MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski grilled an Israeli government spokeswoman over the delayed response to the horrific Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas.
The surprise attack two months ago left more than 1,200 Israelis dead, with reports of sexual assault and torture by Hamas fighters, and many others remain hostages in Gaza, and the "Morning Joe" co-host pressed Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to explain why it took hours for the military to respond.
"I'm just curious, I mean, it's been two months, Tal, and a lot of us have been asking this question repeatedly, how it's possible that so many hours passed, victims were trapped, murdered, raped, kidnapped, Hamas stormed the gates – they stormed by land, they stormed in ATVs, they stormed by the air, in paragliders, in plain sight," Brzezinski said. "I don't understand how it took hours and that there wasn't an immediate response in moments."
Heinrich agreed that was a good question that the prime minister was investigating, and that the government would provide answers later.
"We will share these answers when the time, when the time will come because we are still investigating it," Heinrich said. "We will continue to investigate. You know, we're a democratic country, we have conducted thorough inquiries in the past, and we will continue to do it. We are drawing some lessons as we go because this can never, ever happen again. There is no doubt here that Oct. 7 was a major failure on our end."
Brzezinski wasn't satisfied with her response, saying the Israeli government needed to provide an immediate answer to some of those questions.
"I mean, it's beyond a major failure," she said. "I mean, lives could have been saved. This country is not that big, I mean, physically, to get to these victims and to this attack could have been minutes, and it was hours. There's got to be an explanation for that."
Heinrich said the government would wait until they had a "solid explanation" before sharing their findings, and Brzezinski shared a video clip of an interview NBC News correspondent Richard Engel conducted with Israelis who are furious that the military took eight hours to respond to the attack.
"I mean, is that going to be the answer?" Brzezinski said. "What's the answer for the delayed response, and I'm not just talking about a little delay. We're talking about eight hours were people are waiting and dying. Now you have people, victims, the ones who survived, who feel their government and their military and their police don't care about them. How do you -- there's got to be an explanation for these people."
Heinrich insisted the government, police and Israel Defense Forces all cared, and she insisted that all Israelis were united.
"We are united right now in this goal to eliminate the Hamas terrorist regime and make sure the Oct. 7 massacre, anything on this scale, this scope, this brutality, will never, ever happen again," Heinrich said. "This is why we are operating right now in Gaza, this is why we need to send an unequivocal message, not only to Hamas, but all bad players in our region right now, so that this will never happen again. You know, we have a saying in Hebrew, our sages said that whoever becomes cruel -- merciful to the cruel will eventually become cruel to the merciful. This is why we have to hit Hamas hard right now.
Co-host Willie Geist asked if she understood why Israelis and others around the world were shocked that their highly sophisticated intelligence service could have missed warnings of the impending attack, but Brzezinski was more blunt in her assessment.
"That's not an explanation," she said.
Watch the video below or at this link.
'We are investigating and we will provide answers', says Netanyahu spokesperson on Oct. 7 response timewww.msnbc.com
Spokesperson for Israeli PM's office, Tal Heinrich, joins Morning Joe to discuss the number of hostages still in Gaza and the growing questions over Israel's response time to the October 7 Hamas attacks.
