“We Are in The Midst of a War of Revival,” Netanyahu Tells Knesset “Our victory will not be just for us, it will be for all of humanity,” he says Ira Stoll
Yesterday Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, in Hebrew, offering context and a progress report on the war. At least one longtime nonpartisan observer of Netanyahu’s long career described it as superb and one of Netanyahu’s best speeches. An official English translation isn’t yet publicly available but thanks to the magic of artificial intelligence I was able to muster this rough but fluid and rapid translation of the speech. If readers have corrections to the text, by all means send them along and I will update.
The honorable President Yitzhak Herzog; Distinguished Speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana; Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Justice Yitzhak Amit and his wife Rivka; dozens of Knesset members; Leader of the Opposition, Member of Knesset Yair Lapid, Members of Knesset, my brothers and sisters, To the bereaved families, relatives of the abducted men and women who stand relentlessly before our eyes, distinguished guests, everyone. We are in the midst of a war of revival.
On Simchat Torah, on October 7th, a year ago, we suffered a severe blow, but we got back on our feet. We did not break, we did not fall apart, and not only did we not surrender, we launched a powerful counter-offensive against our attackers, a war that is changing the face of the Middle East.
From then until today, alongside the terrible pain that is the lot of the entire nation, we are defending ourselves with high spirits and supreme determination for the revival of Israel.
Whoever attacked us brought upon themselves an unprecedented disaster.
There is a line of similarity in the current war to the War of Independence. Then we faced seven Arab countries, and today we are facing seven fronts of terror.
But I must emphasize, today we are facing a completely different challenge, against a cruel and barbaric enemy that threatens not only us, it threatens the entire Middle East, it threatens the entire world. Its evil intentions are to kill, destroy, and annihilate. The axis of fanatical evil, led by Iran, which has killed thousands in the past year with its cruelty, threatens to destroy our country and threatens to capture more and more territories. It seeks to take over our region by force and from here threaten first of all the West, not only the West, first of all the West.
Iran strives to develop a stockpile of nuclear bombs aimed at destroying us, equipped with long-range missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles that Iran intends to develop, it will be able to threaten the entire world at any point. Wherever Iran builds an industry of dangerous ballistic missiles, it equips its proxies with deadly weapons. We, here in the State of Israel, are the real obstacle in Iran’s path, and we are thwarting its evil intentions. Because according to Iran’s doctrine, if Israel falls, many countries will fall with it, the entire Middle East will fall into its hands.
But we will not fall and we will not be defeated. We will win and the whole world will be a better place, a safer place.
Our victory will not be just for us, it will be for all of humanity.
Friends, members of the Knesset, in the war of revival, we have a clear path and clear goals. At the beginning of the war, I defined the main objectives of the campaign, and we are consistently working to achieve them: elimination of Hamas’ governmental and military capabilities in the Gaza Strip; the return of all our dear captives home.
We have returned many, more than half, unfortunately, I can say more than half alive, because we have not returned all of them, and we will return all of them, both the living and the fallen. We will not let up, even in these moments, in these days. We are looking for ways, we are using the means, we will bring everyone home, without exception. And another thing we have determined: thwarting any future threat from Gaza to Israel and returning the residents of the south and north safely to their homes. This is the complete victory, not as a slogan, not as empty words that have no coverage in reality, on the contrary. The absolute victory is an orderly and consistent work plan that we are implementing step by step.
We have settled accounts with many of the murderers who were responsible for the terrorist attack on us on October 7th and also afterwards: Yahya Sinwar, Nasrallah, and many, many others. We have eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, dismantled Hamas’ tunnels, destroyed countless terrorist infrastructures, razed the enemy’s bases to the ground, and even underground, we have inflicted on our enemies a long series of crushing blows in nearby and distant arenas.
We are systematically severing the terrorist arms of the Iranian octopus, and at the same time, we are hitting the head of the octopus. Last Saturday, we attacked dozens of military targets throughout Iran in a targeted manner. We have proven, and not for the first time, that Israel’s long arm will reach any place from which the call to destroy Israel will emanate. We have severely damaged Iran’s defense systems and its ability to produce missiles aimed at us. I want to emphasize, these were not workshops that were attacked, this is not about small explosives as you know from Judea and Samaria or the Gaza Strip, these are industrial death factories on an industrial scale, and we hit them with a real blow.
I thank our allies, led by the United States, for their ongoing cooperation. We maintain continuous conversation with our American friends, but the fateful decisions regarding our security, including the selection of targets and objectives, we make ourselves, according to our interests and considerations, which may also be detailed in the future.
After every achievement of ours, how can I not, I hear voices from the former officials from the studios: “okay, we understood the immediate goals of the war, but what is your strategy, what is the strategy?”
So if it’s not clear to them until now, I’ll say what our strategy is in simple words. Our long-term strategy, which I hope will be achieved sooner rather than later, is to dismantle the axis of evil, cut off its arms in the south and north, exact a heavy price from Iran and its proxies, and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I have not and will not give up on achieving this central goal, preventing the Iranian nuclear threat is our top priority. And for understandable reasons, I cannot share with you all our plans and actions on this matter.
And I ask you to understand, we are in the midst of a historic change.
This change has two stages. The first stage was when Iran replaced the Arab world. For decades, the Arab world instilled fear of destroying the State of Israel, and gradually, as we led them from victory to victory, Arab countries came down one after the other. We made peace with Egypt, we made peace with Jordan, and then we made peace with four Arab countries in the Abraham Accords.
