Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in Jordan on her way to Washington on Tuesday. She said she was in Saudi Arabia and had traveled to Israel after the surprise attack by Hamas on Saturday.
Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish and a breast cancer survivor who works to raise awareness in October, represents Florida’s 25th congressional district, which she said has the largest Jewish community in the United States.
“The devastation that was rained on Israel was unprecedented by the savagery of Hamas whose mission is to eradicate Jews and Israel,” Wasserman Schultz said.
At least 14 U.S. citizens were among the hundreds killed in Israel and at least 20 U.S. citizens had vanished during the attack that involved the taking of dozens of hostages.
“The horrific stories that I heard meeting with families who have either had their loved ones captured and are being held hostage or murdered in cold blood were sickening, heart-sickening, and gun wrenching,” Wasserman Schultz said.
In Israel, the resolve to make sure Hamas is never able to attack like that again was strong, Wasserman Schultz said about her meetings with Israeli officials.
Wasserman Schultz said she talked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu on Tuesday.
“It’s clear that Israel will have the need for us to help her replenish and ensure that she has the ability to continue to defend herself,” Wasserman Schultz said adding she is a Zionist, a term historically used to describe those who support a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
During his address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden condemned Hamas’ treatment of civilians as an “act of sheer evil” and said Americans were among Hamas’ hostages.
“I am thankful to President Biden for bringing in our carriers both right up near Israel and to the region to ensure that this violence and terrorism doesn’t spread to other parts of the region and that no other terrorist organization gets any ideas that Israel is weakened or that the United States resolve is weakened because neither is true,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Biden said the U.S. was going to “share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Tuesday, the fourth day of the conflict, that a small group of special operations forces was part of Israel’s counteroperation.
“We also have the ability to rapidly deploy other resources into the region,” Austin said.
The U.S. also positioned the Ford carrier strike group in the far Eastern Mediterranean with warplanes, destroyers, and cruisers.
The U.S. was helping the Israeli military with planning and intelligence, according to Austin, who talked to the reporters who were traveling with him to Brussels.
A family in Miami-Dade County was grieving after a 38-year-old father of four, a commander for the Israeli military, was killed during the Hamas attack.
Israeli-American reservists who live in South Florida have started to make their way back to Israel to help serve after the surprise attack on Saturday. There were some who were also planning to attend funerals before reporting to a military base.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt announced they wanted to mediate an end to the war. The International Committee of the Red Cross announced efforts to mediate access to hostages and prisoners of war.
“It is horrific and deeply distressing to see images of those captured by Palestinian armed groups being ill-treated, as well as reports of killings and the desecration of their bodies,” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.
The death toll of the conflict since Saturday was at over 1,600.
Local 10 News partners including The Associated Press, ABC News, and CNN contributed to this report.
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