‘Even Harder’: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Attacks Israel’s ‘Disproportionate’ Response to Hamas’s Oct. 7th Attack

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday said Israel has given up the idea of a “proportionate” response to the murderous October 7 terror attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas, and characterized it as Israel trying to hit “even harder” than the surprise attack during which concert-goers were gunned down, entire families were kidnapped and tortured, and after which over 240 hostages are still being held by the terror group that’s also refusing to allow even Gaza residents safe passage out of the area.

On the latest The Last Word, O’Donnell spoke with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, whose most recent two columns objected to Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

Before O’Donnell brought up the subject of “proportionate” response, he conjectured that President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and the administration might be offering strong public support of Israel in order to allow them more freedom to secretly pressure the key ally about its counter-attack.

“Well, what we don’t know about the story, I’m not sure whether we ever will, is what President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and others in the administration are saying privately. We know exactly what their public statements are, and their public statements may be so forcefully supportive of Israel so that it allows them to be more forceful, privately, trying to counter what the Israeli government might be wanting to do on any given day,” he said. “So that’s one of the mysteries of where we actually are.”

On the subject of that response, O’Donnell framed it up for Kristof as being not just disproportionate, but as Israel having abandoned “20th century” ideas of responses in proportion to an attack.

“Nick, the phrase that used to frame these events in the 20th century was proportionate response. Whether it be the United States, whether it would be Israel responding to some kind of attack — the response was supposed to be, in theory, proportionate,” said O’Donnell. “The 21st-century Israeli government seems to have deliberately and publicly abandoned the notion of proportionate response into, in effect, disproportionate, saying we will hit you even harder than you’d ever expect.”

“This seems to be the deliberate framing that they want,” he said.

Kristof didn’t commit to the idea that Israel’s response has been worse or “harder” than Hamas committing the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but he did acknowledge his skepticism that “inflicting pain on civilians” now will lead to “more prudence down the road” from Hamas and Hezbollah.

He said he’s afraid Israel is heading down a path that “won’t advance Israeli security.”

“It won’t protect Israelis, but it will kill an awful lot of children in Gaza,” Kristof added.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.