Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis in a brief address to the nation Wednesday night that “challenging days” lie ahead for the Jewish State.
Shortly after the conclusion of a three-hour security cabinet meeting at the IDF’s Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu reminded Israelis that he had said much the same thing from the outset of the war that began with a Hamas invasion on October 7.
That day, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah fell on Shabbat — but the sanctity of the day did not deter thousands of Gaza’s Hamas-led terrorists from torturing and slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting 255 others, dragging them into Gaza captivity, where at least 111 remain, including 39 confirmed dead. Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, joined the battle the very next day, on October 8, in solidarity with its fellow Iranian proxy, Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces have since eliminated about half of Hezbollah’s commanders.
Netanyahu had taken to the microphone not only to remind Israelis of what has been since that time, however, but to warn there are more challenges ahead following the targeted assassination of Hezbollah’s highest-ranking chief aside from the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah himself.
On Tuesday night this week, an Israeli combat drone fired three missiles at a building in the heart of Beirut in a targeted assassination that eliminated Hezbollah’s military chief of staff, Fuad Shukr, also known as “Sayyid” Mohsain.
Shukr was the closest to Nasrallah. He was responsible for Saturday’s rocket attack that killed 12 children and wounded dozens of others in the northern Israeli Druze village of Majdal Shams, according to the IDF. He was also the terrorist who planned the 1983 attack on the a Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 US service members and dozens of French military personnel. The US has since offered a $5 million bounty for Shukr, who appears on America’s Most Wanted List.
“Since the strike in Beirut, threats are being sounded from everywhere,” Netanyahu noted. “We are ready for every scenario and will stand united and determined against every threat,” he pledged.
Netanyahu reminded that the war won’t be over in a day or a week or even a month, and will continue to demand stamina from Israeli citizens.
He added that he has been under pressure to end the war for months, from global leaders and Israelis alike. “I did not give in to those voices then, and I am not giving in to them now,” he declared.
Had he buckled under that pressure, he said, Israel would not have eliminated myriad Hamas leaders and fighters, destroyed terrorist infrastructure, seized control over the Gaza-Egypt border through which Hamas was “importing” its weapons from Iran, or “created the conditions that bring us closer to terms that will not only bring our hostages back, but also allow us to achieve all of our war aims,” he said.
“All of the achievements in recent months were attained because we did not give in,” Netanyahu emphasized, “and because we made brave decisions in the face of great pressure at home and abroad. And I tell you it was not easy.”
Nevertheless, he added, “Together we will fight, and with God’s help, together we will win.”
