Appearing on CNN yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry strongly defended Israel’s right to defend itself.

During his appearance (embedded below) Kerry told host Candy Crowley:

Israel is under siege by a terrorist organization that has seen fit to dig tunnels and come through those tunnels with handcuffs and tranquilizer drugs, prepared to try to capture Israeli citizens and take them back to hold them hostage. No country could sit by and not take steps to try to deal with people who are sending thousands of rockets your way, literally in the middle of a conversation both with the president and with me. While we were talking to the prime minister, sirens went off, the prime minister of Israel had to interrupt a conversation with the president of the United States, to go to a shelter. People can’t live that way. And Hamas needs to understands. We are supporting the Egyptian initiative for a cease-fire.

The Times of Israel reports that Kerry was on a number of talks shows yesterday and consistently defended Israel’s right to defend itself against terror.

Kerry told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it is “unacceptable by any standard anywhere in the world” and that Israel must protect its citizens.

In response to a question on ABC’s “This Week,” Kerry dismissed claims that Israel was committing genocide as “rhetoric that we’ve heard many, many times.

Notably, his appearance on CNN occurred “after Israeli strikes on Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood killed 60 people,” according to Palestinian health officials.

When Crowley pressed Kerry if the United States was “comfortable” with Israel’s attacks on Hamas, Kerry pushed back: “The fact is that Hamas uses civilians as shields, and they fire from a home and draw the fire into the home, precisely to elicit the kind of question you just asked.”

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