In tribute to fallen troops, a bellicose Netanyahu says Israel will recover all hostages, ‘complete the victory’

Speaking at the state ceremony marking October 7 Remembrance Day at Mount Herzl, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is “committed to bringing back every last” hostage, while vowing to still achieve all of Israel’s war goals in Gaza and continue battling Iran and Tehran-backed groups seeking the country’s destruction.

“The struggle is not over. But one thing is clear today: Anyone who raises a hand against us already knows he will pay a very heavy price for his aggression,” the premier warns. “We are determined to complete the victory that will shape the order of our lives for many years.”

“I know the magnitude of your suffering,” he tells the families of fallen soldiers, expressing the nation’s thanks for “all the soldiers who fought in the war: Jews, Druze, Christians, Muslims, Bedouin, Circassians, and members of other groups – they stood shoulder to shoulder to achieve all the war’s objectives.”

“And indeed we will achieve all the objectives of the war,” Netanyahu vows.

During the speech, he pushes back against accusation that Israel’s military campaign constitutes a genocide, saying the term more aptly applies to what Israel was subjected to on October 7.

On that day, he says, “we received a shocking illustration of the expression ‘genocide,'” emphasizing that he is “not talking about a fictitious genocide – one hurled at us in antisemitic libels by those who wish us ill.”

“If those murderers had been able to do more, they would have slaughtered every one of us. This is the real genocide,” Netanyahu says of the Hamas-led terrorists, adding that the attack alerted Israel to the intention of the “regime in Iran and its terror branches to strangle Israel to death in a ring of deadly fire.”

“But our enemies did not calculate one thing: the power within us. We rose to our feet as one,” he says. “We shifted the focus of battle into enemy territory; we struck it with crushing blows.”

Netanyahu calls Israel “the dam against the forces of destruction of radical Islam,” hailing the country’s troops as “the protective wall that separates us from them… They have done it with supreme heroism, with astonishing resourcefulness.”

“From the valley of weeping [on October 7] we reached Mount Hermon and the skies of Tehran, [and] the heart-shaking embrace of the families of the hostages with their loved ones,” he says.