♪ today on "inside politics," fear of an escalating war. the united states' top diplomat is on the ground in israel as hezbollah warns it is an unprecedented battle that they are in with israel. and all scenarios are on the table and possible on the border with lebanon. plus, president biden is under pressure from his own party over israel's response to the brutal hamas attack inside israel. 13 senate democrats are now pushing for a humanitarian pause in gaza. and a cnn exclusive, republican congressman george santos is speaking out on the criminal charges he's facing and why despite all of the lies, talk being a lot of lies, and his legal problems, he still thinks he has a shot at reelection. i'm dana bash, let's go behind the headlines and "inside politics." ♪ we start with secretary of state antony blinken's powerful message in israel today. he was visibly shaken, describing more horrific images that he was just shown by israelis. from the barbaric hamas terror attack on innocent civilian families on october 7th. >> i saw, for example, a family on a kibbutz, a father, two young boys, maybe 10, 11 years old, grabbing them, pulling them out of their living room, going through their very small backyard and into a shelter, followed seconds later by a terrorist who throws a grenade into that small shelter. and then as the father comes staggering out, shoots him down. and then the boys come out and they run into -- into their house, and the camera in the house is filming everything, and they're crying, where is daddy, one says, the other says, they killed daddy. where is my mommy? and then the terrorist comes in and casually opens the refrigerator and starts to eat from it. that's what we're dealing with. and it is striking and in some ways shocking that the brutality of the slaughter has receded to quickly in the memories of so many. >> blinken also spoke of young palestinian children pulled from the wreckage of buildings in gaza. >> when i look into their eyes through the tv screen, i see my own children. how can we not? hamas doesn't care one second or one iota for the welfare, for the well being of the palestinian people. it scynically and monstrously using them as human shields, putting commanders and weapons and ammunition beneath residential buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals. but civilians should not suffer the consequences for its inn humanitarian and its brutality. >> as you can hear the emotion is palpable, calling blinken's task complicated is almost an insult to the difficulty of the policy hurdles and trying to navigate the near impossible amidst a sea of anger and despair. cnn's jeremy diamond is joining us from sderot inside israel. jeremy, the visit is not stopping what is going on on the ground there. jeremy, i want to try to bring you in now, i know there is a lot happening right where you are. this is what we are looking at are live pictures. >> reporter: can you hear me, dana? >> yes, we can hear you. tell us what's happening here. >> reporter: dana, we are on a still overlooking the gaza strip. you have a lot of media that are actually set up. we had a siren go off just moments ago and actually there was a hit it appears on a vehicle nearby. we are standing -- again, there is a lot of media here because this is one of the overlook points to look into the gaza strip and what you're seeing -- let's just get closer to some of the damage if we can here. you see there is obviously a lot of press, it's quite a scrum here, but this car appears to have been blown out by some kind of a rocket perhaps or an interception, shrapnel may have taller, but what we heard was a very, very loud boom. it appeared to be some kind of an impact falling directly on this vehicle or near it. trying to get a better look, dana, because i don't want to get the facts wrong here. but you can see that obviously this vehicle there's quite a lot of damage to it and we heard a very loud impact. let me walk around this way with my cameraman if he can follow me here. we heard a loud boom, we have not seen any pieces of the wokt at this point. it's possible there was some kind of an interception right overhead and shrapnel may have fallen to hit this vehicle. it's very hard to tell right now, but obviously this is one of the realities here. the iron dome system obviously takes out the overwe will mipg majority of those rockets, but some of them do get through and in some cases you also have to be aware of the shrapnel that may fall down. obviously this is turning into a bit of a circus here so i'm going to take us closer this way. you can see there's some damage here as well on this vehicle, which may have been due to shrapnel falling. and so this is the reality of the situation here, dana. >> and, jeremy, understanding that this just happened just before you came on air with us. i want you to go back to an important point that you made which is that you are in israel, you are near the border with gaza and the hamas -- the terrorists in hamas who still have the ability, the capability, despite the civilians not having water or electricity and what have you, capability somehow to shoot missiles or whatever kind of attack that they've just tried to launch inside israel. >> reporter: yeah. >> and what happened -- what happens regularly -- sorry, jeremy. what happens regularly is because israel has what's called the iron dome and the ability to intercept what comes in, it keeps -- for the most part it keeps israel safe, but it's not foolproof and there is shrapnel. >> reporter: understandably. and as i said, we aren't sure whether this was a direct hit to this vehicle. to me this seems like most likely some shrapnel that hit this vehicle, just given the scale of the damage, but it is hard to tell. some of these rockets are actually not that -- don't have that much explosive on them, some of these rockets that hamas uses, and so it's a little bit difficult to tell at times if it's shrapnel or a direct hit, but i can tell you that we had seconds to react here. we heard that siren maybe, you know, three to five seconds later we heard a very, very loud boom coming from right where we are right now and you can hear some of the car alarms still going off, but i do want to as we talk about this and as we talk about some of the damage that has happened here, we should also keep in mind the damage that is happening inside of gaza as well where israeli strikes, bombs, missiles targeting hamas command centers, many underground, but also targeting residential buildings where israeli forces say that hamas fighters have embedded themselves. in gaza they