Statement by Rockville Mayor and City Council: “We unequivocally condemn Hamas’s targeted violence against innocent civilians in Israel, which has resulted in unconscionable barbaric murder and rape, attacking entire families from babies to elders, and the kidnapping of civilians, including children, who remain hostage. The attacks by the terrorist Hamas were long planned and practiced. The brutality was intended; not acts by individual soldiers. We recognize that Israeli Arabs were targeted alongside Israeli Jews.
This unprovoked attack aligns with the Hamas mission to eradicate the State of Israel and murder all Jews. Israel, a nation state endorsed and voted into the United Nations 75 years ago, has the right to protect its citizens, tourists, and visitors against insurgents. Its borders were breached, the country invaded in the most horrific manner, from land, air and sea was a deliberate provocation coming as it did during a religious holiday, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war. For what evil purpose, we cannot fathom. Innocent Israelis and Palestinians, as always in war, will bear the consequences of Hamas’s terrorist attacks for years to come.
