Netanyahu: Sooner or later, we reach all killers

A day after a Tel Aviv gunman who murdered three Israelis on January 1 was killed in a shootout with security forces, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned would-be attackers Saturday night that anyone who targets Israelis would suffer a similar fate.

“Let all who wish to murder Israelis know that sooner or later we will reach them, inside the borders of the nation and outside of them,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “No one is immune. We will get to the killers and to all those who aided them.”

Israeli-Arab Nashat Milhem was killed in the northern Arab town of Arara on Friday, a week after killing three people in a Tel Aviv shooting spree.

Eight people were still in police detention Saturday, Channel 2 news reported, suspected of assisting the killer either before or after the attack.

President Reuven Rivlin said Saturday that Israelis “will not bow our heads in the face of the depraved terror we are facing in this difficult period.”

President Reuven Rivlin seen during an interview at his office at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on May 5, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

He praised the actions of security forces over the past week to locate Milhem.

“We will continue to choose life, even when in pain, even when the price we pay is heavy and so very difficult,” Rivlin said.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog meanwhile blasted the erection of a mourning tent in Milhem’s honor in East Jerusalem over the weekend, calling those behind it “enemies of Israel.”

Herzog called Milhem “a despicable murderer” and said Israel would not rest until it had eradicated the “pockets of hate and incitement” which lead to terror attacks against innocents.