The President of the State, Isaac Herzog, was interviewed today (Thursday) on the French news channel BFMTV. In his statements, he addressed the comments made by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres against Israel. He explicitly rejected Guterres' claims that attacks by Hamas "did not happen in a vacuum."
"Yesterday I heard the statements of the UN Secretary-General Guterres. In a way, he implied as if the source of all this evil is related to the conflict. I completely reject his words because they contain a kind of implication or even an endorsement of horrors and the terror that has occurred here," President Herzog said. "The problem with the conflict in the region is the terrorism. The deepest problem undermining the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians is terrorism. In Israel, we suffer from endless terrorism every day. In the past year, as president, I visited mourning families across the country. But this time, we saw the most terrible example of terrorism. Since World War II, since the Holocaust, such a number of Jews have not been killed in one day."
The president continued and emphasized: "There is a civilization out there, of ISIS, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and all these terrorist organizations, including the Houthis, whose ultimate goal is essentially to conquer the Middle East, expel the Jews, and the next target will be Europe. You need to learn the philosophy behind what they stand for. This axis of evil begins with Iran. They have branches throughout the Middle East. That's their vision, and they use the most cruel means possible, cruelty we've never believed we'd see after the Holocaust, in modern times."
According to him, "First and foremost, we must neutralize Hamas's military capabilities. How do you create security? How do you protect the civilians living there? We are not the ones who wanted war. We do not want war. We simply continue to defend our people. On the 7th of October in the morning, war was imposed upon us, on the State of Israel and its people, and we need to defend ourselves. First and foremost, we need to take away their ability to carry out operations from homes and neighborhoods of people, both below and above the ground, with an enormous amount of dangerous and deadly weapons, and ensure that people can continue with their lives. Perhaps this will also result in Palestinians in Gaza being able to govern themselves and live prosperously in the future."
"You need to know the truth. There is no electricity in Gaza because of Hamas rockets – their rockets damage the wires and affect the power supply. They are the ones who destroyed their own infrastructure. Do you understand how tragic this is? The taxpayers, like in all European countries, paid more and more money that went into Gaza's infrastructure to improve the lives of civilians. Israel opened its borders in recent years and allowed tens of thousands of Gazans to work in Israel. All of this was shattered in the terrible attack on us, with the highest death toll in our history, tortures, and murders, accompanied by the beheading and kidnapping of children. This is the situation we are in. This is a wake-up call to the international community to understand that we are fighting for the good. We are fighting against evil."
Herzog made it clear that: "We care and are concerned for our neighbors. We have always done that. We operate according to international humanitarian law. We asked civilians to move to a safe area, and it is Hamas that is holding them hostage. But you need to provide us with the answer – how exactly should we defend ourselves? What am I supposed to tell a three-year-old girl I met today, a beautiful girl, whose family has been kidnapped or killed? What do I say to her? My entire nation is in a massive tragedy, and I thank all our friends and supporters around the world while we are still grieving and in pain. We also know how to rise like a lion. We are a united nation. We have strength, and we show resilience. We have emerged from the worst horrors in history, and we will emerge from this as well. We are a strong democracy."
On the issue of rising anti-Semitism, the President emphasized: "The concern is great, and it exists all over the world. The tragedy is that the first to suffer are Jews – as always, but they are never the last to suffer. That is the real problem. It should not disturb Jews alone; it is a matter for all democratic societies worldwide. They should be concerned, and governments should take the necessary precautions. I think it's a significant challenge for the world to address the rise in anti-Semitism."