“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough waited until after an Israeli official left Friday’s program to nitpick his appearance.
A senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Mark Regev, joined “Morning Joe” to discuss the ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Scarborough took issue with Regev’s use of the word “illusion” to describe Israel’s idea of living peacefully with Hamas over the border.
“Before moving on, the ambassador, I’m so grateful for him coming on, but he used a word and something that, it’s just a word that hung heavy with me since October 7 and it’s illusion. Israel’s illusion of Hamas as somehow a moderating force. It seems so ridiculous to ever expect Hamas to be a moderating force, especially when they had the war plans and they saw the war preparations,” Scarborough told The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.
“Our illusion of Mossad played in one Hollywood movie after another,” the MSNBC host continued. “Mossad being competent, ruthlessly efficient, deadliest force on the planet. When people would sit around dinner tables talking and whisper ‘oh, here’s the Mossad doing such and such, everybody would stop and freeze in Washington and across the country over the past 50 years because there was this illusion of Mossad as the ultimate intelligence force. The illusion of the IDF being the ultimate security force, military force, what they did in 1967, what they did in 1973, what they would be able to do if they were ever attacked again.”
“And we’ve seen one illusion after another, after another fall on what we believed Israel to be,” he added. (RELATED: Scarborough Jumps In As Two Panelists Get Physically Closer To Each Other During Argument)
He criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “turning a blind eye” to the dangers coming from Gaza and for allegedly causing divisions in his country. He accused the prime minister of causing “political damage” and “suffering” in Israel.
Ignatius said Israel’s “illusion” ended after the barbarous October 7 attack by Hamas. He criticized Israel’s intelligence failures for being unable to prevent such an attack, which left hundreds of people kidnapped and about 1,400 killed.
Watch Scarborough slam the IDF over their response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks: