The United Nations passed a resolution today to help bring more aid into Gaza.

The agreement will appoint a senior U.N. official who will help coordinate aid to the more than 570,000 people in Gaza who are facing starvation.

And so far, more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The United States notably abstained from the vote today because it felt the U.N. did not decisively condemned the attacks by Hamas on October 7th.

The resolution did call for all hostages held by Hamas to be released immediately, and it did not call for a cease fire at the urging of the U.S.. New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer visited Israel this week and just returned yesterday after what he described as a nonstop trip.

He's here with me now to discuss some of his biggest takeaways.

Congressman, great to have you with us tonight.

Now, you just returned from leading an official Intelligence Committee trip to Israel, where you got to speak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some American intelligence officials and some family members of some of the hostages held there.

First, I just want to start with what did you hear in terms of Israel's strategy for their next steps in this war?

Well, first, thanks for having me.

It was an intense 18 hours or so on the ground.

Also met with Mossad, the director of Mossad and Shin Bet, which were the intelligence agencies.

My focus was, of course, as you imagine, how we achieve the objectives that have been laid out by by President Biden to get the hostages home.

And I know the that's shared by the Israelis, including the seven Americans who remain hostage to do everything we can, of course, to crush Hamas, which continues to wreak havoc in the region, fire rockets at Israel, our key ally.

And then thirdly, to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, especially dealing with what we know continues, which is Hamas using innocent Palestinians as human shields.

So the my conversations all were around those objectives.

Right.

How how do we get the hostages home and how do we crush Hamas and deliver humanitarian aid and, of course, keep every aggressive act as targeted as possible in that effort?

Yeah.

Did you hear from Israel that commitment to keep this a targeted attack?

As we know, 20,000 Palestinians have been killed.

And as you said, Hamas right now is using Palestinians as human shields.

And they and I saw that.

So you can see it.

You seen that.

I saw how sophisticated their tunnels system is literally going six stories down.

And you know, what happens is Hamas jumps out of the tunnels and fires at IDF, Israeli soldiers then goes back into into the tunnel system.

It's a very complicated conflict.

It's and they are refusing to let innocent Palestinian civilians leave areas.

So they actually put them into harm's way.

They're using hospitals and mosques and schools as as places where they're keeping weapons.

And they they purposely keep innocent people there in the places where they should be evacuating them.

So it's it's incredibly difficult.

But what I did hear from Israel, from the prime minister directly is how at what lengths they're going to to make sure they're targeted at Hamas, at the enemy, at the terrorists who, of course, raped, burned, decapitated.

Committed the most heinous acts I've ever seen to Israelis and to Americans and others on October 7th.

Congressman, should Qatar right now be playing a stronger role in helping to negotiate the release of more hostages?

Absolutely.

It's something that I talked about at great length and in many of my conversations was the role of the Qataris and yes, I believe that the Qataris, who have relationships with Hamas, actually have Hamas living in their country.

They should be then they're the ones for the relationships.

They should be a lot of pressure on on them to get this done.

To say to Hamas, it's time to release the hostages.

You know, that is a key part of actually making sure we end this war.

And, you know, I put a lot of responsibility directly on them to get it done.

As I'm sure you know, the U.N. just passed a resolution today to get more aid into Gaza.

The U.S. abstained from that vote.

I'm just curious what you believe the U.S. strategy should be right now in terms of supporting Israel moving forward.

You have to support Israel.

She's our key ally who was attacked by terrorists who seek to do us harm as well.

And they're all backed by Iran.

Hamas is Hezbollah in the north, Palestinian jihad.

The Houthis are continuing to fire in the Red Sea at at ships.

And, you know, for and out of Iraq, out of Syria.

There's been firing at our bases and American bases and, of course, at our in our key allies, including Israel.

So I think we have no choice but to make sure we fight back and stop terrorists.

Congressman Josh Gottheimer, great to have you on.

Thank you for having me.