At site of Iranian missile attack, Netanyahu says Israel ‘bringing’ freedom to Iranians, acting ‘for the sake of humanity’

Standing at the site of an Iranian missile attack that killed nine people in Beit Shemesh, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the ongoing US-Israeli campaign against Iran aims to both remove existential threats and allow the Iranian people to effect regime change.

“We embarked on this campaign to free ourselves from the attempt to renew existential threats against us, and we also embarked on it to create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to cast off the yoke of tyranny from upon themselves,” Netanyahu says on the third day of the aerial assault.

“The day when [the Iranian people] will be able to do this is approaching. We are bringing it closer,” he continues, adding that “when it arrives, Israel and the United States will be there with the Iranian people.”

The premier sends his condolences to the families of the victims killed in the attack, saying Iran’s “terror regime fires at civilians, and we fire at the terror regime in order to defend civilians. That is a tremendous difference.”

He says Iran threatens not only Israel and the US but “all the peoples of the region.”

“They fired yesterday at a large part of the countries of the region. I also said they would fire at Europe. Well, they fired at Europe too,” he says, likely referring to Iran’s drone attack on a British military base in Cyprus today.

“If this regime of terror obtains nuclear weapons, they will threaten all of humanity. Therefore we went out in order to remove that danger first and foremost from ourselves, but we are acting here together with the United States, in the name of and for the sake of all humanity,” he says.

Netanyahu concludes by invoking a biblical commandment traditionally recited ahead of Purim: “We read in this week’s Torah portion, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember, and we act,” he says, referring to the ancient Israelites’ archetypal enemy, which in Jewish tradition has come to symbolize those who seek the Jewish people’s destruction in every generation.