Fox News Airs Two Remarkable Interviews

Wednesday afternoon, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared as a guest on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.” The interview lasted 24 minutes. This is unusual on television, where interview segments are typically only a few minutes in length. While the interview was not solely about Israel, Cavuto devoted the first five minutes and another three minutes around minutes 17-20 to the subject and, toward the end, asked Bloomberg whether there would soon be a Jewish president. 

When the FAA announced a ban on U.S. carriers flying to Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, Bloomberg bought a ticket on El Al to show that traveling to Israel is safe. His attitude likely reflects his experience as mayor of New York. He took office in the wake of the September 11th attacks and understands the trauma of terrorism.

Number one, I don’t think you can have a proportional response when people are lobbing rockets at your citizens.  We would not have a proportional response in America. We’d go in with every single thing we have.

 

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As Israel goes so will America. This is the only democracy in this part of the world. This is an ally we need them and they need us.

 

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When the Israelis strike or when the Americans strike in Afghanistan or Iraq or everywhere else we fight wars, the civilians will get hurt. America has exactly the same problem with doing that that the Israelis have. And our solution to the problem is exactly the same. You have to go in and you can’t let them use human beings as shields. Sadly that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. The Palestinians in the Gaza strip are paying a terrible price and it’s because of Hamas.

Watch the interview by clicking on this link.

 

Tuesday on his nightly program, Sean Hannity interviewed Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters. Peters was outspoken in expressing support for Israel and denouncing the bigoted attacks on that nation, saying:

The global media… Let’s be honest about this. The socially acceptable form of antisemitism, of old fashioned, fourteenth century Jew-hatred, is to be anti-Israel, to criticize Israel. That’s safe.

 

Israel is a tiny island of civilization in a vast sea of barbarism called the Middle East. It respects women’s rights, education, the value of hard work, science, medicine. I mean, even the president isn’t above the law. It’s got a great court system. It’s us. It’s western civilization.

Watch the interview by clicking on this link.

 

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg on “Your World with Neil Cavuto”

 

More complete excerpts from Mayor Bloomberg’s interview:

Well, I think compared to the  security at American airports, security at Ben-Gurion airport  is infinitely better compared to the security getting on and off American airlines, El Al security is infinitely better. You got to remember that Israel has been under threat since 1948 when it was founded.  And so it’s always been threats. They take security much more seriously here and on El Al and around the world than we do in America.

 

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A rocket here, not a controlled rocket but a ballistic rocket fell a mile away from the airport.  And if you closed down JFK every time something dangerous happened within a mile or so of Kennedy airport, we wouldn’t have a city. We couldn’t get people in and out of New York.  The real world is that things happen, and in this case I felt as safe as I could possibly feel coming in on El Al and coming into this airport.  And if we let terrorists frighten ourselves into closing travel to different cities around the world, the economies of the world will collapse and terrorists will have won. 

 

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Late yesterday afternoon or middle of the afternoon I heard  about the ban and I said, I want to show tha
t I think it’s safe and so called El Al, got a ticket, went to the airport  after dinner, flew here, had a  great flight, and here I am. 

 

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We live in a world that is dangerous.  And we have to make sure that we support our security forces,  that we invest the kind of  money, we want to make sure that  we protect people’s rights, but the days of laissez-faire saying, oh, well, don’t have to  worry about it, I live in a safe  part of the world are long over.  And if we didn’t learn that message from 9/11, I don’t know how we’re ever going to learn the message.

 

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It is true… that the FAA ban gives Hamas a win and Hamas even put out a statement to that. They’re thrilled that they were able to cow somebody into stopping commerce and hurting Israel, and we cannot let them do that.  We just can’t do that. And hopefully the FAA after looking at all the precautions that Ben-Gurion airport takes will remove their ban and that airlines will start flying here again.  Certainly El Al and British Airways both said we’re going to fly. It’s a safe place.  I happened to fly in on a 777 today, and I was honored to be in the cockpit with the pilots. I’m a pilot. I can tell you the precautions they take here are better than precautions we certainly take in the United States. 

 

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Number one, I don’t think you can have a proportional response when people are lobbing rockets at your citizens.  We would not have a proportional response in America. We’d go in with every single thing we have. 

 

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As Israel goes so will America. This is the only democracy in this part of the world. This is an ally we need them and they need us, just like our special relationship with the Brits and two partners of our country on the north and south. But we have to go and we have to find some ways to solve these problems rather than just complain about them.  I will say that the administration has put in the latest bill where they want more money for border security, more   money to help the Israelis build more of these anti-rocket rockets, the dome that they call it here that has been shooting   down rockets before they ever land.  What the Israelis do is they calculate the track of the rocket the instant it gets off the ground.  If it’s going to land out in an open field, they don’t do anything.   If it will land in a populous area, the computers are good enough to fire off a missile and, with something like 90-plus percent accuracy, they shoot down those missiles, saving an awful lot of lives. But then they have to go to where the missiles are originating from.    Hamas is like every coward, hid themselves amongst the defenseless. So when the Israelis strike or when the Americans strike in Afghanistan or Iraq or everywhere else we fight wars, the civilians will get hurt.  America has exactly the same problem with doing that that the Israelis have. And our solution to the problem is exactly the same. You have to go in and you can’t let them use human beings as shields. Sadly that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. The Palestinians and in the Gaza strip are paying a terrible price and it’s because of Hamas. I think if you went and asked the Palestinians, you’d find exactly the same thing. They understand that. They don’t want somebody walking into one of their schools and setting up rockets and saying leave your kids in class, you can’t take them out because we don’t want somebody to strike.  That’s what Hamas is doing.

 

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I don’t think, all kidding aside, that ethnicity or religion or gender or orientation or any of those&nbs
p; 
kinds of distinctions are what’s important.  If you remember, vice presidential candidate was Jewish four years before this and his wife’s name was Hadassah.   And I don’t remember anyone talking about that.

Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters on “Hannity”

 

More from Colonel Peters’ interview:

How can people not see it? The truth, the fundamental reality is that Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors and prosper. Its neighbors, most of them, want Israel destroyed and Jews dead. What is hard to understand?

 

If Hamas possessed Israel’s military capability, do you really think they would be engaging in pinpoint strikes and warning Jews to leave their homes? They would have leveled Tel Aviv.

 

Israel has the military power to wipe Gaza from the map but they’d never do that. They suffered the Holocaust. They know what it’s like. They want to live in peace.

 

Hamas could have stopped this conflict at any point by stopping the rockets, but Hamas knows, Hamas knows it wins by trotting out dead children and using women and children as human shields, and it is cynical, and brutal, and they are the villains of this piece.

 

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Israel shows amazing restraint and gets no thanks… All these reporters who are breaking their own rules by showing these grizzly pictures of Palestinian victims on television. if they love it so much, why are their news headquarters always in Tel Aviv?

 

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The Islamist movements would kill most of these academics who are defending them. They certainly wouldn’t take very good care of the women who are defending them. And Israel would.

For God’s sake, Israel is us.

 

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