Welcome to the lead on Jake Tapper in this afternoon. We are following two major breaking

stories. The first on Capitol Hill, you're looking live at where House Republicans are

meeting behind closed doors. Right now, they're tallying the results of a secret ballot

where they are trying to decide who their next speaker nominee will be. Our teams are

stationed across Capitol Hill and assuming House Republicans are finally able to nominate

a speaker after 10 days without one in the midst of two wars and pending government shutdown,

we will bring you those results that is an assumption, not sure if that's going to happen,

but if it happens, we'll bring you the results.

Our other major story is really prior minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing this afternoon.

This is only the beginning of Israel's fight to destroy Hamas. At this time, one week ago,

one week ago today, right this moment, it was just after 11 p.m. in Gaza and roughly a

thousand members of Hamas, which is the ruling government of Gaza, were preparing to invade Israel

to attack. They were going to infiltrate Israel by land, by sea and by air, by paraglider.

To kill Israeli soldiers, to kill Israeli babies, to kill Israeli women and men in their

beds, to kill Israeli seniors at a bus stop, Israeli young people in a music festival, hundreds

and hundreds in total. The deadliest day for the Jewish people, literally, since the Holocaust.

And now, nearly seven days later, that attack has resulted in hundreds more in a sense dead,

killed in Israeli retaliatory strikes in Gaza. Strikes at the Israeli Defense Forces claim

are against Hamas targets. They say this is based on Israeli intelligence, though, of course,

post-October 7th, Hamas terrorist attacks, the quality of Israeli intelligence inside Gaza,

that's a legitimate question, as an IDF spokesman admitted to us the other day.

And while currently no Western leader challenges Israel's right to defend itself,

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