My great-grandmother came from South Carolina, and she moved, the other way around, to Germany and married my great-grandfather. And to make a long story short: Today, I am the proud mother of two American citizens. And as those American citizens have already children again, I am also the proud grandmother of one American citizen. So, we have a lot of personal transatlantic bonds.
Mr President, I want to thank you for your remarkable visit to Israel. It is important to show solidarity with Israel, victim of the worst attack since the Shoah. Israel has the right to self-defence in line with humanitarian law. I was in Israel too, exactly one week ago, I went to the kibbutz Kfar Azza. What I saw was barbaric. The impact on the Israeli society cannot be emphasised enough. We stand with Israel and against terror.
At the same time, Palestinians also suffer from Hamas' terrorist actions. As we have both said, Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. The United States and the European Union are both significantly increasing their humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. This is crucial in view of their suffering, and we must also work actively to prevent regional escalation. I am particularly concerned about Iran and its proxies. We have all seen the incidents, involving missiles and drones from Yemen, potentially targeting Israel. No one should take advantage of this situation.
Let me also stress: The events in the Middle East will not distract us from our rock-solid support to Ukraine. We have already provided assistance worth almost USD 90 billion to Ukraine. This includes financial support to keep the state and the economy running, military equipment, humanitarian aid, and support for four million refugees. In the next four years, we aim to provide another EUR 50 billion. Important for Ukraine to have predictability.
We are also making sure, through our joint actions, that Russia's ability to wage war is hampered as much as possible and that those responsible are held accountable. Putin will ultimately fail. He is running Russia into the ground.
These conflicts show: democracies must stand together. This is also true when it comes to other big challenges like: fighting climate change, fostering smart investments in emerging economies, or upholding our rules-based international order.
So, I am very happy to be here today to discuss all these topics with our friend the United States.
