Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday that he will travel to Israel this weekend, becoming the first GOP presidential candidate to visit the Jewish state since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Christie, 61, said at a town hall in Merrimack, NH, that he will meet with Israeli government officials, Israel Defense Forces soldiers and families of Hamas kidnapping victims during the trip
The former New Jersey governor is also slated to visit the southern part of the country, near the Gaza border, according to CNN.
“Tomorrow night I’m leaving to go to Israel because I want to see it for myself,” Christie said. “Because I don’t think you can try to be president of the United States and be afraid to go and see what is happening on the ground. If I’m going to continue to be a strong advocate for doing everything we need to be doing to defend Israel, I got to see it for myself.”
“And if you really want to lead, you need to go over and show the people of Israel that one person running for president of the United States cares enough to get on an airplane and get over there and do what needs to be done to find out how we fix this problem,” he added.
Christie slammed Israel’s intelligence community during the third GOP primary debate on Wednesday, arguing that it “failed” its citizens by being caught off guard by Hamas’ unprecedented raid of the country, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 people and saw hundreds, including US citizens, kidnapped and taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.
“The fact is that Israel and their intelligence community failed,” Christie said during the debate in Miami. “They failed here, and they failed the people of the state of Israel.”
Christie is no stranger to war zones.
In August, the GOP candidate made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and laying flowers at a mass grave in Bucha, where Ukraine claims that Russian soldiers committed atrocities against the civilian population.
Christie is polling in fifth among the slate of GOP White House hopefuls, at 2.6%, according to a RealClearPolitics average of national surveys – more than 55 percentage points behind former President Donald Trump.