death for thousands trapped in the gaza war zone. the white house announcing today that israel has agreed to pause the fighting each day starting today to help civilians get out and critical aid in. but so far no sign that it's actually happening with new osions erupting in gaza in the past few hours. so what is going on? here in new york city hate crimes against jews have tripled from where they were las the antidefamation league reporting anti-semitic nts io, pennsylvania, and kansas, and that's just in the pt three days. a rabbi who traveled to israel now trying to navigate the rise in anti-semitism here at home. he'll join me in just a few minutes. and it's getting late early for candidates trying to shake up the republican race, with the penultimate debate now in the books, a 68-day stretch run lies between the candidates and the iowa caucuses when the first ballots for a nominee will be cast. what could change between now and then? lots to get to, but we begin with that breaking news from the white house. israel says it will pause its fight against hamas in northern gaza for four hours each day. national security council spokesman john kirby said an announcement will be made three hours before the pause goes into effect. the israeli military has told the u.s. that there will be no military operations in the area during the pause. prior to this breakthrough, the u.s., israel, and qatar had been in talks for a pause of up to three days, so while this obviously is far short of that, it would still give some civilians a chance to escape the most dangerous areas of the gaza strip. i want to bring in nbc news senior white house correspondent, kelly o'donnell and raf sanchez reporting from tel aviv. kelly, what exactly has israel agreed to, and what does the biden administration believe it will mean for this war? >> reporter: good afternoon, chris. the white house certainly believes this is a significant development in the month-long conflict because the president and many other administration officials at different levels, from the secretary of defense to the secretary of state and farther down in the government working day by day trying to negotiate a range of things that would result in the release of hostages including some americans, the opportunity for more humanitarian aid to go in and some measure of predictability. now, this is very clearly not a cease fire. this is an attempt to provide a way out and a way in, way in for the goods that are needed, a way out for those that are trying to escape this perilous situation. and so limited, yes. four hours in a window and a three-hour runup, and that, of course, raises questions about how do people get to where they need to go. that would be what the idf would be making clear on the ground to those who want to try to flee the area. the president was asked about the nature of this today as he's made his way to illinois. reporters questioning him about his attempts to get some kind of a pause in the fighting. here's how the president responded. >> did you ask him to pause for three days to get the the hostages out? >> yes, i've asked for an even longer pause. >> mr. president, are you frustrated with prime minister netanyahu that he has not listened more to some of the things that you have asked him to do? >> it's taking a little longer than i'd hoped. >> reporter: so when you consider the close relationship between the u.s. and israel, that's about as far as you might hear the president going, it's taking a little longer than i'd hoped, but they are also very optimistic that this can produce some results. now, negotiations for hostages is a whole other complex arena, but the ability to get aid and supplies in and to make it palatable and passable for people on the ground to try to find a way out. now, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. as you mentioned, there isn't a sign of it happening yet, but the white house considers this a product of pressure, influence, negotiation with a friend that is as close to the united states as any in that part of the world. chris. >> kelly o'donnell, thank you for that. raf, for the past couple of days, israel has left open a corridor to evacuate from north gaza to the south for a period of time each day, and 50,000 palestinians took advantage of that just yesterday. what's different about this commitment from israel? >> reporter: chris, it's a very good question. the devil is very much going to be in the detail. as you can see, the sun has gone down here. we are not expecting to see any kind of large scale movement to palestinian civilians inside gaza tonight. too dangerous to move around in the nighttime hours, especially given the limited electricity, but tomorrow we may get a better sense of how it is that the israeli military plans to communicate to the palestinian civilians, when they are safe to leave, where it is safe to leave. the israeli military is being very clear tonight, they are saying there is no cease fire. there are tactical local pauses for humanitarian aid for gazan civilians, so right now it is not clear from the israeli government how what happens tomorrow is going to be different from what happened today or yesterday. chris, it does also appear at this moment that this is not part of that larger hope for a deal where you might have a three-day cease fire in exchange for the release of a significant number of hostages, but in the last hour or so, we are getting new information about the hostages. we are hearing, chris, for the first time from palestinian islamic jihad, the smaller militant group inside of gaza, which is believed to be holding about 30 hostages. for the first time, they are releasing a hostage video of their own. we're not going to show it to you here because we don't know whether these