Megyn Kelly blasted “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King for asking the Israeli father of an 8-year-old girl believed to be held captive by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip about Palestinian deaths.
“How dare she try to get the father of an 8-year-old Israeli hostage to comment on the Palestinian children (who are suffering [because] of Hamas, not Israel) as if ‘well, violence on both sides!'” Kelly wrote on Thursday to her nearly 3 million followers on the X social media platform.
“Show some damn sensitivity to a grieving dad.”
Kelly reacted to an interview King and her co-anchor Tony Dokoupil conducted on Wednesday with Thomas Hand, an Ireland native who immigrated to Israel more than 30 years ago.
Hand said he has been experiencing “a living nightmare” and “hell on earth” since he was told his daughter was taken hostage by Hamas.
Emily Hand was at a sleepover at a home on a kibbutz on the morning of Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists on paragliders and pickup trucks launched a surprise cross-border raid on Israeli towns near the frontier with the Gaza Strip.
More than 1,400 were killed and roughly 240 were taken hostage back to Gaza.
Towards the end of the interview, King asked Hand about “innocent children and Palestinians who are dying” and “innocent Israeli children who are dying.”
“No one seems to be able to say, ‘Enough. Stop that’,” King said.
Hand replied that he was “not interested in politics at all.”
“My only concern is getting Emily back — whatever that takes to get her back,” he said.
Hamas gunmen slaughtered scores of soldiers as well as civilians and took dozens hostage.
Hand told King and Dokoupil he believes his daughter is still alive.
Initially, he feared Emily, who turns 9 on Friday, had been killed.
“At first I was informed that she was found in the kibbutz…dead,” Hand, who has been raising Emily on his own since her mother died nearly six years ago, told King on Wednesday.
He said that the news she was killed made him “relieved” since “it was all over for her” — meaning that she didn’t have to endure being in Hamas captivity.
While choking up on the verge of tears, Hand described how weeks later he was informed by the Israeli military that his daughter was alive.
“They didn’t find any body of Emily,” Hand said. “They didn’t find any blood in the house where she was doing the sleepover.”
Hand said he has been told “very little” about his daughter’s condition since.
He said that his daughter was seen “being led away by the terrorists” alongside “her little friend and the mother of her little friend.”
“Whether they’ve killed her in the meantime, I don’t know,” the grieving father said. “But she was definitely taken hostage, kidnapped.”
The Post has sought comment from King and CBS.