EXCERPT:
HASAN: “And you have to understand, when we talk about Gaza in the West, for a lot of people it’s very easy to conflate Hamas, which is a militant group that carries out acts of vicious terror, as they did this weekend, with Gaza, which is a place that contains 2.2 million people, Alex, half of them children. Half of the 2.2 million people are children. And it’s one of the most densely populated places on planet Earth. You’ve got 2.2 million people crowded into 141 square miles, so they automatically become the victims of Israeli airstrikes because it’s so crowded, because it’s so densely populated. And it’s basically like living, Alex, in an open-air prison. And those aren't my words, those are the words of the former head of Israeli intelligence just a few months ago, Tamir Pardo, he said, 'We’re treating Gaza like an open-air prison.' So that is the context that is so important for us to remember when we talk about Gaza as some kind of strange faraway place, people shouting with guns. It’s actually a real place with real people, families, and they're living in horrific conditions, Alex. You know, 59 percent of Gazans live in poverty, 63 percent food insecure, 70 percent of young people unemployed. 90 percent of Gazans have no access to clean drinking water. The U.N. Secretary General called it hell on earth. How much more hellish is it going to get in the coming days?"