Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday, met with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak, who was visiting Israel on the thirteenth day of the war since the horrific Hamas terror attack from Gaza.
Welcoming Sunak, President Herzog said, "We are extremely grateful for your visit. Because you've come to visit Israel in our darkest hour, but we will overcome and prevail and it will be our finest hour. Mr. Prime Minister, you will see here in Israel the way our nation has risen following the horrendous attack, following the shock and the trauma, with enormous pain that we are carrying with us on an hourly basis. Every hour another story, another story and another story of shocking stories, shocking - people being burned and tied up in barbed wire, you can only think about a family just before they are totally murdered, and heads cut off, all the things that you've been hearing."
"And therefore, this is a test, the moment calls for us to understand who is our friend, who is with us. And you've been with us from first moment, we are extremely grateful, Prime Minister, for your support and your decisions and, and your leadership in this respect, and we welcome you with an open heart. Because of this moment, we are at the frontier of a certain clash of civilizations.
"We are seeing an ISIS on our border, entering into our country. And it's an empire of evil, which we know is led from Tehran. It's a coalition of evil led from Tehran, which has its forks in Lebanon, which has left havoc in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. This is the real international interest, the security interest of all the nations of Europe, and this is how we feel and see this moment.
"And therefore, the fact that you're here is gives us a certain sense of the kind of support for the fact that we are there to uproot the military capabilities of this enemy so that we can bring back decent, honest, innocent people to live on the border, and live in peace with our Palestinian neighbors. We believe that both nations deserve this. And we are grateful to you for your efforts, on all fronts. We listen very carefully to your message and President Biden's message and other leaders on the need for humanitarian relief program for the people of Gaza, who have been moved out of the war zone in order for us to carry out our inherent right of self-defense. And I thank you for your very strong support for our right to self-defense, and your support of the Jewish community – your address in the synagogue in Finchley meant so much to the Jewish people and the Jewish world, and I'm grateful for that as well."
Herzog also stressed, "I want to raise the issue of what I call objective or not objective reporting about this tragedy because we feel that – and I've made it public – the way the BBC characterized Hamas, this is distortion of the facts."
"We are dealing with one of the worst terrorists organizations in the world. And I know that in modern democracies, such as ours and yours, you cannot intervene per se but because the BBC has a certain linkage and a is known as British all over the world, there has to be an outcry so that there will be a correction and Hamas would be the described as a terrorist organization. What else do they need to see to understand that this is an atrocious terrorist organization?"
"“I want to thank you greatly for your warm and comforting or words, our heart is bleeding with the pain of families right now, and we are also devoted to bringing back the hostages. There are babies and pregnant women, elderly people with dementia with their caretakers, there are foreign nationals, innocent lives without any knowledge of their whereabouts. And I think the international demand must be extremely forceful, so that we bring them back as soon as possible safe and sound. Thank you very much."
Prime Minister Sunak thanked the President and said: "It is a privilege to be here. It's difficult time for you and for your people, but I wanted to be here. First and foremost, I want to express my solidarity with you and your country after you have suffered something unspeakable, a barbaric act of terrorism, as you said, we should call it what it is: an act of terrorism perpetrated by an evil terrorist organization, Hamas. That's what I believe. And that's what we will continue to say."
"In that vein, we will stand with Israel, we will stand with you in solidarity with your people and your right to defend yourself, to bring security back to your country, to your people, to ensure the safe return of the hostages that have been taken. Because that's the right thing to do. You have not just a right to do that, I think you have a duty to do that, to restore that security to your country. But I'm also grateful to you for the support that the Israeli government has provided to the families and British nationals who have been caught up in this tragedy. I very much appreciate that and I know we will continue to cooperate closely and support your efforts to ensure the safe return of all the hostages.
"I'm glad that you and I have had a chance to discuss the need for humanitarian access. Palestinians are victims of what Hamas has done. And it's important that we continue to provide humanitarian access, I welcomed the announcement yesterday – the UK has announced further aid that we're prepared to bring into the region. And we're keen to see that that gets to those who need it, when people have been asked to leave to protect civilian life, which is the right thing to do – where we can support them, we want to do that. And I very much welcome the progress that we've made on that. So again, thank you for having me here - the relationship between our two countries has always been strong. But I want you to know at this particular moment, you don't just have our friendship you have all solidarity will be with you."