Right-wing media selectively edited comments made by Hillary Clinton to falsely accuse her of endorsing Hamas' extremist tactics. But Clinton made clear that Israel has a right to defend itself and credited its measures to decrease civilian casualties.

In an interview with Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton renewed her support for a cease-fire to end the current Israeli/Hamas conflict.

Right-wing media outlets co-opted Clinton's interview to dishonestly claim that Clinton was justifying Hamas' tactics and endorsing the extremist group.

On July 29, the Washington Free Beacon distorted Clinton's comments, portraying them as justification of Hamas' tactics in an article headlined “Hillary: Hamas Uses Human Shields Because 'Gaza is Pretty Small.'”

On Fox News' The Five, co-host Andrea Tantaros accused Clinton of “trying to make an excuse for Hamas” and defending Hamas “for hiding rockets in places like schools.”

But the full context of the interview shows that Clinton credited Israel's attempts to prevent civilian casualties by sending warnings before airstrikes and said that “obviously Israel has a right to self-defense.” Clinton noted that “any kind of conflict” has civilian casualties, but Gaza's small size and Hamas' tactics make them more acute (emphasis added):

CLINTON: I'm not a military planner, but Hamas puts its missiles -- its rockets in civilian areas. Part of it is that Gaza's pretty small and it's very densely populated. They put their command and control of Hamas military leaders in those civilian areas. Israel, I know, has sent warnings and tried to get people to move, but in any kind of conflict there are going to be civilian casualties, and we need to try to get to a cease-fire as soon as possible.