Secretary of State John Kerry did not seem especially pleased with CNN’s State of the Union host Candy Crowley on Sunday when he was asked if the United States was “comfortable” with the deaths of Palestinian civilians and children which have resulted from Israeli’s offensive operations in the Gaza Strip.

Kerry said that neither he, nor the United States, nor any “human being is comfortable with children being killed.” He added, however, that Hamas had facilitated those deaths intentionally with the precise intention of getting members of the Western press to criticize Israeli’s prosecution of this operation.

“The fact is that Hamas uses civilians as shield,” Kerry said. “And the fire from a home, and draw the fire into a home, precisely to elicit the kind of question you just asked.”

Watch the clip below via SooperMexican:

On Sunday, the Israeli Defense Forces revealed that 13 soldiers have been killed in ongoing military operations inside the Gaza Strip. These deaths bring the total number of Israeli military casualties since the start of this campaign to 18. Hamas reportedly also killed one Israeli civilian in an artillery strike on an Israel-Gaza border post.

“At least 425 Palestinians have been killed in the near two-week conflict that shows no signs of stopping,” the AP reported.

Thus far, the disparity in casualty rates between combatants has not led the American public to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, according to a national survey conducted by Pew Research Center in from July 8 to 14.

Currently, 51% of Americans say that in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, they sympathize more with Israel. Just 14% sympathize more with the Palestinians, while 15% volunteer that they sympathize with neither side and 3% sympathize with both.

Pew, which has been surveying American public opinion on the Israel-Palestine violence since 1978, reported, however, that the gap between Democrats and Independents who support the Palestinians versus Republicans who support Israel “has never been wider.”