Former MMA fighter, Green Beret, and founder of humanitarian rescue organization SaveOurAllies, Tim Kennedy, detailed the reality of what’s going on in Israel and the Gaza Strip on the latest episode of the Ben Shapiro hosted “The Sunday Special.”
Discussing the current conflict, Shapiro noted that Palestinian civilians were crossing the border on October 7 “and taking part in the massacre and taking part in the atrocities.”
“The attempt to create moral equivalence between what Hamas did and what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip is astonishing. I can see that as a commentator,” Shapiro continued. “But you obviously have the military expertise and military experience. You’ve been in these situations. What exactly is it that Israel is facing in the Gaza Strip?”
Kennedy, who was on the ground in Israel in the days following the October 7 attack for rescue operations, explained to Shapiro that Israel’s task of taking out an insurgency, and the way they are doing it, is “historically nearly impossible” due to the nature of the terrorists’ actions.
“What we see Israel trying to do right now is identify military targets that are in Gaza, that are the Hamas terrorist organization,” the decorated veteran said. “We don’t want to just leave October 7 as the standalone thing that has happened because that’s intellectually inaccurate and historically wrong. Hamas has a long history of attacking Israel on countless occasions — not just intifadas, not just big assaults and attacks and the things that we saw on October 7, and terrorist attacks. But it has been a constant execution of this long plan of trying to incite Israel so they’ll lose in a propaganda battle.”
“Israel is trying to do the right thing, they’re just doing it the wrong way, and this is just my opinion,” Kennedy explained. “They are trying to limit as many civilian casualties with a group that are intentionally hiding amongst civilians, and a populist that, frankly, is sympathetic to Hamas.”
“When Hamas was returning from the attacks to the Palestinians, into Gaza, what we saw was rejoicing in the streets,” he continued. “They were excited about the success of the attack. They were getting constant updates inside of Gaza. And you can find the videos, you don’t have to trust my word. You can go and look at the Palestinians rejoicing at the death of 1400 people, taking out 200 captives; the rape, torture, and murder of children and Holocaust survivors. It’s atrocious.”
“And Israel now has to go block by block, door by door, fighting an embedded insurgency,” he explained. “And they’re trying to do it in a way that is acceptable to the world. And that’s the problem right there, Ben.”
Kennedy went on to explain the difficulty of current battles between democratic nations like the U.S. and Israel and insurgencies, such as what we see in the Gaza Strip.
“We’re not going to be able to fight the state-on-state thing that we so desperately have been wanting to fight,” Kennedy said. “The last time America was truly a dominant aggressor in a war was in WWII. Since then, we have not really decidedly won any wars. And it’s because of what’s happening here in Gaza — it’s a perfect example of it. They’re not fighting by the rules that Israel is fighting by. They’re hiding in hospitals, they’re hiding behind women, they’re intentionally taking their military equipment and positioning it at schools. These are the things that terrorist organizations and insurgencies do. And these are not the things that a proper military would do.”
“So it’s a hard battle, and every time that you try to take a block, you’re of course going to incur civilian casualties, because the bad guys are hiding with the civilians intentionally and using them as human shields,” he said. “So any time an Israeli soldier tries to move to try and find insurgents, of course there’s going to be a civilian casualty because that’s what Hamas wants, and that then continues this revolving door of propaganda. So it’s a real tough situation that Israel’s in right now.”
The full conversation is available to stream on The Daily Wire.