PMO says speakers will broadcast UN speech from Israeli side of Gaza border in ‘public diplomacy’ effort

As parents of soldiers in Gaza fume at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to send loudspeakers on trucks to broadcast his English-language United Speech into the Strip, Netanyahu’s office explains in a statement that it’s “part of the public diplomacy effort.”

“The Prime Minister’s Office instructed civilian entities, in cooperation with the IDF, to place loudspeakers on trucks on the Israeli side of the Gaza border only,” says the PMO, “with the aim of broadcasting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s historic speech today at the UN General Assembly into the Gaza Strip.”

According to the statement, Netanyahu “explicitly ordered that this operation must not endanger IDF soldiers.”

Parents and some officers told Hebrew-language media that having soldiers secure the trucks for the effort needlessly put them at risk.