seat at the table with the chinese president. the lawmaker calling it unconscionable. >> wow. that's something to think about. that's a lot. alall right. david cull vculver, thank you v much. and thanks to all of you. let's hand it off to anderson. tonight on "360," we have breaking news and what the idf is saying in a military operation under way inside gaza's main hospital. it follows a day that saw supporters of israel fill the mall in washington, including the parents of one badly wounded american hostage. they join us tonight. also tonight, whether it's a senator or witness, nearly coming to blows or the former house speaker allegedly elbowing a fellow republican member, what is going on in congress? i'll ask bernie sanders who joins me tonight who had to prevent a fight today. we begin with the breaking news, what israeli military officials are calling a, quote, precise and targeted military operation at al-shifa hospital in gaza city. it is according to israel a base for hamas fighters in tunnels underneath. just today national security council spokesman john kirby said american intelligence supported this view. and i'm quoting him now, hamas and the palestinian islamic jihad use some hospitals in the gaza strip including al-shifa and tunnels underneath them to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages. he added hamas and the palestinian islamic jihad members operate a command and control node from al-shifa in gaza city. they've stored weapons there, and they're prepared to respond toe an israeli military operation against that facility. all of this coming as israel's defense minister claimed hamas has lost control in the northern gaza strip. it also comes with the negotiators trying to reach a deal on releasing a large number of the more than 200 hostages now being held by hamas and others. cnn's nic robertson joins us now. he is in sderot just across the border from gaza. nic, you were at a hospital yesterday that you got to with the idf. what more do we know about this operation the idf is carrying out at al-shifa hospital? >> yeah, a precisely targeted operation is how they describe it. they say it's based on intelligence information and operational necessity. they say that they have people trained, medics train and arabic language specialists trained for what is going to be a complex operation, is how they describe it. and reiterated what they've been saying many times, that hamas has been using this hospital as a base of operations of sorts. and they say that they gave a 12-hour warning in the past 24 hours to hamas, saying leave and surrender. this was not taken up apparently. the explosions you're hearing behind me there are part of an ongoing operation a little farther north than where al-shifa hospital is. this has been going on all through the day. but precisely on the hospital, the idf is saying that they are not targeting patients or doctors. they say they've released this information in arabic. it's not clear how many patients or doctors in al-shifa hospital are able to get this message, but they say they're not targeting patients or doctors that they will be organizing evacuations, that they do plan to help the medical staff with the medical necessities there that they will be possibly helping with the transfer of incubators and the provision of incubators for young children later in the day. and they also -- they have a message as well for the civilians who are hiding out there in the hospital, saying they are not being targeted either. so this is very clearly from the idf's perspective aimed precisely at hamas. how this unfolds in the middle of the night in a military operation where there is the potential for hamas to fire back and fire on the troops in the facility of possibly civilians, possibly medical staff, possibly patients is going to be very, very difficult, given the levels of fear and concern on both sides. the civilians there will obviously be terrified about the situation. they've been aware that the idf has been positioned around the hospital for a number of days now. >> yeah. >> so this is a very complex and will be difficult operation. >> so nic, the hospital you were at yesterday, can you just talk about what you saw and how visible would that -- i believe it was placed stockpiling weapons and other things. talk what you saw. how visible would it be to anybody coming and going in that hospital? is that something that people in the hospital, doctors, staff, i mean, i assume they would have been aware of that? >> so in the hospital there, they say that they have been subsequent to our visit, we've been in touch with the medical authorities from that hospital. and they say that in the basement of the hospital, which is where we visited, families had been sheltering, civilians from the neighborhood had been sheltering because they felt that the hospital was a safer place to be. it would seem from what we saw that the basement would have been accessible from the rest of the building, and there is no reason that most activities in the basement would have been known to the hospital authorities. it's hard to say from our visit if hamas or other groups could have operated out there without the hospital staff knowing. they say there wasn't any operation. there weren't any hamas operatives there in the basement that have cast doubt on the information that the idf has provided and some of the things that the idf point out to them were suspicious about the weapons that were found there, about, you know, a chair there was a woman's clothing on the chair there was a rope around the legs of the chair. and i asked the idf spokesman when he showed that to us if he thought that meant there had been hostages there. he said we're going to do dna testing to see if that is the case. he didn't say definitively it was the case. but what he was showing us purported he believed to show an area where hostages had been kept, a makeshift toilet facility there, which did look out of place. and again, would have been hard i think for hospital staff not to have been aware of this makeshift toilet. but it's impossible to know definitively in a short space of time in the dark precisely what hospital staff may have known and precisely what else there may be in other parts of the hospital, or even in other areas of the basement we didn't get to, anderson. >> nic, we're going come fwok you momentarily. first we're joineded b ee eed b lerner. >> we are conducting our operations in the al-shifa compound. as you have been showing throughout the course of the day, it is a huge compound. and what i think is important to