President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses plan to memorialize the one-year anniversary on Monday of Hamas’s terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The president and Jill Biden, the first lady, intend to join a rabbi (whom the administration didn’t identify) in lighting a yahrzeit memorial candle shortly before noon, according to a White House release.
The event will be covered only by the in-house pool, meaning a small number of reporters who represent their colleagues have an opportunity to shout questions at the president, who might opt to respond.
Only pool reporters will be permitted to cover Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who is Jewish, planting a “memorial tree” at the vice president’s residence to “honor the victims,” per the White House. The two will deliver remarks in the afternoon that the White House will livestream, the White House added.
Emhoff also plans to attend an American Jewish Committee memorial service in the morning, which will be live-streamed and open to the press, the White House said.
War on ‘our shared values’
Former President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential nominee, plans to participate in an Oct. 7 remembrance event on Monday evening in Miami.
“Jewish community leaders will gather to honor the 1,200 lives lost after being taken hostage and killed on that fateful morning one year ago,” the Trump campaign stated. “The event will also remember the victims of antisemitic violence that has continued to afflict communities worldwide since that tragic day.”
The campaign added that Oct. 7 “was the day in which the most Jewish people were murdered since the Holocaust.”
“Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies launched a war, not just against Israel, but against all of our shared values. What we have witnessed in the past year is a battle between the forces of good versus evil,” per the campaign. “Since the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, we have witnessed nothing but global chaos, as evidenced by Iran’s horrific missile attack on Israel just this past week.”
Trump referred to Biden’s and Harris’s policies as “inept and failed,” saying they “enabled the Iranian-backed proxies that have sewn a path of death and destruction, resulting in catastrophic global ramifications.”
He added that by choosing not to be present at the July 24 joint session of Congress when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, Harris “blatantly displayed her lack of competence in international diplomacy, showing that she does not stand with our strongest ally in the Middle East, the State of Israel. Since taking office, the Harris-Biden administration has enriched Iran, enabled the enemies of the United States and compromised the security of our country.” JNS
{Matzav.com}