Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called on regional players Sunday in an historic interview with the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya English news channel to join together to create a “NATO-like structure” to block terror.
The interview took place two days before the one-year anniversary of the vicious massacre of 1,200 people and abduction of 251 others in southern Israel by thousands of Hamas-led terrorists from Gaza, an event that launched Israel’s Iron Swords War, named by the terrorists as “Al Aqsa Flood.”
The interview was conducted in English with senior news anchor Riz Kahn, and was broadcast in English and dubbed into Arabic on the channel’s outlets.
In the interview, Herzog made a direct appeal to the people of the Middle East.
“We are all the children of Abraham, and I call upon the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran, the people of all of the oppressed nations in the region, to rise up and understand that if we move this empire of evil, if we confront it and be tough together, we surely can hope for a better future and create a NATO-like structure in the region that blocks radicalism,” Herzog said.
“Clearly, as we see, this war has been waged against us by the empire of evil, by Iran and its proxies. We have 101 hostages still in the dungeons of Gaza, in immense suffering. And we are fighting in the north and in the south, meaning in Gaza and in Lebanon, we are trying to change the equation and bring hope for the people of the Middle East.
“It’s a golden opportunity for the powers that want to have a better future for the Middle East to move forward with new ideas and new plans in order to resolve this conflict and exit from the war,” Herzog stressed. “But I’m not sure our enemies are there.”
