

On CNN today, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Israel has a right to defend itself, but she is concerned about “proportionality.”

Wolf Blitzer asked what she meant by proportionality: that Israel is “overreacting… going too far?” Albright confessed that It’s hard to watch what’s going on.

Well I do think that it is very hard to watch the number of Palestinians that are being killed– innocents. It is hard to dispute the fact that as Prime Minister Netanyahuhas said, that in fact, there are innocents being put in the way in order to act as shields, but the bottom line is that I think this is hurting Israel’s moral authority. I do think it that it looks as though they are overdoing…

Where are the bad optics? They’re on the networks. Last night on NBC Richard Engel at Shifa Hospital spotlighted a beautiful 10-year-old who is “completely paralyzed” and doesn’t know her mother and two sisters are dead. And then he interviewed volunteer doctor Mads Gilbert saying that another girl’s only crime was being born Palestinian. Mads Gilbert on the network news. About time. Here’s Dr. Gilbert’s quote:

This is a Palestinian child. Guilty of the most horrible crime, to be born Palestinian in Gaza.

Later, talking to Steve Kornacki of MSNBC, Engel said that Israel’s attack sure doesn’t seem “pinpoint” to him (apropos of the Kerry statement). There has been wholesale carnage– children flung from buildings by bombs, he said.

Oh and here is Ayman Mohyeldin:

#Israel says its targeting Hamas w ‘surgical strikes’ so how did it kill 70 people in 1 #Gaza neighborhood on 1 day http://t.co/EfkhSYDNyL — Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) July 21, 2014

P.S. Today, over on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell fretted over the fact that international carriers aren’t flying into Tel Aviv as of this afternoon. She seemed concerned that it was going to hurt Israel economically (and Mitchell is married to a former Federal Reserve chairman). More bad p.r. It’s always the extrinsic factors.