James Lankford: “Today is October 7, 2025. It has been 731 days--2 years--that the war has been raging in Israel. On October 7, 2023…”

“Today is October 7, 2025. It has been 731 days--2 years--that the war has been raging in Israel. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed through a fence line separating Gaza and Israel, and early that morning, they brutally slaughtered over 1,200 people--men, women, children, moms and dads, grandparents. There were 4,000-plus people injured, and there were 251 people taken hostage. Forty-eight still remain today, 2 years later. It is hard to process what it is like for those hostages--living in tunnels, stored underground, moved from place to place. Who knows what has happened to them. Two years--for 2 years, Israel has said one simple thing: This war ends when Hamas, that terrorist organization, is not in charge of Gaza--because, clearly, they cannot be trusted--and when our hostages come home. For 2 years this war has raged unnecessarily because a terrorist organization is determined to drive Jews out of Israel--for 2 years. I have been in Israel a couple of times during the war. I have been able to visit with senior leadership there to be able to get a status update, but I also took the opportunity to drive south, right along to the Gaza border, to visit the kibbutzim that are now empty, which were previously full of families and children. I was there in the springtime last year and saw the flowers popping up just organically, on their own, in an empty kibbutz, and I realized the horror of what happened that day.”