identify in our announcement, we said localized and specific, in a specific location. so we're not overrunning the hospital, but we are conducting a very precise and targeted operation against a specific location where we have intelligence and indeed operational necessity in order to defeat hamas and perhaps rescue hostages. >> and what do you believe is there? admiral kirby had talked about a command node. >> anderson, we've been sharing with the world for weeks now what we understand is a substantial hamas command and control position, a place of operations, a place of hiding, and perhaps a place of keeping the hostages, holding the hostages, or some hostages. and so when we are mobilizing and it's precisely to achieve our military goals, the military goals of this war, we're into day 40 now of this war, a war we didn't ask for, a war that cost over 1,200 israeli lives and 240 israelis are being held hostage. our goal is to bring them home. our goal is to seek out hamas wherever they're hiding. a and the hospital and the hospital compound is one place, a central place, a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart, and maybe even a center of gravity. we have to deal with the threat. and what we've been trying to do throughout the extensively over the last few days, and you've covered it, we've been trying to evacuate the hospital. we've bought fuel for the essential services. we've been trying and attempting to bring incubator, mobile incubators to try and get some of those babies out of the hospital, because the people of gaza are not our enemy. hamas is the enemy. and that is why we're trying and extensively operating in order to distinguish between the civilians that nic was talking about and the hamas terrorists that are using the hospital and jeopardizing those people. >> if in fact you -- the idf and u.s. intelligence is correct and this is an important hub or a command, control node, whatever one wants to call it, that would mean that palestinian health officials who have oft been quoted have been lying when they said that there is no military at this hospital. is there any way that you believe health officials, reporters who linger outside the hospital with cameras, doctors, people work in the hospital would not be aware of what was going on the grounds of al-shifa? >> when you say "health officials," we have to always add one word beforehand, hamas health officials. >> that's a given. >> hamas health officials. so it frames the whole discussion, would they hide it? can they hide it? are they fn speak? the rantisi hospital is actually named after one of the founders of hamas. so this is the context of the conflict. hamas over the last 16 years have built this mercy, this machine of murder. they utilized all the tools of government. so the health authorities are just one of those tools. it would not be beyond the understanding that the hamas terrorist organization that utilize and abused and put at risk the people of gaza through its health ministry and officials would lie to the world. why wouldn't they? they butcher babies in our bedrooms. why wouldn't they lie to the world about this? >> do you have a sense of how many staff, how many patients are still on the compound? and what that means for this operation? the complexity of it. >> the complexity of it, of course there are our that suggest based on the information, and we have been in touch with the hospital administration throughout the last days. we've shared recordings of the conversations publicly. we understand that there are about a thousand people give or take. but they're not in necessarily the specific location. they're definitely not all of them are in the specific location that we're conducting our operation currently. so there may be some civilians, and it obviously is a complex operation. but we are going out of our way in order to mitigate that threat. and that is why we've announced we've informed, we've had open channels, we've tried to facilitate and bring down the amount of people and tens of thousands of people that were taking refuge in the hospital just two weeks ago are no longer there. they've left to go south, to south gaza. yes, the civilians are a challenge, and that is why. we trained for this operation, as nic pointed out. we have doctors and also arabic speakers in order to address some of those threats. we need to take into consideration, we are a professional military. our principles guide us, the principles that guide us are proportionality, but also distinction and the military necessity of the operation. and there is no doubt based on the intelligence that we've shared and the u.s. has shared there is a necessary any this operation. >> lieutenant colonel lerner, thank you. let's go back to nic in sderot and retired general wesley clark. general clark, you're talking about proportionality and necessity. can you just talk about that a little bit, just from a military standpoint. in all wars when there are civilians around and there are targets of that are believed to be of military necessity, there are calculations essentially done about how valuable is the target, what is the risk of civilian loss, and how much civilian loss is acceptable. and these are horrible calculation, but these are calculations that armies make during war. a situation like this operating on the grounds on a hospital has got to be extraordinarily difficult. >> sure. and you're exactly right, anderson, about the way you cast it. you know what the target is, you know how valuable it is, you try to estimate what the risks are of hurting civilians, and then you have to make the judgment of whether the target, going after the target, taking out the target is worth the risk of injuring people who are innocent and not part of the enemy force. but here you're dealing with the command and control node of hamas. you're dealing with hamas that has deliberately, cynically located its most valuable assets in a hospital, deliberately to try to provoke outrage in the world community and discredit israel. israelis know this. they've got really great intel on this. when those soldiers go in armored vehicles first, and then dismount into the buildings, and it is a very complex compound, as you saw from the overhead coverage, they'll have helicopters, they'll have drones overhead, they'll be able to mark enemy positions with lasers. they'll be able to deliver precise fire if there is an opponent there. and then they've got to go inside. and if hamas is there, yes, there could be a shootout in a hospital corridor. and they're going have to get to the bottom of it. and they're