Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) said she came away from her recent visit to Israel feeling resolute in her determination to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship and support the Jewish state in its efforts to bring all remaining hostages in Gaza home.

Gillen, a freshman lawmaker who represents a Nassau County, Long Island, swing district with a significant Jewish population, took part in a delegation of 14 House Democrats to the Jewish state last week. The trip was sponsored by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation, which organized a similar visit to Israel for House Republicans the week prior that overlapped for several days with the Democratic trip. 

“We need to continue to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Israel,” Gillen told Jewish Insider in an interview on Monday. “The most important thing is: We need to be consistently supporting Israel. Hamas needs to end this war. It needs to give the hostages back. That’s something that can happen today, and the world needs to remember that.”

The Long Island lawmaker noted that the trip, her first visit to Israel as a member of Congress, highlighted the nonpartisan nature of support for Israel in the United States and sent a message that the vast majority of Americans are behind the Jewish state. 

“Just being on this trip with colleagues from the other side, having the opportunity to sit down and talk about some of the things that we saw, the conversations we were having with various elected officials and various nonprofit groups and business leaders in Israel, and talking to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about what we’re sharing, the shared experience of visiting Israel, I think is really important going forward,” Gillen said.

“I think it’s important for the world to see this, that the detractors are the extremes on both sides of the aisle, that the majority, I believe, of people see the value and the special nature of our relationship with our ally Israel,” she continued. 

The trip comes amid increasing tensions between the Israeli government and some of the most vocal pro-Israel Democrats on Capitol Hill, many of whom have expressed concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s recently finalized plans to expand the war and conduct a military takeover of Gaza City.

Gillen said that the response from constituents to her trip has been overwhelmingly positive. “The folks that I have been speaking with, they’ve been glad that I went to Israel. They were glad that I could share stories about what I saw going on there, the stories about how aid is actually getting into Gaza, the challenges that are faced, the stories about meeting with the hostages’ families,” she told JI, adding, “people are losing sight of what is going on with this conflict.”

Placing blame for the war in the hands of Hamas, Gillen noted, “We have to keep reminding the world that that is why people are suffering.”

The House Democrat said that the most consistent concerns she heard from Israeli officials and citizens were focused on securing the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. 

“The No. 1 feeling that I got is [that] people want the hostages home. Everywhere you look you see pictures of the hostages, whether it’s arriving in the airport where their photographs are up to just on a fence outside a private home. That’s the most overwhelming sentiment, I think, is we need to get the hostages home, and we need to get them back alive,” Gillen said.

Asked about her sense of public sentiment among Israelis nearly two years since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Gillen replied: “I’m always in awe of the resilience of the Israeli people.”

Gillen pointed to her tour of Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities in southern Israel targeted on Oct. 7, and said her guide “was telling us the stories and the horrible things that happened all around her that day, to her neighbors and friends, but she also talked about how they’re going to rebuild. They’re going to come back, and they’re going to be stronger than they were before.”

In addition to seeing the sites of the Oct. 7 attack, the group toured the Old City of Jerusalem and visited the Western Wall and Yad Vashem — the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The lawmakers also traveled to northern Israel and the Golan Heights. They received several briefings from IDF officials, including one on Iranian threats to Israel from IDF Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, former Military Intelligence Directorate chief. 

The trip featured meetings with hostage families and senior Israeli officials, including with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid. The group also met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, whom Gillen’s office said she “had the honor of introducing” to her colleagues on the trip, as well as hostage families. 

Regarding a visit to Ashdod Port to see the World Food Program’s aid collection operation on the ground, Gillen told JI, “it was a top priority for our delegation to find out what is going on in terms of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza.”

“One of things we took away is [that] it’s very challenging because they are trying to distribute food in an active war zone, so that makes it harder to get the aid to the folks who need it most. However, there is aid going into Gaza. There’s agreement there, and that the challenges in getting aid are caused by Hamas,” Gillen said. 

“Hamas’ military operations are hurting the ability of all aid organizations to get the food to the people who need it, but certainly aid is getting into Gaza,” she continued. “There’s agreement also that we need to, or they need to, increase the number of distribution sites, but that’s being made more challenging because of Hamas’ activities.”