Yeah, I don’t think he actually misspoke here. I think he was legitimately just straight up saying what it sounds like, that Israel has a right to create “collateral damage” as long as they try to “minimize” (whatever the the hell that wiggle word means at any given time) civilian casualties.

His demeanour and delivery doesn’t really indicate a slip up to me.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1r1i-BO2M

If he did misspeak I suspect it was more that he probably meant to say Israel has the right to “target those civilian centers (because Hamas is there)”, and just kind of was too intellectually lazy to get his politi-speak ironed out.

It makes sense from a language point of view though, the subject being either those civilians or Hamas and a subject slip.

It’s literally how a Freudian slip works.