The messenger was the 56th Secretary of State.

He became the first Jewish Secretary of State when he was sworn in in 1973.

When meeting with Israel's prime minister, Golden Meyer, Secretary Kissinger said, quote,

you must remember that first I am an American, second I am Secretary of State, and third

I am a Jew.

Fifty years after the Senate confirmed Henry Kissinger as the first Jewish Secretary

of State, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said this today in Israel.

I come before you, not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.

My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia.

My stepfather, Samuel Pizar, survived concentration camps, Auschwitz, Dachau, my Donek.

So Prime Minister, I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas'

massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed, for Jews everywhere.

I also come before you as a husband and father of young children.

It's impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed such as the mother, father,

and three small children murdered as they sheltered in their home in Kubuts near Oz and

not think of my own children.

This was just one of Hamas' countless acts of terror.

In a litany of brutality and inhumanity that, yes, brings to mind the worst of ISIS.

Babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped, parents executed

in front of their children, children in front of their parents.

How do we even to understand this, to digest this?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly thanked Secretary Blinken.

...