Breaking Update
PM Netanyahu’s Remarks to ISA Managers
PM Netanyahu expressed full confidence in ISA Director David Zini and outlined a new strategic axis to counter radical Islam, extending from India to Ethiopia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today:
“I want to tell you upfront that I have full confidence in the organization and full confidence in its Director, David Zini, a commander with many merits: Pro-active and – here is an important word – a tactician, a reality-changer. Because reality is constantly changing before us, and we must move with it.
On one hand, we are challenged by a wounded Shiite axis, but there is, of course, the Sunni axis of the Muslim Brotherhood. We have a great interest in creating an axis of our own, an axis of countries that oppose both axes of radical Islam. This encompasses many nations. Some are even visiting us these days; some we are visiting. I am talking about an entire circle that embraces the Middle East. I wanted to use the biblical expression, which is appropriate for Purim: ‘From India to Ethiopia.’ Pretty close. And everything in between and into the Mediterranean. A new axis.
We have rescued the hostages down to the last one, Ran Gvili, a hero of Israel. Now we must complete the task. It is agreed upon with the international force, with the ‘Board of Peace’, that Hamas must disarm and we must demilitarize Gaza. As we are accustomed to saying: It will either happen the easy way or the hard way, but it will happen. Afterward, we must ensure that Gaza never returns to being a threat to Israel. There is only one force that can guarantee this. That, of course, is that the overriding security responsibility remains ours.
The operation you have conducted against the terrorism front in Judea and Samaria is nothing short of brilliant; the combined operation with the IDF to attack the hubs of terror in the refugee camps, essentially uprooting the centers of gravity of terrorism. I don’t think the citizens of Israel understand how many lives your activity has saved; many.
There are hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons. This stockpile – we must reduce it, we must seize it, because a rainy day could come. We always speak of the ‘turning of barrels’ from here and there, from both places. This is a supreme mission which, of course, also affects crime in the Arab sector, where you have mobilized in a very important way for joint action to address it. But that is a symptom of something larger. We want a country with law, not a wild West, not a wild South, and not a wild North.”
