Jake Tapper corrected chief PLO representative Maen Rashid Areikat Wednesday after Areikat condemned Israeli police for shooting a camouflaged Palestinian who charged Israeli police with a knife.
Tapper questioned Areikat's statement that a "very large" amount of Palestinians are "executed on the field after they were wounded," pointing out that many of those who are "executed" are killed because they are committing acts of terror.
"Isn't Abbas out there saying that two innocent Palestinian teenagers were murdered by Israel, when there is actually videotape showing one of the Palestinian teens charging at Israeli police with a knife before being shot? And the other teen is alive -- isn't Abbas out there saying that?" Tapper asked.
Areikat did not bend to Tapper's question.
"Does this change the fact that one of them was shot and killed by the Israeli police?" he asked back.
"But there's tape of them with a knife," Tapper said and proceeded to play the tape on air.
"This is--this is--this is the problem--OK, well," Areikat said.
Areikat then claimed that the Israelis "are being the judge and the executioner at the same time."
"They had chances to apprehend the people after they shot them," he said, criticizing Israeli police for "execut[ing]" Palestinians "on the spot."
However, Tapper's correction stood.
"If you run at a cop with a knife in this country you'll get shot," Tapper said.
"If I have a knife and I run outside here and go at a cop with a knife, I'm going to get ‘executed,’" he said. "That's how it works."