WASHINGTON—Today, The Heritage Foundation’s national security experts issued the following statement in response to the first anniversary of the heinous October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. At least 1,200 individuals died during these attacks, marking the largest terrorist attack in Israel’s history.  

Heritage’s Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Victoria Coates stated:   

“October 7th was a brutal and unjustifiable attack not only on the Israeli people, but also on Americans and the citizens of many other nations. It was in fact an attack on western civilization writ large. Motivated by a savage bloodlust to kill Jews, Hamas didn’t care who they murdered, raped or kidnapped on that terrible day if it furthered their genocidal directive to destroy Israel.

“Hamas’ hateful attacks were funded by the feckless regional policy of the Biden- Harris administration, which has been trying to appease the Islamic Republic of Iran by not enforcing the crushing sanctions President Trump imposed on it to prevent precisely this sort of violence directed by the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

“With the threat from Iran greater than ever before, the United States must unequivocally stand with Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle East, to ensure that atrocities like these never threaten Israelis or Americans again.” 

Heritage’s Director of the Allison Center for National Security Robert Greenway added:   

“Today and every day, we remember the innocent victims whose lives were tragically taken during the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and deadliest attack on Americans since 9/11.

“The Biden-Harris administration’s reckless foreign policy in the Middle East—including unfreezing hundreds of billions of Iranian assets—has systematically dismantled our deterrence and appeased the world's largest state sponsor of terror which has paved the way for future attacks against the Israeli people and allowed the Islamic Republic to achieve the nuclear threshold and plot to assassinate former U.S. government officials, including the former President, with impunity.

“Abandoning the region’s only democracy and our longstanding ally amid these trying times would be a disaster, not only for Israel but also for the United States, and the broader region.”