to to help them.

HARLOW: All 2 million of them, wow. Will Ripley, thank you for the reporting from Tel Aviv.

MATTINGLY: And joining us now, senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev. Ambassador Regev, we appreciate your time this morning. I want to start with what we heard from the prime minister yesterday and also what he wrote in "The Wall Street Journal" editorial pages, making clear that the offensive, in his words, isn't close to finished, and then laying out his prerequisites for peace. They included destroying Hamas, demilitarizing and deradicalizing Gaza. How close are you to attaining these three goals at this point in time?

MARK REGEV, SENIOR ADVISER TO ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We are not there yet, but every day we are getting closer. In the northern Gaza Strip where our campaign started earlier where we're seeing the Hamas military machine crack. We are seeing more and more Hamas terrorists voluntarily surrender to the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. We're seeing Israeli control over the ground the there. And I think it's only a matter of time before we have victory there in the north.

In the south, we started later, as you know, only in November. That'll take a touch longer. But we will see victory there, too. And it must be understood that destroying Hamas is a prerequisite for a better future both for Israelis and Palestinians. You won't have a demilitarized and de-radicalized Gaza without first destroying Hamas. You can't have reconstruction in Gaza, rebuilding the lives of people without first getting rid of Hamas.

MATTINGLY: I think the primary question I've heard from some officials in reading the opinion piece was the third prerequisite of deradicalizing Gaza. What is your threshold for that? How do you have metrics for that? How do you ever achieve that, particularly in the wake of an offensive campaign that led to the deaths of what the health ministry -- Hamas health ministry, says is more than 20,000?

REGEV: So we think it can be done and we think that the fact that Hamas is brought this terrible war upon us all, has brought about all this destruction and death, that that would create an atmosphere for Hamas's path of radicalism, of extremism, of fanaticism, that will be discredited in the eyes of many Gazans.

[08:10:04]

And just after victories in the Second World War in places like Japan and Nazi Germany led to deradicalization and those countries are now healthy democracies, we believe something similar can happen in Gaza. And I'd remind you that there have been countries in the Middle East, in the Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia, countries like Emirates, where in the past you had a more radical tradition. There were even connections between Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda in the past, and so forth. Those countries themselves have gone through a process of deradicalization, and today they are moderate countries, open-looking countries, countries that want to embrace the modern world. And I think the Gazans can learn for the experience of their Arab brothers and sisters.

MATTINGLY: Those are nations that I think also, if you were speaking to go them privately, would say they have no issues with Hamas being dismantled and removed from Gaza, and yet where are they right now? We don't see them making public statements in support of Israel. We see them calling and condemning some of the actions taken. Where are those nations now?

REGEV: So I think everything depends on us winning this war, and we will win this war. But once Hamas is defeated, many things that today seem impossible will become very possible. Once Hamas is defeated and the world will be discussing building something new in Gaza, I am sure there will be many partners, many partners in the Arab world as well. And ultimately, it's obvious that getting rid of Hamas is good for the people of Israel. Hamas is a brutal and horrific enemy that has committed the most terrible violence against innocent civilians. But people forget that Hamas has also been a curse for the people of Gaza. They have been ruling Gaza for 16 years. And what have they brought the people of Gaza besides poverty, hardship, and misery? The people of Gaza also deserve a government that actually, actually cares about them.

MATTINGLY: Ron Dermer, a close advisor and confidante to the prime minister, who is scheduled to be in D.C. today meeting with White House officials. At the time the White House officials are asking for the scale and the intensity to be ratcheted down, which seems to be different from the message from the prime minister. What are those conversations expected to yield?

REGEV: So we have been having really good conversations with the administration since this crisis erupted October 7th. A close friend of mine said he has never seen the level of dialogue with the United States as close, as intensive as it is to now. And as you've heard repeatedly, we and the United States share common goals. Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself against this Hamas terror threat. Israel and the United States want to see Hamas destroyed. We want to see a new reality in the Gaza Strip. We can have different discussions on this technical issue or that technical issue. We listen very attentively to whatever Washington says, and I believe they listen carefully to whatever we say to them. But ultimately, we are on the same side of this. We want to see Hamas destroyed.