going to have to search for the tunnel entrances around it. so at every step, the soldier on the ground, the tank commander and so forth is at risk. he is putting himself out there. he is likely to draw fire. he has the right to self-defense, no matter what, always. and he is going to respond, if he is attacked. but he's got a lot of assets backing him up, a lot of eyes on the baptist field. so it's everything that can be possibly done to protect civilians and still go after the command and control at the hospital. and the israelis, militarily, they have to do this, anderson. >> one of the things i'm surprised there is not more outrage internationally about is that hamas had two years say preparing this attack or a year, however long it was. we don't know the exact amount of time they've been preparing. but certainly they've been preparing for quite some time. they have not made any effort to build any bomb shelter for any civilian it seems in the gaza strip. they built tunnels for themselves to store supplies and weapons and to protect themselves, but there are not bomb shelters, even the kind of shelters that you see on the sides of road in israel by bus stops to protect against rockets. those don't exist on the streets of gaza. have -- in your military experience, have you seen many countries or territories with a military that does not prepare or have some sort of safe harbor for its civilians? >> well, no. but on the other hand, hamas deliberately wants these civilians to be at risk. >> i mean, that's the point, yes. but i still find it stunning that that doesn't seem to register with a lot of people. >> well, the thing about it, anderson, is we call hamas a terrorist organization, but it's actually the government of this gaza strip. they're in charge of everything. >> right. and they have received hundreds of millions of dollars from qatar and other places, and they have not built any bomb shelters for their people. >> right. because they're not interested in protecting their people. they're interested in provoking international outrage against israel. they knew that when they launched this attack. and they hope to draw israel in, bog israel down, cause a lot of casualties, do exactly what they're doing with world opinion. they have a lot of voices out there saying ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire, and try to stop the israeli assault, and then declare victory. that's the goal. and so the more civilian casualties that the israelis inflict, even though they don't want to inflict any, the greater hamas believes its chances of success. >> and nic, it's accurate to say that the health officials in gaza have denied repeatedly that al-shifa hospital or others are being used by hamas for any -- i don't even want to call it military purposes, for any of their own purposes. >> they have. and it's something health officials in gaza, hamas-run health officials say is true for other hospitals there. cnn has been speaking with officials from the hospital over the last few days, and just going through our latest information on that, it appears the most recent over the past couple of days date that we have from the hospital itself, from al-shifa hospital, they say there are about 7,000 civilians taking refuge there, or there were until recently. it's not clear how many of those might have left. and about 1500 staff, 100 or so doctors, other medical officials, and included in that 1500, of course, several hundred patients as well as sort of support staff in the hospital. so it's still a big complex, a complex complex. and it still appears a significant number of people working there. you would have to assume that these health officials would have knowledge of the whole complex. there is a lot of people there and would have knowledge of the nooks and crannies of it, if you will. there wouldn't be places they wouldn't know about within the hospital complex. so they continue to say hamas isn't there. >> right. but that's the enduring thing. anybody who has reported from gaza knows -- i mean, you see rockets being fired from civilian areas. you see rockets being fired from the building where -- the time i -- last time i was in gaza, i would see where rockets were being fired from in buildings nearby me. even the doctors in the hospitals know hamas, islamic jihad and others are firing rockets over their hospitals, but they don't speak out about it because they don't want the get killed. they -- obviously nobody speaks out against hamas for fear of their own safety. maybe they agree with hamas, maybe they don't. and a lot of people don't in gaza, don't like hamas. but people don't speak out. but people know -- they know where the tunnels locations are or where the rockets are being fired from. you can see it. >> this is, in a nutshell, people are scared. when hamas was voted in by the electorate in gaza to power in 2006, 2007, they went round throwing out windows of high buildings the political opposition. and they might have won an election in 2006, but they've maintained control ever since through fear and intimidation. they might have a hard-core base of supporters there who genuinely believe in them, but the vast majority of people would not want to speak out against them, would fear speak out against them. like you, anderson, i've been to gaza and had those private conversations away from cameras with people who will tell you precisely that. we are too afraid to speak out. hamas has done this to me, hamas has done that to me. and me and my family. >> the last time i was there, i watched as hamas, two guys on motor bikes dragged two human beings along on the ground, their legs tied together with rope or chains to the motor bikes, and they were dragging them through the streets as a warning to other people. i don't bhoknow who those peopl had been accused of, but they were palestinians, and they were dead, accused probably of being collaborators, and they dragged them through the streets as a warning to everybody else to stay silent and not collaborate. we're over time. nic robertson, thank you. general wesley clark, thank you as well. coming up next, my conversation with the parents of hersh goldberg-polin about their son still being held hostage, we believe, last seen with half of his left arm blown off being loaded into a pickup truck. later, a day unlike most at the capitol saying mccarthy elbowed him in the kidney in the halls of congress. the npr rereporter whoho saw it happened j joins us. israel's military operation tonight at al-shifa hospital in gaza city is aimed a spokesperson told me at specific targets with