From the Liveblog of
Monday, December 11, 2023
‘We’ll never forget what we’ve seen here’: EU MPs tour border town ravaged on Oct. 7
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
KIBBUTZ KFAR AZA — A delegation from the European Union parliament tours the Gaza border town of Kibbutz Kfar Aza where some of the worst atrocities on October 7 took place.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana leads the tour for the delegation headed by Security and Defense Subcommittee chair Nathalie Loiseau from France and Foreign Affairs Committee chair David McAllister from Germany. They are joined by MPs Rasa Juknevičienė of Lithuania, Gheorghe-Vlad Nistor of Romania, Attila Ara-Kovács of Hungary and Carina Ohlsson of Sweden.
“What we’ve seen here in Kfar Aza we will never forget,” says Loiseau in remarks to the press at the end of the tour through the burnt buildings in the border town where over 50 were murdered and at least 17 were taken hostage on October 7.
“We know that we are in the same fight,” the European lawmaker continues. “You don’t need to be an Israeli, you don’t need to be a Jew to feel that this is humanity that has been attacked.”
“We will keep this memory deep in our minds. We will testify it to our fellow citizens back in Europe, and we will never forget that we are fighting this fight together,” Loiseau adds.
“It was important that a cross-party delegation of the European Parliament had the opportunity to witness for us to understand just how incredibly brutal these atrocities were,” McAllister added.
Ohana thanks the European delegation for making the trip to Kfar Aza “to see with their own eyes, to hear with their own ears, to witness what happened here on October 7.”
“This attack is not only on Israel, but it is on the free world. We all have to stand together — democracies have to stand together against this evil, against terrorism against those who educate their children to hate, to kill [and in] antisemitism,” he adds.
The delegation is later taken to an IDF base in central Israel where the army’s film compilation of the October 7 atrocities is screened.
The delegation of lawmakers is one of dozens that have toured Gaza border towns over the past two months since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