MATTINGLY: Before I let you go, Ambassador, the Iranian officials have alleged that Israel was behind a strike that took out an IRGC leader in Syria. They have also vowed retaliation. One, is there truth to the fact that Israeli forces were behind it, and, two, are you prepared for whatever retaliation may come that is being pledged not just by Iran but by their proxies?

REGEV: So it's clear that Iran is a major problem here. Iran not only present in Syria but they're present in Lebanon through their proxy Hezbollah, they're present in Gaza through their proxy Hamas. They pay for some 93 percent of Hamas's military machine. And of course, we have seen them present in the Red Sea interrupting international shipping, piracy on the high seas paid for by Iran and sponsored by Iran through its proxy, the Houthis. The Houthis couldn't do anything without their Iranian logistics support. So Iran is everyone's problem. It's Israel's problem. It's America's probably. It's the problem of everyone who wants to see peace and prosperity here in the Middle East.

MATTINGLY: But specifically, were Israeli forces behind the strike that took out this IRCG official?

REGEV: I cannot comment on that specifically. I can say generally, anyone involved in terrorist attacks against Israelis, they can expect that we will find them.

MATTINGLY: Mark Regev, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you, sir.

REGEV: Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: To the FBI. It's now joining an investigation into threats made against justices on Colorado's Supreme Court following their ruling that disqualifies Trump from the GOP primary ballot. What we're learning there those threats, that's ahead.

MATTINGLY: And Kremlin critic and prisoner Alexei Navalny is back on the radar after nearly a two-week disappearance. What he is now saying about his relocation to an arctic prison known as Polar Wolf. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:44]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back.

After that unprecedented ruling in Colorado last week taking GOP frontrunner Donald Trump off the ballot in the primary in 2024, the FBI is now investigating violent threats made against those state Supreme Court justices that were in the majority on that decision writing: "We vigorously will pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation."

Now, CNN reporting finds those posts are similar to posts of violent language that came after the federal indictments of Trump, but do not detail specific acts or threats.

With us now, our CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller.

What do you know? What's your reporting on how concerning these threats are?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, very concerning. You've got the combination of the Colorado State Patrol who is

responsible for protecting those judges in state buildings. The Denver Police, which is also involved in this case and the FBI, working on increasing security around those judges.

Now, this was a four to three split decision. Some of the threats are directed against the judges in the Supreme Court of Colorado in general, some against specific individuals, but Poppy these can be difficult cases to investigate after you increase security because, you know, in these message boards, if you post, you know, I hope they all die, under the law, that's not considered a threat.

[08:20:14]

If you say, I'm planning to go and kill one of them, that is a threat. So they're sorting through the threat and the language.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Given that dynamic, how can they shift their posture as they are trying to sort through things in a way that they feel like, we will have been better prepared should something happen?

MILLER: Well, I think the first thing is increasing security, which they've done and are continuing to evaluate.

The second thing is, you know, you -- and I've been through these investigations before many times in the New York City Police Department. We have a specific -- have a specific threat squad that does threat assessments, and then they'll send people out and interview these people and they'll assess the person who posted it.

And sometimes they'll say, well, I didn't mean that or I was drawn -- or I was angry. Sometimes they'll say we're going to take this investigation a step further. And in another case, they can make an arrest.

But you have to take them seriously. Look at judge Esther Salas in New Jersey who had an individual show up at her home shoot her husband, killed her teenage son. Look at Judge Roemer in Juneau, Wisconsin, who had an individual in one of his cases came to his home after the fact and killed him.

Threats against judges in this country have skyrocketed between 2016, and I think 2018, they doubled last year for federal judges, just federal judges, that's 2.700 federal judges. There were 4,500 threats that were serious enough to merit investigation by the United States Marshals.

HARLOW: That's an incredible number, 4,500 against judges.

What is driving it? The increase in anger, the increase of threats, and also the increase in deadly violence against judges?

