Israel At War

Floor Speech

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Mr. KIGGANS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following message I shared on October 11 at a meeting of Jewish leaders with Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia at the offices of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater in Virginia Beach.

Thank you Governor Youngkin for your initiatives to fight the precipitous rise of anti-Semitism in these United States and around the world. Your very timely visit with us so shortly after the October 7 terrorist Hamas vicious attacks on Israel's innocent civilians near the Gaza border is deeply appreciated along with ordering the lowering of the flag throughout the Commonwealth. We turn to our shared one God of life's blessings who always brings us together to be one caring family, gratefully united and gloriously diverse, ever harkening onto the divine commandments of loving-kindness.

At this painfully trying time of excruciating anguish and an over-whelming sense of violation by heartless enemies of humanity and civilized society, evoking terrifying images of the Holocaust deeply seared within us and to which I can personally testify as son of Polish survivors who lost hundreds of murdered relatives, and one who spent his early childhood in Europe's transit and DP Camps, later growing up in Haifa, Israel and serving in the IDF in the 1960s.

Just as we did not allow ultimate victory to Nazism rooted in historical anti-Semitism, so we shall defeat, whatever the cost, those who now shamefully delight in the barbaric slaughter of Jewish babies and their shocked parents, mowing down hundreds of youth celebrating peace at a music festival along with rape and torture; dragging to cruel captivity the young as well as frail Holocaust survivors who had found refuge in the world's only sovereign Jewish state and the Middle-East's only democracy. We shall never abandon our beloved Israeli sisters and brothers heroically fighting for the very survival of their ancestral homeland which they have already honored with remarkable accomplishments benefiting all humanity.

We are uplifted and reassured at this fateful hour of existential threat to Israel's very well-being by the incomparable Israeli-American alliance of shared values and interests that, no doubt, makes a critical difference for the defense of the entire free world. The Ford and Eisenhower strike groups whose homeport is Hampton Roads are truly a source of swelling pride. The recent historic strides toward lasting Middle East peace with the major inclusion at last of Saudi Arabia, likely pushed Iran and its proxies--the enemies of peace who glorify death and dying while the West sanctifies life and living--to this inhuman cowardice massive assault on a holy Jewish day--50 years and a day since the other traumatic surprise of the Yom Kippur War--with total disregard for basic human norms.

They will be held accountable. Perhaps it was also a failed attempt of divergence from the Ukraine tragedy. Restoring Israel's damaged deterrence is a must priority. The internal Israeli bitter divisions around misguided Judicial Reform were perceived to reflect a weakened society, though Israel unites in a national security emergency, but a heavy price is nonetheless exacted by an enemy tragically neglecting and sacrificing its own Palestinian people.

Oh God sustain our sacred resolve to face evil and subdue it with Shalom's eternal blessings that we shall not compromise over, of healing, hope and harmony. Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is founder and spiritual leader of Temple Lev Tikvah in Virginia Beach.

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