don't have an early warning system, they don't have bomb shelters to rush into as we were able to do and we have watched of course as the toll of casualties in gaza has mounted quite substantially over these last three and a half weeks of war. i do think that that's something we keep in mind, especially as there's quite a scrum of media here and one of the reasons everyone is here is because, again, these positions over here is where we are posted to kind of watch the activity inside the gaza strip. dana? >> jeremy, stay safe, please. i know you don't need me to tell you that, but also i just want to say that this is happening while, again, as i just played at the beginning of the show, the u.s. secretary of state is there, is in the region, not where jeremy is, but is in israel. thank you so much for that. i want to now go to a different part of israel to the northern part of the country. that's where jim sciutto is. jim, the leader of hezbollah broke his silence, spoke publicly for the first time since the hamas terror attacks. what can you tell us about what he said? there was a lot of anticipation about the statement. >> reporter: a lot of anticipation, a lot of fear, frankly, among residents here, particularly in northern israel bordering lebanon where hezbollah is based, but also among israeli officials and u.s. officials to see if the leader of hezbollah would announce that hezbollah was entering this war, more so than it already has been involved. it's already been firing rockets and artillery across the border since we've been up here and really since the october 7th attacks, but anticipation that he might announce something more subst substantial. he did not do that, at least in so many words. he spoke for more than an hour, he said a lot of things, certainly expressed solidarity with his brothers in arms in hamas, but did not say that hezbollah was entering this war more definitively. have a listen to how he put it. >> translator: the worry is that the possibility of this front actually escalating or going to a fully-fledged war or becoming a wider war is a realistic one. it can happen and the enemy has to make every provision for this and i'm sure they do make every provision for this, and i'm sure they do think about it. >> reporter: note what he said and didn't say. the enemy he is describing israel as thinking about it but did not announce that hezbollah was jumping in as it were. i think it was notable as well that he deliberately put daylight between hezbollah and hamas for those october 7th attacks. he called it in his words a 100% palestinian operation, saying this was a hamas operation, hezbollah was not involved, and he even took care to note that in his words hezbollah was surprised by the attack or did not get advanced warning, and he explained that and even said, well, we weren't bothered by that, we understand the need for the element of surprise here, but many in this country note that distance that he put between hezbollah and hamas as a way to perhaps ensure that hezbollah does not become a target, not just of israeli forces, but also u.s. forces. you've got two u.s. carrier groups off the coast in the eastern mediterranean which as you know was a deliberate step by the president who said right in the wake of the october 7th attacks, if you are thinking of joining this war, speaking to other players in the region in president biden's words at the time, don't. and secretary blinken repeat peted that warning during his visit to igs real today. >> interesting and noteworthy that nasrallah talked about the potential for the war escalating in the north where you are as if he is sort of a bystander looking at it and not an active player in the answer to that question. >> exactly. >> thank you so much for that reporting. i want to bring in cnn global affairs analyst kimberly dozier and cnn national security reporter natasha bertrand. kimberly, can you help parse one of the things that jim just reported from the leader of hezbollah's statement, which is the distance that he tried to put between hezbollah and hamas. what does that mean? why is that important? >> all along hezbollah and its partner iran have been really good at calibrating, creating friction, keeping israel engaged, staying on the right ideological side of the fight in terms of the arab world without triggering an all-out response. hezbollah, the time to attack would have been october 8th, october 9th, before israel had deployed 70,000 troops to that border, evacuated civilians. so their strategy seems to be engage just enough to keep israel occupied and nasrallah even sort of bragged about that, that they've kept that much of the army engaged. that seems to be their answer to the hamas public complaint that hezbollah hasn't done enough so far. but he reserved in this long speech the option to do more to declare a war. >> and, natasha, from the u.s. perspective, antony blinken, he's trying to navigate this as i mentioned at the top of the show is quite, quite difficult. i talked about the emotion that he had and the sympathy and empathy that he showed towards israelis and also innocent civilians in gaza, but from the diplomatic and policy point of view the fact that he said standing in israel that there should be a pause, how realistic do they actually think behind the scenes that that is? >> well, i think they think that something can be appreciated because as president biden alluded to last week, there does appear to have been a brief pause in air strikes while a couple hostages got out of gaza and the israelis steph curry not yet confirmed that but president biden did allude to that. i think what they want to see is some kind of repeat of that, but the question is how long will israel agree to maintain that pause in hostilities? will it be a couple days? will it be a few hours? the israelis have said they do not want any kind of ceasefire and will not engage in one unless the hostages are released by hamas. they don't want to give something for nothing. at the same time the israelis are clearly feeling some of the pressure by the u.s. and international community in how they are engaging in this war, just look at the fact that they felt the need to show that horrific video to blinken this morning. >> that's right. >> i mean, that clearly impacted blinken and he was obviously empathetic and sympathetic. >> it's not the first time that he has seen t the last time he was there he saw the images and we know that the israelis are showing this 40-minute video -- >> i saw it earlier this week. it's that video that he described. >> to media and influencers all