The TV news correspondent whose description of decapitated infants and other atrocities from the Hamas attack on southern Israel went instantly viral pushed back Wednesday against questions around her reporting, saying she witnessed the atrocities “with my own eyes” and calling the reflexive doubt “sickening.”
Nicole Zedek was on the ground early this week for i24NEWS, an international 24-hour news television channel based in Tel Aviv. Her reports describing beheaded babies and children were immediately shared and widely discussed around the globe — including scrutiny and outright doubt, which she addressed Wednesday during an appearance on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.”
Zedek said she was grateful at first that her reporting had spread so quickly, “because people need to see those images and need to hear exactly what’s happening here on the ground in Israel.”
“I witnessed some of those scenes with my own eyes as we were walking through this community,” she said, “that may be a quarter of a mile from the Gaza border, the atrocities that were still left behind, children, cribs, baby cribs overturned on their side, splattered with blood. Horrible, horrible images.”
CNN reported on Wednesday that the Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed the report of beheaded babies and toddlers.
Zedek said she also spoke with a deputy commander who was among the first on the scene Saturday, when there were still “active terrorists hiding in houses” that they immediately sought to “eliminate.”
“There’s no words to describe what they’ve seen,” Zedek said. “I mean, babies’ heads cut off. That’s what they encountered when they came there. So as horrible as it is and and I wish that it wasn’t true. And I see how those images and those words are hard to comprehend because it’s hard to comprehend how any one could commit such heinous, heinous crimes. But that’s exactly what happened in just one of the kibbutz communities.”
She said with additional targeted communities in southern Israel still being encountered by IDF, “this is just a glimpse into what is happening here.”
Cohost Buck Sexton asked about the condition of soldiers who were first to see these scenes of horror — many of whom are not active-duty military, but reserves who were hastily called from their own family lives into duty.
“The deputy commander who I spoke to, he was a reserve soldier,” she said. “He left five kids behind. He left his own family behind to then come to the scene of entire families murdered so no one could prepare them for what they were about to witness. And they are in shock. But they say as they continue to see these acts, it it makes them want to fight back stronger.”
Cohost Clay Travis later played a clip from a commentator voicing his doubt about the veracity of her reporting, with the speaker saying the claim of beheaded infants is “completely false” and accusing Zedek of making up the most gruesome details based on a “walk-and-talk” interview with an Israeli commander.
“You know, it’s sickening, really, that people are asking, ‘Where are the babies? Why aren’t you showing the babies?’” she replied. “Is that something that anyone would want to the first thing with their own eyes?”
Zedek said people are seizing on details like the number 40 — a hasty estimate — and the word “babies,” which can mean different things to different people.
“So 40 babies, 40 children were carried out on on gurneys, 40 dead children were found. And a lot of people are saying ‘babies,’” she said. “Well, how does she know that number? How old are they? And I think that is really the fact that people are focusing on that doesn’t matter. Just three months old or three years old, six months old, six years old, a six-year-old is someone’s baby.”
She said besides her own eyes, there are multiple “soldiers confirming what they’ve seen of the mutilation of these children. And I think when people are denying what’s actually happening here, it is truly, truly sad and show that people just are not willing to see exactly what’s happening.”
Zedek also said there is “footage of it all” that will speak for itself – and in many cases already has.
“The fact that people are denying it, even after seeing exactly with your own eyes, the footage, the pictures. It’s truly despicable.”
Watch the entire exchange in the above clip.
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