[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 176 (Wednesday, October 25, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1014]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             ISRAEL AT WAR

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                        HON. JENNIFER A. KIGGANS

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 25, 2023

  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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