North Carolina lawmakers passed a pro-Israel resolution in the state House and read a pro-Israel statement onto the Senate's official record, as the country's conflict with Hamas intensified Tuesday.

It comes days after Palestinian militants with the group Hamas launched a series of attacks this weekend into Israel, which responded with airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, an area governed by Hamas. Hundreds on both sides have been killed in the past few days, including a large number of civilians.

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The motions in support of Israel were a rare sign of bipartisanship at the legislature on a day when North Carolina lawmakers were otherwise engaged in highly partisan political fights: GOP lawmakers overrode five of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes Tuesday, as Democrats accused them of ushering in newly authoritarian rules for elections and more.

Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg, said her former legislative assistant now lives in Israel with her fiancé and other family members.

"They're scared," she said. "And they're very worried. She said that everyone she knows knows someone who is either missing, kidnapped or killed."

One of the legislature's only Jewish members, Sen. Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake, noted that around the same time the first Hamas attacks were beginning in Israel over the weekend, her synagogue in Raleigh was entrusted with a Torah scroll that's hundreds of years old, even surviving the Nazi occupation of eastern Europe during World War II.

"This symbolism of the resilience of the people of Israel, but also the Jewish people throughout the centuries and millennia, really speaks to the fact that the Jewish people will survive," Grafstein said.

The Senate's formal statement, read into the record by Sen. Ted Alexander, R-Cleveland, denounced Hamas for "terrorist attacks [that] cynically, unconscionably targeted innocent children and adults."

The statement concluded: "It is our duty, and the duty of all civilized people, to condemn the cowardly action of targeting civilians."

Around the same time the Senate was formalizing that statement, the House passed a resolution that urged the U.S. Congress "to offer full and unequivocal support of Israel, financially and otherwise, for as long as it takes for Israel to bring justice in light of the unprovoked attacks on innocent Israeli civilians."

House Speaker Tim Moore said he traveled to an Israeli settlement on the border with the Gaza Strip several years ago, so after the fighting started he looked for reports on its fate. What he was told stunned him: Of the 200 people who lived there, at least 70 are now dead.

"That is senseless violence," Moore said. 'That is terrorism, just in the way that we as a nation were attacked on 9/11. So, too, Israel has been attacked, and we owe it to a freedom-loving democracy, to stand with them and their time of need."

As lawmakers backed Israel in the fighting, some also urged recognition that civilians aren't just being killed on the Israeli side of the border. Rep. Marvin Lucas, D-Cumberland, said he supports Israel but also cautioned against lumping in all Palestinians with Hamas.

He said the Gaza Strip's 2 million residents live in extreme poverty, have been mistreated for years, and that most of them are not part of the fighting.

"They're still human beings," Lucas said. "They ought to have the right to have food. They ought to have the right to have electricity. And, God knows, the body cannot exist without water. So in our quest to strike a balance, please remember that these are still people there, too. Most of them innocent. Don't forget that."

The House resolution passed with a vote of 104-0 in the 120-seat chamber. Twelve Democrats were listed in the final count as “not voting.” They are: Rep. John Autry, D-Mecklenburg, Rep. Amber Baker, D-Forsyth, Rep. Gloristine Brown, D-Pitt, Rep. Kanika Brown, D-Forsyth, Rep. Maria Cervania, D-Wake, Rep. Terence Everitt, D-Wake, Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, Rep. Nasif Majeed, D-Mecklenburg, Rep. Marcia Morey, D-Durham, Rep. Renée Price, D-Orange, Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams, D-Cabarrus, Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake.

Four additional members of the House had excused absences Tuesday: Rep. Kelly Alexander, D-Mecklenburg, Rep. Cecil Brockman, D-Guilford, Rep. James Roberson, D-Wake, and Rep. Caleb Rudow, D-Buncombe.

WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie and WRAL State Government Reporter Travis Fain contributed to this report.