After visit, Gillen touts bipartisan support for Israel

Rep. Laura Gillen reiterated her support for Israel and vilified Hamas on Monday, during an interview with The Jewish Star after she returned from a visit to the Jewish state.

Gillen joined 14 Democratic members of Congress on a weeklong trip to Israel sponsored by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation, meeting with officials and visiting significant locations around the country.

“We hear a lot from the fringes on both sides of the aisle, but the majority of the members understand that Israel is our ally, and we need to support them, and we need to get the hostages back,” Gillen said. “Hamas can end this war and end the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians by giving back the hostages and relinquishing its power.”

The freshman congresswoman, whose district includes the right-leaning Five Towns and other South Shore communities, overcame a Trump sweep in Nassau County to defeat one-term Republican Rep. Anthony d’Esposito in 2024.

During her Israel trip, the delegation visited the port at Ashdod where they observed aid collection and discussed the difficulties of distributing it in Gaza.

“One thing that we found by meeting with various aid organizations is that there is aid going into Gaza,” she said. “There are challenges providing aid to folks, because Hamas is engaging in military operations and trying to take the food away for its own uses.”

That “there need to be more distribution sites was kind of a general consensus,” she added, “but Israel is letting aid get into Gaza.”

Gillen said that Hamas “is effectively trying to change the narrative about what is really going on there,” and that “what is getting lost right now is why this conflict started, and it’s because Hamas launched a brutal terroristic attack, unprovoked, to destroy peace in the region, to kill Israelis and Jewish people, and they did it in the most savage, brutal way.

“That is why everybody is suffering right now, not because of Israel but because of Hamas,” she said.

Gillen said the most moving moments during her trip came in visits to Kibbutz Nir Oz and the site of the Nova Music Festival, and a meeting with Ilay David, brother of Evyatar David, who remains a Hamas captive.

The representatives were briefed by IDF officials about how Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow-3 protect Israelis, and heard them tout the value of the US-Israel strategic defense partnership.

They visited the northern border and the Golan Heights, threatened by Hezbollah in Lebanon and terrorist groups in Syria, as well as the Gaza envelope. And they heard Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, former head of IDF military intelligence, discuss the threat posed by Iran.

“I am very hawkish when it comes to dealing with Iran,” she said, “and I think that the [Trump] administration’s strong stance against Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is extremely important, something that I support.”

Other stops on the tour included meetings with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, opposition leader Yair Lapid, President Isaac Herzog, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

Asked about her prospects in a district that views the president and Republicans favorably, Gillen said she’s “not running against Trump for president, I’m their representative in Congress.”

“I can give credit where credit is due,” she added. In addition to praising Trump on Iran, she cited the Abraham Accords as “a huge accomplishment that made great strides in terms of finding peace between Israel and its neighbors. And I think that’s the reason we saw some Arab states condemn Hamas and condemn October 7 in the wake of that attack.”

“I would be completely supportive of the administration trying to work with Israel to see those relationships continue and expand going forward as we look to a resolution of this conflict,” she said.

Among the 14 House Democrats travelling with Gillen were 11 first-term lawmakers, including George Latimer of Westchester — one-third of the 33 freshman Democratic members, which Jewish Insider reported was “a sign of AIPAC’s continued pull among more centrist pro-Israel Democrats even as progressives have sought to make the group politically toxic.”

A Republican trip the previous week sponsored by the same AIPAC affiliate included around the same number of freshman lawmakers, Jewish Insider said.