On Friday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “State of the Race,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) acknowledged that Hamas does use Palestinian civilians as human shields, but said that he wouldn’t get into whether or not Israel has committed war crimes during its war against Hamas and argued that the U.S. should push for a different war plan from Israel.

After Welch stated that “it’s true that Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields.” Host Kasie Hunt asked, “Do you think Israel has committed war crimes in the context of this war?”

Welch responded, “I’m not getting into that, because Israel got a brutal attack, and think about what we get after the brutal attack on us on 9/11. I’ll leave that to other people, but our responsibility here, we’re going to help our ally, that’s Israel. But I think that we can be very clear that, on the war plan, where the war plan that has played out so far, has so many civilian casualties, and where there’s not even an ability to get the humanitarian relief to avert disease and possibly starvation, I think we can assert that we want a different kind of war plan.”

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