over the world. >> that particular video when you watch the father and the two young boys, you can see it's security camera footage from inside their house. so you can see them running to take shelter and then being attacked and the father falling to the floor, dying in front of his kids. and then trying to run away and then getting caught. it's terrifying. but what in the larger picture, what this does in terms of -- by the u.s. backing a humanitarian ceasefire and then netanyahu saying we'll only do it if hostages are released, it does possibly arm the negotiators with a, hey, hamas, we have something that's a serious offer right now so that possibly they can get a few dozen more of those hostages out. all of them, probably not. some of them, maybe. >> carrot and the stick. thank you. both of you. coming up, president biden is facing more pressure from some of his key democratic allies in congress. more than a dozen senate democrats say it's now time for a short humanitarian pause in gaza. and later presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy will be here to tell us what his approach to this war would be if he were to be president. president biden is under increasing pressure from his own party to push israel to pause on their attacks on hamas terrorists inside gaza as civilian palestinian death tolls rise. 13 senate democrats signed a letter calling for a, quote, short-term cessation of hostilities to allow for more aid and to get that into gaza, and also to figure out a path forward for a potential way for peace. which actually sounds quite allusive at this point, but let's listen to what chris murphy said earlier today. >> i simply believe that the current level of civilian casualties inside gaza is too high, both from a moral perspective and a strategic perspective. what we have learned in our own country's counterterrorism operations is that when you are too permissive of civilian casualties you kill a lot of militants but you also create a lot of terrorists as well because that civilian harm becomes bulletin board material for terrorist recruiters. >> we will bring in our great panel of reporters, david cha chalian, manu raju. it's not just the proud progressives, if you will, there are a lot of democrats who signed this who would consider themselves maybe a little bit more hawkish on national security, and on foreign policy in particular. you can see some of them on the screen and we don't have to go through the specifics, but what does that tell you about the politics of what is happening right now inside the president's party? >> it tells me it's on the move. this is not just as you are noting a position that is being cornered off to the squad, if you will. that's not where it is. this is -- this issue is moving with realtime events obviously and responding to that. when chris murphy put out that statement yesterday i couldn't believe it. i was very surprised by it. and i flagged it around to our colleagues and i was like, this is significant. this is somebody that i would expect to be far more sort of in line with the administration every step of the way on this, and this clearly was him trying to guide the administration to a place that they should be at. you look at the polling data you see. democrats broadly, young people, these are parts of the president's coalition that is in a different place than the president right now. >> if you just look overall we actually have some numbers from the quinnipiac poll that came out this week. just overall on the party how israel is responding, 75% of republicans approve, 33% of democrats. this is when you saw tony blinken just this morning in israel talking about how quickly the horrors of what happened to innocents inside israel is receding, the impact of that is receding in public opinion on the world stage and then trying to balance that with the horrors of innocent palestinian civilians at the hands of israeli bombs but also because hamas is not only not protecting them, but putting them in harm's way. >> right. it is such a difficult balancing act for the administration because clearly the white house, the president, sees the public polling, sees the public reaction that we are all seeing, particularly from members of his own party and particularly from those who would be otherwise stalwart allies of the administration, but it's really -- there are some actions -- i mean, not only the actions of the white house and their staunch support of israel, that's not the only factor that's concerning many in the democratic party, particularly rank and file democrats, critical key states such as michigan where there is a large arab-american community, but it's a lot of the things that president biden has said. i was actually -- when chris mur tee was talking about the civilian death toll count in gaza being too high i was reminded how president biden last week in his press conference said that he kind of didn't take the death toll count at face value because it is coming from the hamas-run health ministry in gaza and many in the palestinian american community really felt those comments were insensitive. >> well, hamas is not -- and the people who are giving us those numbers are not necessarily reliable when it comes to data. >> correct. >> he is not wrong about that. >> sure. >> but that is lost in nuance as you're trying to mention. you mentioned michigan. another person who i thought was really, really telling in speaking out is elissa slotkin, a skrath, former military, intelligence, definitely not a progressive but she's also running for senate in the important state of michigan. listen to what she said. >> i think our experience after 9/11 is actually instructive here. for those of us who have served in places like fallujah and ramadi, we just want to make sure that there is an end game that's not fantasy, that's actually real. we want to make sure that you don't create more terrorists by the way that you act. and we want to make sure that we get the people who perpetrated this attack. you can want all of those things all at the same time and sometimes being a good ally and a good partner is telling those hard lessons from our own experience. >> she's also running in a democratic primary in michigan, but there is a growing split within the democratic party. i spent the morning talking to house members, some are very close aligned with the president on this, some want him to be more forceful. again, israel, some of them want to embrace calls for a ceasefire. you're seeing in the democratic leadership down to the rank and file. the longer this plays out the more likely we will