While Israel faces many challenges, it is also “acquiring friends around the world and within the region here,” Netanyahu stated.
By: United with Israel Staff
Israel is facing many challenges but while doing so is also “acquiring friends around the world and within the region here,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated.
Speaking on Tuesday at a toast for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, with Prime Minister’s Office personnel, Netanyahu noted that “we live in a challenging area – and we are equal to the task.”
“We hit our enemies when necessary and we are capable of hitting them even more. We are defending our borders and we are also dealing with threats while they are far away and have yet to reach us, with foresight, preemptively,” he declared, possibly relating to Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in Syria.
On Tuesday, the IDF revealed that it has carried out 202 strikes in Syria over the past year and a half. According to the IDF, the attacks made use of over 800 missiles and bombs that were dropped on selected sites, mostly from fighter jets.
The revelation was made as part of a special assessment of the IDF’s readiness to deal with security threats, which IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot presented to Israel’s Security Cabinet.
Aside from the aerial strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria, methods of cyber warfare were also employed, but their details remain classified.
Israel ‘Acquiring Friends Around the World’
While Israel is hounding its enemies, it is also “acquiring friends around the world and within the region here.”
“They see our strength and they see our commitment to defend our state, to develop it,and become an economic, technological, military and intelligence power, and this brings us friends,” he explained.
Speaking at a similar toast held on Monday for Foreign Ministry personnel, Netanyahu extolled the Iran nuclear agreement’s unexpected outcome of uniting Israel and its Arab neighbors against a common enemy.
“The agreement with Iran was a bad agreement in every respect except for one – it brought us closer to the Arab world on a scale that we never knew, and one of our goals is that it continues,” declared Netanyahu.
“I think that another important thing is, of course, the fact that there is a gradual normalization with leading countries in the Arab world,” he added.
Highlighting Israel’s blossoming diplomacy on Tuesday, Netanyahu said “Who but you, the employees of the Prime Minister’s Office, knows this? This tent is like a railway station; leaders from around the world arrive every day, sometimes several times a day, hundreds of leaders.”
Just this past week, Israel hosted Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Albanian Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati and US Special Representative for Syrian Affairs James Jeffrey.
TPS contributed to this report.