Netanyahu to families & nation: ‘I apologize to you’ for not getting hostages back before they were ‘destroyed by monsters’
Gripped with emotion, PM holds press conference
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — How quickly a nation’s mood can swing from rejoicing to the deepest grief and sorrow.
Just last week, all Israelis were celebrating the IDF rescue of another hostage out of Gaza, the fourth rescue this year.
We were also breathing a great sigh of relief and gratitude because the IDF had discovered – and thwarted – a Hezbollah plot to launch upwards of 6,000 missiles and suicide drones at Israel from Lebanon.
What’s more, three top terror leaders had been assassinated – one on Gaza, another in Beirut, and a third in Tehran.
But now all of Israel is mourning as we process the ghastly news that six Israeli hostages were each brutally murdered – shot in the back of their head – in a terror tunnel in southern Gaza in recent days.
For many Israelis, their grief and anger have caused them to double down on their determination to crush and vanquish Hamas once and for all.
For other Israelis, however, their grief and anger is focused on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
They pin the blame on there having been no new hostage deals since November 2023 – and now the deaths of these six hostages – squarely on him.
And they are vowing to remove him from power as quickly as possible.
In that context, Netanyahu addressed the nation on Monday night by holding a live, televised press conference from the Kirya military headquarters – Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon – in Tel Aviv.
THREE KEY POINTS
Netanyahu made three key points.
First, the prime minister said that now is the time for Israelis to come together in our grief, not to let ourselves be divided.
Second, a visibly emotional Netanyahu apologized to the families and the nation for not being able to get these six hostages – and all the remaining 101 hostages – out in time.
Third, Netanyahu insisted that in the midst of this “existential war,” Israel absolutely must retain full military control of the border region between the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian Sinai Desert called the Philadelphi Corridor or “the Philadelphi Route.”
Using maps and charts to illustrate his point, Netanyahu argued that the tunnels between Gaza and Sinai are “the oxygen tubes for Hamas.”
Hamas and its terror allies can only be resupplied and continue to attack Israel if it can receive regular shipments of arms, ammunition, rockets, explosives, and other military essentials through those tunnels.
Hamas, he said, is desperate to get access to those smuggling tunnels once again.
But Israel absolutely must not bow to Hamas threats, international pressure, or to internal Israeli pressure to give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor.
Netanyahu said surrendering such control would not bring more hostages home alive.
To the contrary, he insisted that only when Hamas realizes that its supply lines have been cut off forever will they be willing to truly make a deal.
ISRAELIS MUST STAND TOGETHER
“In this existential war, we have to stand together as one people – all of us, the Left and the Right, the religious and the non-religious, Jews and non-Jews,” Netanyahu said as he opened his Monday night press conference.
He said Israel learned this when the war began.
We are learning this again because of this “horrific massacre, the execution in cold blood of six of our hostages, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lubanov, Almog Sarusi and IDF First Sergeant Ori Danino. May God avenge their blood.”
The prime minister said he has spoken on the phone with several of the mourning hostage families.
He called their murdered loved ones “pure souls.”
NETANYAHU APOLOGIZES
“My heart and the heart of the nation is broken into fragments.”
Looking at pictures and videos of the six when they were alive, Netanyahu said, “You hear their happiness. You hear their life stories. The happiness they had. And all these lives were destroyed by the hand of monsters.”
“I told the families, and I repeat this again this evening: I apologize to you that we have not been able to bring them back alive.”
“We were close but we were not successful.”
VOWING REVENGE, NETANYAHU DESCRIBES ISRAEL’S FOUR MILITARY GOALS
“Israel will not act as if nothing happened during this massacre,” Netanyahu vowed.
“Hamas will pay a very heavy price for this.”
Israel is facing “a war against the axis of evil and this specific one against Hamas, and also in the North” and Israel has set four goals:
1. Destroy the Hamas terrorist organization
2. Bring back all of our hostages
3. Ensure that Hamas and other Gaza terror groups will no longer be a threat to Israel
4. Bring back our residents in the north of Israel to be able to live in security
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Joel C. Rosenberg is the editor-in-chief of ALL ISRAEL NEWS and ALL ARAB NEWS and the President and CEO of Near East Media. A New York Times best-selling author, Middle East analyst, and Evangelical leader, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and sons.
