Jewish Home Minister Naftali Bennett addressed recent security-related incidents in southern Israel during the Arutz Sheva’s conference in Jerusalem. The conference on US-Israel relations was organized by Dr. Joe Frager in cooperation with "Young Israel

According to Bennett, “We are incorrectly looking at every event in the South in isolation. The correct way to look at it is that there is a big octopus - the head of the octopus is located in Tehran. They have an Iranian arm in Lebanon called Hezbollah. They have an arm in Syria called the Shiite militias. They have another arm in Gaza called Hamas. Their approach is that they are willing to fight to the very last drop of blood - of others. Iranians are not very generous about their own blood, but they’re very happy to volunteer other people’s lives. That’s the big picture.”

“Now, for the past three decades, we have been fighting the arms, but have been giving immunity to the head of the octopus. Once you understand that, you understand the folly of wasting all your efforts on the messenger without touching the one sending the messengers.

We have to wage an ongoing campaign - diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and through other means - against the head of the octopus.”

Bennett said that while ISIS and Iran are both “the bad guys” - “ISIS the Sunni bad guys and Iran the Shiite bad guys” - “we never viewed ISIS as an existential or strategic threat, [and] you don’t pull out ISIS to bring Iran in.”

“Iran’s strategy is to have an ongoing corridor that reaches the Mediterranean. We have to sever that corridor, and that’s what we’re doing. We said that we will not allow Iran to establish itself in Syria, and we are [reflecting that commitment in] our deeds,” Bennett said.