Blinken: I Come Both as a Jew and Descendant of Holocaust Survivors

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a joint press conference on Thursday afternoon in the Kirya in Tel Aviv.

At the beginning of the conference, Netanyahu expressed gratitude to Secretary Blinken for the unwavering support of the United States for Israel.

He went on to say, “Hamas has revealed itself as an enemy of civilization. The heinous acts it has committed, including murdering parents in front of their children, children in front of their parents, burning people alive, beheadings, and kidnappings, along with their sickening celebrations of these horrors, all serve as evidence that Hamas is ISIS. And just as ISIS was defeated, so too will Hamas be.”

Blinken, opening his remarks, made a powerful statement: “I stand before you not just as the United States Secretary of State but as a Jew.”

Below is a text of Blinken’s speech:

Mr Prime Minister, I’m grateful to be back in Israel in this incredibly difficult moment for this nation but in fact for the entire world. If you’ll permit me, as a personal aside, I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State but also as a Jew. My grandfather, Maurice Blinkin, fled Pogroms in Russia. My Stepfather Samuel Pizar, survived concentration camps; Auschwitz, Dachau…so Prime Minister, I understand on a personal level the harrowing Echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed for Jews everywhere.

 I also come before you as a husband and father of young children. it’s impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed such as the mother father and three small children murdered as they sheltered in their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, and not think of my own children. This was just one of Hamas’ countless acts of terror in a litany of brutality and inhumanity that yes, brings to mind the worst of ISIS. Babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive…parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents. How are we even to understand this to digest this? And yet at the same

time that we’ve been shocked by the depravity of Hamas, we’ve also been inspired by The bravery of Israel’s citizens. The grandfather who drove over an hour to a Kibbutz under siege, armed only with a pistol and rescued his kids and grandkids. The mother who died shielding her teenage son with her body, giving her life to save his, giving him life for a second time. The volunteer security teams on the Kibbutzim who swiftly rallied to defend their friends and neighbors despite being heavily outnumbered.

And we’re lifted by the remarkable solidarity of the Israeli people demonstrated in the long lines of people giving blood, in the hundreds of thousands of reservists who’ve mobilized, some rushing home from abroad. People around the country opening their homes to fellow citizens displaced from the south.

The people of Israel have long and rightly prided themselves on their self-reliance on their ability to defend themselves even when the odds are stacked against them. The message that I bring to Israel is this: You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists you will never ever have to. We will always be there by your side. That’s the message that President Biden delivered to the Prime Minister from the moment this crisis began. It’s the message that I and my other colleagues in the government have delivered to our Israeli counterparts on a daily, even an hourly basis. It’s the message that I bring with me to our discussions today, and it’s what I’ll affirm when I meet with the members of Israel’s newly formed national emergency government. We welcome the government’s creation and the unity and resolve that it reflects across Israeli society.

We’re delivering on our word, supplying ammunition, interceptors to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome alongside other defense material. The first shipments of U.S. military support have already arrived in Israel, and more is on the way. As Israel’s defense needs evolve, we will work with Congress to make sure that they’re met, and I can tell you, there is overwhelming, overwhelming bipartisan support in our Congress for Israel’s security, here in Israel and everywhere.

We will reaffirm the crystal clear warning that President Biden issued yesterday to any adversary state or non-state, thinking of taking advantage of the current crisis to attack Israel – don’t.

The United States has Israel’s back. We’ve deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean, we bolstered the presence of U.S. fighter aircraft in the region, we’re providing other support as well we continue working closely with Israel to secure the release of the men, women, children, elderly people taken hostage by Hamas. We’re pursuing intensive diplomacy throughout the region to prevent the conflict from spreading, and I’ll be doing that over the course of my trip inthe coming days.

Too often in the past leaders have equivocated in the face of terrorist attacks against Israel and its people that’s why we’ve been adamant with all countries in the wake of these attacks there is no excuse, there is no justification for these atrocities. You heard the Prime Minister say it this is this must be a moment for moral clarity.

The failure to unambiguously condemn terrorism puts at risk not only people in Israel but people everywhere. Look at what just happened; individuals from 36 countries killed or missing in the aftermath of Hamas’s attacks…Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, no region has escaped Hamas’  bloody reach.

Anyone who wants peace and Justice must condemn Hamas’ reign of terror. We know Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations to live with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity and dignity. We know Hamas, instead of promoting the well-being of its citizens rules repressively and dedicates the resources it has to terror tunnels and rockets.

We know Hamas didn’t commit its heinous acts with the interests of Palestinian people in mind. We know Hamas does not stand for the future that Palestinians want for themselves and for their children.

Hamas has only one agenda; to destroy Israel and to murder Jews. No country can or would tolerate the slaughter of its citizens or simply return to the conditions that allowed it to take place. Israel has the right, indeed the obligation to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again.

As the Prime Minister and I discussed how Israel does this matters. We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard even when it’s difficult, and holding ourselves to account when we fall short. Our humanity, the value that we place on human life and human dignity, that’s what makes us who we are, and we count them among our greatest strengths.

That’s why it’s so important to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians and that’s why we mourn the loss of every innocent life. Civilians of every faith, every nationality who’ve been killed. Tragically the number of innocent lives claimed by Hamas’ heinous attacks continues to rise. Among those, we now know that at least 25 American citizens were killed.

We join the families in Israel, in the United States, and around the world in mourning their immeasurable loss.

Nearly 15 years ago, my stepfather, who I alluded to earlier, Samuel Pizar, came here to Yad Vashem to perform the mourner prayer that he wrote to accompany Leonard Bernstein’s Third Symphony… Kaddish, to reflect on the Unspeakable Horrors that he’d endured as a boy in the Nazi concentration camps. He wrote that man, though created in Your image and endowed with the freedom to choose between good and evil, remains capable of the worst as of the best. Of hatred, as of love. Of madness as of genius. In this moment, where evil, hatred and madness have once more taken so many innocent lives, we must stand together, resolve to confront what is worst among humanity with what is best. We must provide an alternative to the vision of violence and fear, nihilism and terror presented by Hamas.

That is what the United States will do, standing with Israel, working together with its people and all those in this region who remain committed to the vision of a more peaceful, a more integrated, a more secure, a more prosperous Middle East. Thank you very much.