MILLER: Well, a couple of factors. Number one, there is the perceived anonymity for persons making threats of the internet, of social media. It's not like you're calling up the judge's office in most of these

cases and saying, I'm going to kill Judge Smith. But when you're in these message boards, and you're using a handle or a screen name, that's not your true name, and the conversation gets going.

And I saw this in the first criminal indictment in Manhattan, where they started threatening the prosecutor, the Manhattan DA, where they started threatening the judge. But beyond that, the gasoline on the fire is when you have Donald Trump, a former president of the United States, making vivid, vitriolic personal attacks on prosecutors, on judges, calling them names that adds gasoline to the fire in these chat rooms and people feel they're being called on.

The problem is for authorities is sorting out the noise from who the real player is going to be who might show up and do something. I mean, you look at the Nancy Pelosi case where an individual showed up at her home in San Francisco, a home invasion, assaulted her husband, someone who was not on the radar screen and comes out of the woodwork.

So these are difficult cases.

MATTINGLY: Yes. No question about it.

John Miller, we appreciate it. Thank you.

MILLER: Thank you.

MATTINGLY: And new this morning, Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny issuing his first message from the remote Siberian prison he was transferred to telling his supporters that "He is fine."

His lawyer visited the jailed activist on Monday at a prison known as Polar Wolf in the Russian Arctic, more than 2,000 miles from Moscow.

Navalny has been missing since December 11th just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his re-election plans. Navalny sent out a series of tweets today, one of which read: "Anyway, don't worry about me. I'm fine. I'm totally relieved that I finally made it."

HARLOW: Ahead, Harvard pressure mounting there from some after the president was accused of plagiarism again, also being criticized for her handling of antisemitism on campus and key faculty just had a meeting with top school officials. We'll update you on that ahead.

MATTINGLY: And it's been six months after the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions, how some Black high school students are navigating the new college application process, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:57]

MATTINGLY: Well, Harvard's board appears to be backing its embattled president, Claudine Gay, as the university faces a series of issues including calls for her resignation. Now, some members of Harvard's faculty and the university's top governing body held a meeting last week to address problems on campus.

The university's newspaper, "The Harvard Crimson" reports that no one discussed Gay's removal.

Now earlier this month, Gay and other university presidents struggled to say explicitly calling for the genocide of Jews on campus would violate school rules.

Now, Gay has been facing calls to step down since that disastrous hearing and her handling of antisemitism on campus. She also faces allegations of plagiarism and the university is seeing a number of applications plummet.

CNN's Omar Jimenez joins us right now.

In terms of this meeting, in terms of what the actual path forward is for Claudine Gay, what do we know at this point?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so right now from my understanding, there seems to have been a meeting to talk about a range of issues, so including rising antisemitism on campus, including the plagiarism allegations, but also following application rates, also how they're going to deal with the recent Supreme Court ruling when it comes to affirmative action as well, so a lot of things on the table.

And a former dean of Harvard Medical School, who was at this dinner told CNN, it was a very cordial and frank discussion with the members of the Harvard Corporation, which is essentially the main governing body for Harvard.

And all that said, while the board members did face a grilling according to "The New York Times," no one pressed for the explicit removal of Claudine Gay according to "The Crimson," which is what Harvard pointed us to, and we reached out for comment.

HARLOW: What about this deadline, which is this Friday for this House probe on antisemitism at some of these schools? What is Harvard expected to say and do and where does this go?

MATTINGLY: Yes, so this is a House probe that obviously it goes back to early December when the university presidents were on Capitol Hill testifying disastrous as many people described it.

So it started with antisemitism. Since then, it has expanded to now include plagiarism allegations. You see some of the timeline on your screen there based on where we are right now, and so now the House Education Committee is asking the university among other things to provide how they've handled instances of plagiarism in the past when it comes to students and other faculty because they essentially want to compare -- want to see if they're holding their students to the same account that they're holding their president and that deadline again this Friday.

HARLOW: Okay, Omar, thanks for the reporting on both fronts appreciate it.

[08:30:20]