Netanyahu: Unity government sends a ‘huge message’; Israel will wipe out ‘barbaric’ Hamas

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel will “eliminate” the “barbaric” Hamas terror organization, speaking from the Knesset podium ahead of a vote to approve adding ministers to form his new national emergency government.

“This is a fight for our home,” Netanyahu says, saying that it needs to end with “crushing and elimination of Hamas, which is ISIS (Islamic State).”

The Jewish people, Netanyahu says, have withstood dark challenges, “perhaps more than any other nation. But we’ve never given up.”

“This was the most horrible day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the premier continues, saying it would be hard to find someone who doesn’t know people who lost loved ones to Hamas’s Saturday terror rampage.

The premier says he visited a military reserve division before arriving at the Knesset, and the unit was oversubscribed with 130 percent appearance for duty. He describes a scene with a long line of hundreds of cars parked alongside the road, left by reservists who reported to the base without receiving a formal summons.

Ahead of the Knesset vote to add Benny Gantz and four opposition MKs to form a national emergency government, Netanyahu says that “our national unity is sending a huge message, externally and internally.”

After nine months of social unrest tied to the Netanyahu government’s highly divisive judicial overhaul, the premier says: “We stand before this conflict together in internal fraternity and with mutual concern.”