Joe Biden on Tuesday pledged unflinching support for Israel, calling the assault by Hamas militants that left nearly 1,000 people dead an “act of sheer evil” and confirming that some US citizens are part of the many currently being held hostage.
In a televised speech from the White House, the US president said at least 14 Americans were killed in last weekend’s attack by Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, and a yet unknown number of Americans are being held hostage.
The attack saw gunmen crossing the border from Gaza, raiding Israeli cities and gunning down civilians in their homes, cars and at a desert music festival. As many as 150 hostages are believed to have been taken. More than 900 people in Gaza have been killed in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes while enforcing a “blockade” that sealed off the besieged territory of 2.3 million people from food, fuel and other supplies.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, later told reporters that “20 or more Americans” were unaccounted for following the weekend violence, though the number held captive by Hamas remains unclear. He said the US government was in regular contact with the families of the missing, some of whom have made public pleas to US and Israeli authorities for help locating their loved ones.
“In this moment, we must be crystal clear: we stand with Israel,” Biden, flanked by vice-president Kamala Harris and US secretary of state Antony Blinken, said in a forceful speech, repeating: “We stand with Israel.”
In a show of solidarity with Israel, the state department announced on Tuesday that Blinken will travel to Israel in the coming days.
In his remarks from the White House State Dining Room, Biden was unequivocal in his condemnation of Hamas, calling it a terrorist organization whose “state purpose is the annihilation of the state of Israel and the murder of Jewish people”.
“Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination,” he added, echoing the sentiment expressed in a rare joint statement by the leaders of the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy on Monday night.
“All of us recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” it said. “But make no mistake: Hamas does not represent those aspirations, and it offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed.”
On Tuesday, Biden said the group’s attack “brings to mind the worst rampages of Isis.”
“Parents butchered, using their bodies to try to protect their children. Stomach churning reports of babies being killed … women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies,” he said. “This is terrorism.”
As Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip after the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, the Biden made no public appeals for restraint.
Israel, he said, not only had the right to defend itself but a “duty” to do so. But in a phone call prior to his remarks, Biden said he reminded Netanyahu that democracies were more secure when they act “according to the rule of law”.
Biden said the US was committed to supporting its ally and was “surging” additional military assistance to replenish its Iron Dome rocket interceptor system. The US Congress, presently plunged into chaos without a House speaker, may also be asked to take “urgent action” on the matter, Biden said.
In Washington, the attack has largely drawn a similar response from lawmakers across the ideological spectrum, with condemnations of Hamas and expressions of solidarity with Israel.
In a statement, the Senate leader Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish official in American history, said he spoke on Tuesday with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog and assured him that a bipartisan group in the US Senate “stands ready to do whatever it takes to ensure Israel has the resources it needs”.
Still, there were voices of dissent. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan and the first Palestinian American woman elected to serve in Congress said in a statement: “I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost.”
She also called on Israel to commit to “lifting the blockade, ending the occupation and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance”.
She concluded: “As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
Speaking to reporters, Sullivan said the US would support Israel “for as long as they need” and additional military assistance, including shipments of ammunition and other weapons, was on its way. “You can expect American planes flying into Israel to deliver military capabilities,” he said.
Asked what the US was doing for Palestinian civilians trying to flee the Israeli bombardment, Sullivan said the US was “focused on this question” and was actively working with Israel and neighboring Egypt to identify a route for residents of Gaza to escape.
Domestically, Biden said in his remarks that state and federal law enforcement agencies were also responding by taking steps to safeguard Jewish centers across the country and “disrupt any domestic threat that could emerge in connection to these horrific attacks”.
Biden is a staunch ally of Israel, stretching back to his first visit to the country as a young US senator in 1973. In his remarks on Tuesday, Biden recalled that visit, 50 years ago, recounting a lengthy conversation he had with then Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in the weeks leading up to the Yom Kippur war.
He said Meir, sensing his concern for the fate of Israel, sought to assure him. “Don’t worry, Senator Biden, we have a secret weapon,” she whispered, according to Biden. “We have no place else to go.”