people were under duress, these captives of islamic jihad when they were speaking. this video shows an elderly israeli woman and a 13-year-old israeli boy, both pleading for their freedom from the israeli government saying that they are being held in good conditions. we can only imagine, chris, what those conditions are like and what they were told to say on camera. but islamic jihad is claiming that it is prepared to release these two hostages. it is not giving any time line. it says when conditions are right, it does not make clear that this offered release -- and we should be really clear, chris, until these people are actually back in israeli hands, there is -- it is difficult to bank on anything, but islamic jihad is not explicitly saying that this release is linked to this announcement from the white house, but it is notable, it came just a couple of hours later, chris. >> raf sanchez, thank you for that. i want to bring in retired admiral james stavridis, msnbc's chief international analyst. always great to have you on the program, admiral. so not a cease fire, not a three-day pause, but even hours could be a window of hope, right, for thousands of palestinians caught in the cross fire. on the other hand, critics say hours does very little. that to really get people out, to get aid in, it has to be days long. i wonder what you make of this development? >> well, think of it, chris, as kind of a spectrum that runs from a full-on cease fire, that means everybody stops. the war freezes the frame. that's not going to happen. israel's going to continue, and frankly, hamas is going to continue fighting. at the other end would be just ongoing combat, no brakes. so we're kind of working on that spectrum. and sure, would i personally have thought six hours, even an eight-hour cease fire, excuse me, a pause might have been a better idea, but hey, i'll take four hours at this point. three-hour runup. i think you can do a lot in four hours, particularly in terms of trucks. look, the gaza is not like the state of texas. it is tiny. it's like rhode island. you can move very quickly in a few hours. so i think this is a step in the right direction. final thought on this, chris, sometimes we talk in crisis about confidence building measures. in other words, hamas watches this, sees if the israelis do what they say, the israelis watch hamas. they don't see signs that hamas is taking advantage of this to move weapons, to move fuel. it's four hours, build some confidence on both sides, right? that's how you expand to six, maybe to eight, then maybe you get to three days. let's hope so. >> yeah, so best case scenario, it's just a first step. let me ask you about the folks who are already moving within gaza. we've seen this massive exodus of palestinians over the last several days from the north to the south. they're doing what israel has asked them to do, right? to get out of the war zone, but there are air strikes in the south every day, even with these daily pauses. should israel establish a part of gaza that truly is out of danger? is that their obligation? >> i think increasingly they will be under pressure to do so, and it -- to me militarily, it makes sense. create a safe zone in the south. now, should you worry whether hamas would take advantage of it, somewhat, but could you conduct special operations forces in that area. what i would worry about is hamas using it as sanctuary for their fighters. i think there are means you can use to deal with that that are less intrusive than bombing. so let's hope our israeli friends are looking at this, thinking about it, and let's also recognize, chris, right across that border is egypt. is a safe zone. so we ought to be telling our egyptian friends and partners could you open those gates, could we help you financially establish camps in what is already a de facto safe zone. that's called egypt. >> in the meantime, admiral, the u.s. launched what the pentagon describes as self-defense strikes on syrian weapons storage facility used by iran's revolutionary guard. the republican presidential candidates were asked last night at the debate what they would do about iran. let me play some of that for you. >> if you want to stop the 40-plus attacks on military personnel in the middle east, you have to strike in iran. if you want to make a difference, you cannot just continue to have strikes in syria on warehouses. you actually have to cut off the head of the snake, and the head of the snake is iran and not simply their proxies. >> iran responds to strength. you punch them one and you punch them hard and they will back off. >> i am not going to put our troops in harm's way unless you're willing to defend them with everything you have. biden has them out there. they're sitting ducks. he's doing glancing blows. that's just inviting more attacks from the iranians. >> a lot of tough talk there, admiral. what's your view of what you just heard? and how do we deter iran without plunging into a larger war? >> well, that's exactly the problem. let's say hypothetically we decided we'll whistle up some b-52 bombers and b-1s and launch off the carrier, and we'll bomb tehran, iran. okay. what happens next? now we're in a war with iran. that's not how we want to play this. what we want to do is as the administration is doing, move up that vertical ladder of escalation. if iran is using drone strikes against us under international law, we have every right to respond. we should. we are. and we're going up the ladder of escalation. we're sending f-15 strike eagles. we know exactly what we're hitting. iran is paying attention. if they don't pay attention, and they come after our troops further, then we go up again. that might be a massive cyber attack that destroys the iranian economy. we can go after iranian assets at sea, platforms in the iranian gov. we have a lot of options before we want to talk about dropping bombs on tehran with no plan about what we do the day after we drop those bombs. >> admiral james stavridis, always a pleasure to have you on the show. thank you. well, next the fallout from the republican debate, what voters are saying in 60 seconds. . if you struggle with cpap... 