From the Liveblog of
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Netanyahu celebrates Purim with troops: ‘We got Haman and we’ll get Sinwar’; ‘We will enter Rafah’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marks the Jewish holiday of Purim with officers from the Military Police’s Erez Battalion, telling them, “We will enter Rafah and achieve absolute victory. We eliminated Haman and we will eliminate [Hamas leader in Gaza Yahye] Sinwar.”
His reiteration of the imperative for troops to tackle Hamas in Rafah comes soon after US Vice President Kamala Harris warned against such an operation.
In the Purim story, the king’s adviser Haman was plotting to kill the Jews of Persia and was ultimately hanged.
“Today we celebrate the holiday of Purim,” the prime minister says after a reading of the Book of Esther. “Over 2,000 years ago in ancient Persia, an antisemitic tyrant, the evil Haman, sought to exterminate the Jews from the face of the earth. The Jews rose up, united, fought and won a complete victory.”
“Today in modern Persia, a new oppressor has arisen — the Iranian regime, which seeks to exterminate the Jewish state. We have already seen what one of the messengers of this tyrant did. On October 7 Hamas committed what President Biden called “an act of sheer evil”.
“Sheer evil cannot be defeated by leaving it alone in Rafah,” he says.
Israel’s planned operation in Rafah, which it says is essential to destroy the Hamas terror group’s remaining battalions, has drawn international concerns as over a million displaced Palestinians are taking shelter there amid the ongoing war with Hamas.
