Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in Jerusalem Tuesday, shortly after Kerry landed in Israel. 

"Good morning, John. I'd like to welcome you again to Jerusalem," Netanyahu began. "You are a friend in our common effort to restore stability, security and peace. There can be no peace when we have an onslaught of terror – not here or not anywhere else in the world, which is experiencing this same assault by militant Islamists and the forces of terror.״

"Israel is fighting these forces every hour," he continued. "We are fighting them directly against the terrorists themselves; we're fighting also against the sources of incitement. And we believe that the entire international community should support this effort."

"It's not only our battle, it's everyone's battle. It's the battle of civilization against barbarism."

Kerry, Netanyahu
Kerry, NetanyahuPrime Minister's Office (PMO)

Kerry thanked Netanyahu for the warm welcome. 

"Clearly, no people anywhere should live with daily violence, with attacks in the streets, with knives or scissors or cars," Kerry stated. "And it is very clear to us that the terrorism, these acts of terrorism which have been taking place, deserve the condemnation that they are receiving and today I expressed my complete condemnation for any act of terror that takes innocent lives and disrupts the day-to-day life of a nation."

"Israel has every right in the world to defend itself," he continued. "It has an obligation to defend itself. And it will and it is."

Kerry also acknowledged the upswing in attacks, as well as the murder of 18 year-old US citizen Ezra Schwartz last week.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with innocent people who have been hurt in this process," he said. "I know that yesterday a soldier was killed and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who were wounded, their families."

"Regrettably, several Americans have also been killed in the course of these past weeks, and just yesterday I talked to the family of Ezra Schwartz from Massachusetts, a young man who came here out of high school, ready to go to college, excited about his future, and yesterday his family was sitting shiva and I talked to them and heard their feelings, the feelings of any parent for the loss of a child," he emphasized. The US State Department received a great deal of bad press after it issued a late response to Ezra's murder, and the White House has yet to respond at all

"So I'm here today to talk with the Prime Minister about the ways that we can work together, all of us – the international community – to push back against terrorism, to push back against senseless violence and to find a way forward, to restore calm and to begin to provide the opportunities that most reasonable people in every part of the world are seeking for themselves and for their families," he continued. 

"We have much to talk about. There's a lot happening in the region, as well as those events that are happening here in Israel. We are deeply concerned about Syria, about Daesh [ISIS - ed.], about regional unrest."

"We all have an interest, needless to say, in working together against this spasm of violence that is interrupting too much of the daily life of too many nations."