WASHINGTON, DC: Joe Biden delivered a strong speech on the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, stating, “We stand with Israel.”
The President also confirmed that 14 Americans have been confirmed dead in the fight. Among them was Deborah Matias, who died while shielding her teen son.
Her father, Ilan Troen, shared that her daughter was on the call with him when she was shot dead.
Deborah Matias died while protecting her teen son from bullets
Troen, a professor emeritus from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said his daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Matias, were killed by Hamas militants during the attack.
Troen’s grandson, 16-year-old Rotem Matias, was shot but will survive, he added.
“We were on the phone with Deborah as she was killed. We were on the phone the entire day with our grandson, Rotem, as he lay first under her body, and then found a place to escape under a blanket in a laundry,” said Troen.
Rotem was shot in the stomach but will recover, as per his grandfather. “The brunt of the shot was borne by his mother,” he said.
“The terrorists who came, they had explosives and blew up the front door to their house and then blew out the front door to their so-called safe room,” Troen added.
Joe Biden compares Hamas attack on Israel with 'ISIS rampages'
Meanwhile, Joe Biden called the attack "abhorrent," and compared the attack with the ‘ISIS rampages.’
“The brutality of Hamas, this blood-thirstiness, brings to mind the worst, the worst rampages of ISIS – this is terrorism, but sadly, for the Jewish people it’s not new,” Biden said.
“This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by millennia of anti-Semitism and genocide of the Jewish people, so in this moment, we must be crystal clear, we stand with Israel,” the President added.
“As president, I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans being a hostage around the world,” he said. “This is not about party or politics, it’s about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America,” said Biden.
The 80-year-old further shared, “Terrorists purposely target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war. It matters. There’s a difference,” reports CNN.
On the domestic front, he said, that the law enforcement officials “have stepped up security around centers of Jewish life."
They are also “working closely with state local law enforcement and Jewish community partners to identify and disrupt any domestic threat that could emerge in connection to these horrific attacks,” the POTUS said.
