Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today (Thursday) with British Foreign Secretary and former Prime Minister David Cameron.
During their meeting, Netanyahu addressed the delay in the release of the first hostages by the Hamas terrorist organization and said that "we hope we get our hostages out."
"It’s not without its challenges, but we have to, we hope to get this first tranche out and then we’re committed to getting everyone out,” he said.
"We will continue with our war aims, namely to eradicate Hamas, because Hamas has already promised that they will do this again and again and again. They are a genocidal terrorist cult. There is no hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab countries if we do not eradicate this murderous movement, which threatens all of us," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu noted that Cameron visited Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the communities in southern Israel that was devastated during the massacre on October 7. "This is a broader war of civilization against barbarism. The cruelty you saw during your visit is the most terrible cruelty the Jewish people have experienced since the Holocaust. Just as the world united to defeat the Nazis, or al-Qaeda after 9/11, or ISIS - we must unite to defeat Hamas."
"What Israel suffered, relatively speaking, is equivalent to 20 9/11s. It's like if 50,000 Americans were slaughtered in one day, and 10,000 were kidnapped, including a nine-month-old baby; he still can't walk, he still can't talk, but he's in captivity. What kind of people do such things? The answer is that they are not people, they are monsters. These monsters must go - and they will go. We will continue the war until we achieve this goal and guarantee a different future for Gaza and for us," Netanyahu concluded.
Foreign Secretary Cameron replied: "I wanted to come here personally and travel to places in Israel and to Kibbutz Be'eri, to see what happened in the horrific attack on you. I think it is very important to do this and to see it. We stand with the citizens of Israel in sympathy with what you went through. This is important."
Cameron called the four-day ceasefire Israel agreed to as part of the deal to free 50 of its hostages “an important opportunity to get the hostages out and more aid into Gaza to help the Palestinian people.”