Overview

• In a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, Ambassador Yechiel Leiter argued that Israel deliberately slows operations to reduce civilian harm.
• He said his son, Moshe, was killed early in the war after entering Gaza on foot and encountering a Hamas booby trap.
• Leiter contended that Israel could end the war faster but chooses restraints he says have increased IDF casualties.
• He pointed to what he described as 450 miles of Hamas tunnels under Gaza and labeled the group a “death cult” that hides among civilians.
• He described a divided Israeli public, with cease-fire protests and counterdemonstrations by soldiers’ families pressing for Hamas’s defeat.