Featured Image Credit: MSNBC
Topics: World News, Parenting, Health, Mental Health, Israel
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: World News, Parenting, Health, Mental Health, Israel
People are flooding to social media to criticise a reporter's questioning of an Israeli mom whose kids were abducted by Hamas.
Since Hamas militants launched their attack on Israel over the weekend, over 100 soldiers and civilians have been taken hostage.
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell spoke with a mother who was on the phone to her children right before they were abducted, however the reporter has come under fire from social media users for her line of questioning.
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The mother explains to Mitchell she was 'on the phone' to her children 'trying to calm them down' when at around 8:30, she heard 'voices' and a 'door breaking'.
She continues: "They were with me on the phone and I asked them to stay quiet. They were in the safe room - the bedroom of the eldest. And about 10 minutes later I could hear people speaking in Arabic outside their door.
"And they broke in and the last thing I heard was the youngest, who's 12, saying to them, 'I'm too young, don't take me'. And that was it, that was the last time I heard from them."
The mother hasn't heard anything from the government yet, but is 'keeping her hopes up that they're alive and well'.
The children's father and his spouse were also taken - spotted in a video shared by the Hamas.
She states: "I'm hopeful they are altogether and they have other people that they know around them to keep them safe and give them a hug.
"I just want them back home."
The MSNBC reporter then jumps in to ask the mom: "What are your feelings about the attacks against Gaza right now?"
The mother responds: "You're looking for a symmetrical situation and I'm not saying it isn't."
She continues: "If you are dealing with a war between two countries. Countries don't take children hostages, I'm sorry. It is against the laws of war. It is against humanity. It is against anything that we all believe in.
"Every time we had missiles shot at us, I used to say to my children that they should be sympathetic to the children of Gaza because they suffer a lot more than they do. I'm not sure I still believe in it now. And I must say the only worry I have now from the bombings in Gaza is the fact that my children are there.
"I can't be sympathetic anymore - I can't be sympathetic to animal human beings - well they're not really human beings - who came into my house, broke everything, stole everything, took my children from their bedrooms and took them to the Gaza strip. Israel has never done that and it will never do. So there is no symmetry I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being so emotional."
People have flooded to a post of the interview on social media in support of the mom and many criticising the reporter's line of questioning.
One YouTube user said: "What a disrespectful question, honestly, maybe ask Hamas why they hide behind their own women and children too! Prayers for this poor woman and her children."
"Andrea Mitchell surprised me with a total lack of ability to 'read the room'. A mother who's children were just ripped away by heathens should never have been asked about her feelings regarding anything else. Period. It really p****d me off. Mitchell should know better," another added.
And a third wrote: "Andrea Mitchell should publicly apologize to that mother. Her question was despicable and woefully tone deaf. What an asinine question. Further, MSNBC should apologize for making a moral equivalence. Pathetic media organization."
The mom resolved: "I want my government to put it on the first priority. I want the world to put it on the first priority. I think every mother in the world should try to imagine her children under that situation and then think again.
"That's all I want. I want the world to ask them to release children, release the elderly, to release the civilians they took.
"There is no reason to hold them there. They are not part of the war. They have nothing to do with it.
"[...] This is not the way a country behaves. This is a way a terror organisation behaves. Again, there is no symmetry."
UNILAD has contacted MSNBC for comment.
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