But the one who replaced the Arab world is Iran, Iran, which decided to develop a desired empire in which there is no place for the State of Israel. And what is the Iranian threat to the State of Israel composed of? It is composed of three things: it is composed of the axis of evil, the front of suffocation and fire of the proxies, the branches of Iran. The axis is composed of ballistic missiles, and it is composed of the attempt to develop nuclear weapons.
The strategic change that we have already brought about, we have already brought about, is clear to everyone. We carried out a widespread attack in Iran, and the Russians, the emissaries who were supposed to protect Iran, that’s why they established it, the Iranians lost a significant ability to come to its aid. And I have already described the damage we have done to Iran’s ballistic capabilities. We do not forget, even for a moment, that all of this is achieved thanks to the heroism and sacrifice of our dear sons and daughters, the soldiers of the IDF and their commanders, the policemen and policewomen and their commanders, the Shin Bet and Mossad fighters and their commanders, all those serving in the security forces. What spirit, what strength, what a generation, what a home front, what a nation, what a nation.
The late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said then, he said, he no longer says, referring to a bereaved family, I know what the families who lost their loved ones are going through. The loss is heartbreaking, and a feeling of suffocation floods the throat. The sadness and longing have no end.
Together with my wife Sarah, I see with tearful eyes the pictures from the funerals. We listen to the eulogies, we listen not only with our ears, but with our hearts. We meet the families of the fallen, and every such encounter opens deep wounds in the soul. But even there, in the depths of pain, the spirit of the parents, the brothers and sisters, the grandparents, the sons and daughters-in-law, the children who were orphaned at once, this spirit rises time and time again, made of unyielding steel. A spirit that draws from our history, from our faith, from our heritage. A spirit that sharpens the meaning of our struggle, and this is a spirit that demands from us to continue forward to ensure the revival of Israel.
I see this spirit now in the stands next to my wife Sarah. I see Lily Green and Ilana Boskila. Lily’s son, Saadia Yaakov, fell in Gaza, along with Ilana’s son, Oren Moshe, who recited here a few minutes ago the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers. Ilana’s daughter, Amit Boskila, an only daughter, was taken from us brutally at the Nova party. The spirit of these mothers, these heroines, this spirit represents the good in us, the strength in us. And I want to say to you and to all the bereaved families, our wonderful sons and daughters did not fall in vain.
Thanks to their heroism and sacrifice, our future is assured. Their legacy is the eternity of Israel. Israeli society is not made of wax, it is made of steel. Our enemies simply did not believe that Israel would withstand a war on seven fronts for a whole year, and they certainly did not imagine that we would achieve the achievements we have achieved.
In the days before the establishment of the state, the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg wrote, it is worth listening: “It is permissible to cry and tear, but the crying and tearing are in vain if this crying does not turn into a ram of iron with its horns of sorrow, we turn into a shield and sword, we turn disaster into revival.”
We have an eternal debt to the fallen: achieving victory and establishing the strength of our state forever. Members of Knesset, on the day after, Hamas will no longer rule in Gaza, and Hezbollah will no longer sit on our northern border. We are currently busy formulating plans to shape these two fronts.
But the day after includes another important thing: I aspire to continue the process I led a few years ago with the signing of the historic Abraham Accords and achieve peace with additional Arab countries. In the Abraham Accords, we achieved four peace agreements, and I emphasize, peace for peace, peace from a position of strength, with important countries in the Middle East. And these countries and other countries see very well the blows we are inflicting on those who attack us, the Iranian axis of evil. They are impressed by our determination and courage. They aspire, like us, to a stable, secure, and prosperous Middle East.
I want to quote in your ears what the journalist Amjad Taha from the United Arab Emirates recently wrote. He addressed Hamas and here are his words: “You dared to attack a wise and courageous people. You committed genocide, kidnapped their children, and desecrated their women. You thought they would fall, but they rose again. Now they will send you a thousand years back. They will defeat you, they will seal your fate and the fate of anyone who dares to harm their children. This is a nation that the world respects.”
And the Emirati commentator concludes his remarks with a sharp and clear reference to the results of our war: “This is a victory for the Middle East over extremism and fanaticism, a victory not only for Israel but for all those who oppose terrorism.”
My friends, this is the future of the Middle East after the murderous arm of Iran and its murderous proxies is eradicated. Light will conquer darkness, good will overcome evil, the sanctity of life will prevail over the worship of death. An iron principle in our region will receive further confirmation: the strong survive, if the strong forge alliances, if the strong make peace. And I want to tell you, members of the Knesset, Israel is stronger than ever, and it will be even stronger.
We will invest in strengthening ourselves, in strengthening internal cohesion. This depends mainly on us, on those sitting in this house. We will restore the economy so that it will flourish again. With the spirit of victory, we will rebuild the areas of our country that were damaged in the war: the kibbutzim, the moshavim, and the communities of the western Negev. We will turn them into vibrant, bustling regions of the homeland, twice as large, with flourishing fields. Fields that turned into battlefields, and battlefields will turn back into flourishing fields, into flourishing towns, into flourishing settlements, into flourishing kibbutzim.
As the prophet Jeremiah said: “And you shall plant them in this land in truth, with all my heart and with all my soul.” We won the War of Independence, and members of the Knesset, with God’s help, we will win the War of Revival.
Comments are closed.
