Nearly a dozen displaced residents of the Galilee returned to Israel on Thursday amid a barrage of , after spending several days in Washington, DC meeting with elected and administration officials to share their eight months of experiences living within Israel’s second battlefront. Facilitated by Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and founder of the Israel Advocacy Group, the delegation was organized in a matter of days; reflecting the urgency of the unfolding crisis creeping southward and westward. The delegation met with (D-NY); Rep.
Brad Schneider (D-IL); Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (D-WA); Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D- NY); Rep.
Ted Lieu (D-CA); Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ); Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-FL); Rep.
Jimmy Panetta (D -CA); Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Jewish leaders including American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch. Oren first spoke to t over the phone on Wednesday afternoon while he and several of the delegates were en route to the White House for a meeting with Russ Headlee, National Security Council director for Jordan and Lebanon, and Samantha Sutton, the National Security Council’s director for Israel and Palestinian Affairs.
Oren spoke with again on Thursday morning after the meeting, which he called warm and productive. Sutton and Headlee appreciated hearing the first-person accounts of the “intolerable situation in the North,” he said. Wednesday’s meeting took place at a unique, yet precarious, moment as Hamas had .
