In rare public speech, Sara Netanyahu calls to better equip local security teams

Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addresses a group of local security chiefs and their wives, saying that the security groups should be better armed.

Dozens of members of local security teams in towns and kibbutzes near the Gaza border were killed in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught. Many surviving members of the teams have said they were lacking adequate weapons and had suffered numerous budget cuts in the months and years before the attack.

According to a Haaretz report in October, a large number of weapons and funding were redistributed from Gaza envelope local security teams to those in West Bank settlements in recent years.

Addressing the event in the Mateh Binyamin region in the West Bank, Netanyahu says the event is a chance to “thank everyone who is there for us in those most difficult and complicated moments — for our children, our families, for the whole nation.”

Netanyahu, who rarely gives public speeches, says that since October 7, “we are engaged in an existential fight for our home, for our lives and for our right to live here safely.”

During her speech, Netanyahu says that “I think there need to be even more local security teams… and my husband is aware of this. We have to support, to defend, to expand and to arm the local security teams, because they are really the first line of defense who protects all of us — we saw this on October 7, we saw how much they were needed in places they didn’t exist.”

This comment, however, was not included in the excerpts provided to the media by the Prime Minister’s Office.