When Becca Balint ran for Congress last year, she spoke about how her family’s history as Jews who lived through the Holocaust motivated her to “heal divisions.”

Now as a progressive Jewish member of Congress, Balint has been thrust into the center of a raging debate about how to respond to the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s intense retaliatory bombardment of the Gaza Strip, home to over 2 million Palestinians.

On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400 Israelis, abducting over 200 hostages, and injuring more than 5,400 people, most of them civilians. In response, Israel has mounted a brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. As of Tuesday, nearly 6,000 Palestinians had been killed and over 16,000 injured, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Balint recently joined 132 House Democrats, including every Democratic Jewish member of congress, in a statement that endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself and also called for protections for civilians.

“Israel has to protect innocent lives — that has to be a part of the response,” Balint told The Vermont Conversation. “And also, Hamas could end this immediately by releasing all of the hostages and denouncing their position, which is that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth and all Israelis should be slaughtered.”

“Any civilian loss of life is absolutely tragic,” she continued, noting that she is “working very hard with the Biden administration to push Israel to follow all humanitarian and international laws related to this conflict.”

The ripple effects of the Hamas attack and the Israeli assault on Gaza are being felt around the world and throughout Vermont. Rallies have been held in Burlington in solidarity with Israelis, and another calling for Palestinian solidarity. Jewish Vermonters held a prayer service on the rainswept steps of the Vermont State House last Friday and read the Mourner’s Kaddish, the traditional prayer in memory of the dead, “to honor the loss of both Israeli and Palestinian life,” according to local organizers with If Not Now, an American Jewish group that is calling for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Eighteen Democratic members of Congress have signed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Balint has not endorsed the ceasefire resolution.

“If I thought that calling for (a ceasefire) right now would help this situation, would help the hostages, would help the intricacies on the ground, I would do it,” asserted Balint. “I'm doing my level best in this moment to make the right political decision to ensure ongoing peace and security in the region, which is what I want and have always wanted.”

Balint acknowledges that “people are really struggling in Vermont with this issue right now.” She counts herself among them.

"Of course, my family's Holocaust history weighs on me. Of course, the antisemitism and Islamophobia weighs on me. But it doesn't impact the decision making that I do. Because Vermonters want me to be doing my homework. And that's what I'm doing."



“It's not easy to be on the receiving end of people saying that I'm responsible for genocide, or I'm responsible for this humanitarian catastrophe,” she said. “I am making the steps I think need to be made right now to make this situation better.”