Rep. Seth Moulton on the latest in the Middle East, Ukraine

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts joins Radio Boston from Capitol Hill, where military aid for Ukraine is tied up in negotiations over next steps at America's southern border. Meanwhile, Israel's tactics in its war with Hamas in Gaza increasingly raise humanitarian red flags.

On UNICEF declaring Gaza the most dangerous place in the world for children:

Moulton: "It's devastating. It's frightening, and there should be no innocent kids dying in this war, period. There are a lot of innocent kids kids killed on October 7 — that doesn't justify killing innocent kids in Gaza. I think it's easy in the midst of all the anger and divisiveness of this war to lose sight of the common goals. I mean, I fully support Israel in getting rid of Hamas. And anyone who wants to live peacefully in Gaza in the future should not want to live under a terrorist regime."

"The problem is how Israel is going about getting rid of Hamas. And I've been saying this for a long time now that they're not learning the lessons of counterinsurgency campaigns — the lessons that we had to painfully learn ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan — that you can't kill innocent civilians in the process of taking out terrorists because you just recruit more terrorists to the cause. That you have to have a plan for what comes next. You have to have a believable political outcome that both sides want, that the Israeli troops risking their lives can believe in, that the Palestinians caught up in the midst of this war can believe in."

On if it is too late for a peaceful solution:

Moulton: "It's a fair question, but it's never too late to do the right thing."

"[Getting it right] means that Israel ceases this bombing campaign that's just killing far too many people and, by the way, not yielding great results. When you look at the lists they have of senior Hamas leaders killed, they're not very long. I mean, we don't know exactly how many Hamas operatives have been killed, but even Israelis admit that it's far fewer Hamas terrorists than civilians. So they need to change that — they should have changed it two months ago. They need to change it today."

On what the U.S. government should do:

Moulton: "This is so often confused as a spectrum of, 'Do you support Israel or do you not?' And what the United States should do — in my humble opinion — is what I'm doing, which is saying we absolutely support Israel, but we don't support them in a losing cause. I mean, imagine if Israel had commented on our war in Iraq in, say, 2005 when we were essentially inciting a civil war and said, 'Just have at it. Keep making the situation worse, America.' That wouldn't have been good advice.

"Friends tell friends tough advice. They tell them the truth. And the truth, in my humble opinion — but an opinion formed over four tours fighting in the infantry in Iraq — is that Israel's tactics are not going to yield them a strategic victory. They actually risk yielding a strategic defeat. And if you believe in eliminating Hamas, as Israel does, and as so many leaders in the Arab world do as well... if you support getting rid of Hamas, you should not want to see Israel mess this up. And they're messing it up right now at the cost of thousands of innocent lives."

On the war between Russia and Ukraine being a "stalemate":

Moulton: "It means we need a new strategy. And that does not mean that we back off our support of Ukraine, but it means that we take a very hard look at what's working and what's not. Because somewhere around 350 people — 350 people just like you and I — are dying every day in Ukraine that this war continues. And if they're dying in a stalemate, which means that there's literally nothing coming of this on either direction [and] no side can claim any progress victory, then that's an even worse waste of life than if one side was winning, I guess you could argue."

"So my point is that we need to continue supporting Ukraine for all the reasons we've laid out before: freedom, democracy [are] on the line. Putin's next stop will be a NATO country if we let him continue this march towards the west. That means American troops will be fighting and dying. Other autocrats like Xi Jinping in China are watching how we respond to Ukraine as they contemplate similar moves elsewhere in the globe. These are all reasons to support Ukraine. But just like we were talking about with Israel, it shouldn't just be a blank check with no questions asked."