From the Liveblog of
Saturday, July 27, 2024
MKs from across political spectrum urge tough response to Majdal Shams rocket attack
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Politicians across the political spectrum call on the government to take the fight to Hezbollah for today’s deadly rocket attack on the northern town of Majdal Shams.
In an English-language post on X, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz pledges “wide support from outside the government for any determined and effective response that will restore security to the citizens of the north.”
On the 7th of October Hamas' massacring of children and kidnapping of innocent civilians did not discriminate between race, religion or ethnicity. All were guilty of the high crime of being Israeli.
As innocent Israeli children in the Druze village of Majdal Shams were murdered…
— בני גנץ – Benny Gantz (@gantzbe) July 27, 2024
Meanwhile, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declares: “Since October 8th I said that we are in a state of war in the north and the enemy needs to be defeated,” but Israeli decision-makers “avoided acknowledging that we are in a battle against Hezbollah for ten months.”
“Today, no one, in any forum, including the defense minister who strived only for containment against Hezbollah, can avoid the bloody reality – we are at war,” the far-right Otzma Yehudit party chief continues. “I call on the prime minister to immediately convene the cabinet, [even] by encrypted phone, to make the decision that I have been demanding for a long time – war in the north now!”
In a video address from Majdal Shams, Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kreuzer says that “the blood of the children of the Golan is not cheap” and calls on the government “to go to war, to destroy Hezbollah, to hit the state of Lebanon from which came the rocket that hit here and caused this severe disaster.”
Knesset whip Ofir Katz of Likud says that “a difficult and painful response is required” while Labor MK Merav Michaeli posts that “whoever launched these rockets must pay a heavy price.”
