Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his country’s determination to fight in a video message during the official commemoration of the October 7 massacre on Monday.
“Together we will continue to fight, and together – with God’s grace – we will prevail,” he said in a video message. The ceremony took place in Ofakim, near the Gaza Strip, where forty people were murdered a year ago.
He stated that October 7, when the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement and other extremists killed about 1,200 people in Israel and abducted about 250 others to the Gaza Strip, was “a day of indescribable suffering for the country.”
The conservative politician claimed that Israelis had united in defense of the country.
“We have set the war objectives and we are achieving them,” he said. He said these objectives were to dismantle the Hamas regime, bring home all hostages, eliminate any future threat from the Gaza Strip and ensure the safe return of residents from the south and north to their homes.
However, after a year of war that left nearly 42,000 dead in the Gaza Strip and growing international criticism of Israel’s crackdown on the coastal strip – and now in Lebanon – none of Netanyahu’s stated war objectives have yet been fully achieved.
