(JNS) In Israel over the weekend, Chris Christie, who became the first 2024 Republican presidential candidate to visit the Jewish state since Oct. 7, spent time at Kfar Aza, one of the kibbutzim in southern Israel targeted and attacked by Hamas terrorists.

The former governor of New Jersey met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and visited the kibbutz with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana.

“I came here to see with my own eyes what took place on Oct. 7, and there are few words that can capture the brutality of it—dozens of men, women and children murdered in their homes by Hamas,” he wrote.

“It’s one thing to talk about these atrocities from the comfort of thousands of miles away. It’s another to see them firsthand,” Christie added. “To listen to people on the ground and to see the destruction and despair.”

“I want the people of Israel to know that there are hundreds of millions of Americans who stand with them, who understand the atrocities that were committed and why in the future we need to stand absolutely shoulder to shoulder with Israel,” he said.

The presidential hopeful said that he could still “smell the death” in the homes he visited a month after Oct. 7.

That “is something that I think the American people need to know,” he wrote. “Leaders in our country need to see this for themselves.”