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"the new york times" asked its opinion columnists to rate the performances. they had nikki haley on top. "the wall street journal" board said haley stood out, especially for her foreign policy expertise. do you think there was a clear winner last night, and even if there was, stuart, is it enough to help winnow the field? >> you know what, i think we have to ask ourselves what would happen if one of these candidates did defeat donald trump. what would donald trump do? so it's pretty unimaginable that for the first time in his life he would act like a normal politician who has the party's best interests, not his own, at heart. so what will happen? is he going to endorse the nominee of a party that just defeated him? that's unimaginable. and polls show that between 25 and 30% of the republican electorate will not vote for a candidate that donald trump -- that's not donald trump or donald trump doesn't enthusiastically endorse. so all of this is conducted in this strange sort of half reality, as if donald trump wasn't 40 points ahead. as if donald trump wasn't the leader of the republican party, and it's sort of -- nikki haley, it's really a longing for a republican party that existed before donald trump. but that's just a fantasy land, and none of these candidates, except maybe chris christie seem willing to live in that reality. >> so marissa, you talk to a lot of voters. how did they see it? >> yeah, just to set the scene here, we are in jacksonville beach, florida. jacksonville is a very military strong presence. there's multiple military bases nearby, and so we've been talking to voters on the streets this week as well as before the debate started at a local watch party asking them two things. the issues they care most about, which the economy frequently comes up at the top of lists, but given the military community here, we also heard a lot about foreign policy, especially when it comes to u.s. involvement and u.s. aid to ukraine and israel and we know that was brought up several times yesterday by the candidates on stage. but then we also asked who are they leaning towards for 2024. and so republican voters here, no surprise we would hear a sparing response once in a blue moon for tim scott, ramaswamy, maybe nikki haley here and there, but overwhelmingly the support for donald trump and the current florida governor ron desantis. remember, we are in the sunshine state, so that doesn't come as a big surprise, especially a lot of veterans have a lot of support for veteran ron desantis himself. but one thing that i thought was interesting is the response after the debate watch party. what i'm going to do is i'm going to have you take a listen for yourself on some of the responses we got after the debate, and then i'll explain why it's significant on the other side. >> more aggressive, more sure of himself. i kind of wish sometimes he would have started his campaign the way he was tonight. >> i'm still for trump. i think he's strong. i think america's still pulling for him. i would love to have seen him on the debate. >> for me i was really between desantis and nikki haley. i felt like what nikki haley said about abortion is probably like the greatest thing that a republican has ever said about abortion. >> unfortunately, you have tim scott and chris christie kind of recede into the background. it's very clear that desantis, it's very clear that desantis and haley are the two front runners at this time. >> so i know that that first response might have been a little bit hard to hear. at the very start of it, that was someone who was saying that governor ron desantis was the strongest he had seen him and wishing he had seen that version of ron desantis sense the start of his campaign here. overwhelmingly, chris, what we heard last night after the debate between not just in person but text, i followed up with a lot of the people i've been speaking to this week. the consensus was that nikki haley really shined with her response on abortion. a more winnable strategy when it comes to abortion and are for the republican party in general. but ron desantis was strong from start to finish. then i followed up with another question. a lot of people were saying they were leaning towards trump or they were die hard trump supporters from the beginning before the debate. i said, okay, if you thought desantis and haley shined on stage, was this enough to convince you that you might consider voting for someone other than donald trump, and the resounding majority of the responses, chris, was no. an uphill battle. they shined on stage, but the big question is will it be enough? we know there's no path forward for these candidates unless they're able to pull those support, those votes from donald trump. >> so stuart, there are those voters, grant it it's a small number of them, but affirming exactly what you said, i thought nikki haley was great. i thought ron desantis was great. i'm still voting for donald trump, even though maybe i wish he was on that debate stage. there will eventually, whoever the candidate is be a general, right? so let's talk about abortion. i thought it was very interesting to hear that young woman say that what she heard from nikki haley was the greatest thing she had ever heard from a republican. i want to play for you something haley said after the debate last night. here it is. >> what i'll