Bennett: 70% of Palestinians in Gaza, PA want to murder all Israelis

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations’ 51st Annual Leadership Mission in Jerusalem on Tuesday, spoke of the strategic lessons of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, the necessity of preventing Iran from going nuclear, and the emerging danger from Turkey and Qatar.

Bennett asserted that seven out of 10 Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority want to murder all Israelis. He based that figure on the latest opinion polls in those areas, which showed 70% of the public support the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. He noted that in the only democratic elections which took place in the P.A., in 2006, Hamas won 76 out of 132 parliamentary seats.

Bennett also cited anecdotal evidence. On Oct. 7, the first two waves of the attack were led by Hamas commandos, but the third wave consisted of “random people” who entered Israel and murdered Israelis. “There’s not one recorded event of a righteous Gentile in Gaza,” Bennett said.

Of the Iranian threat, Bennett said that the Islamic Republic had been severely damaged by the joint Israeli-American airstrikes in June of last year, but “the ballistic threat remains, and the evil regime remains.”

Comparing the regime to the former Soviet Union—”rotten, old, disconnected, incompetent”—Bennett said the ayatollahs will eventually fall and Israel’s strategy should be to do whatever it can to accelerate that collapse. In the meantime, it must prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Bennett warned of a new threat emerging from Anatolia. “Turkey is the new Iran,” he said. Together with Qatar, it is feeding the “Islamic Brotherhood monster,” which “eventually might become as dangerous as the one created by Iran.”

Turkey is building a Sunni axis composed of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others, in an attempt to encircle Israel in a new “choke ring,” he said. Describing Turkish President Recep Erdoğan as “sophisticated, dangerous,” Bennett said Israel must not wait to counter the threat from Ankara, even as it still deals with Iran.

Bennett said his biggest concern is the internal threat, the divisions between Jews in Israel. The modern State of Israel is the third iteration of a sovereign Jewish state and the previous states were lost due to civil wars. “In the year leading up to Oct. 7, that horrible year of 2023, we saw Israeli society tear itself apart,” he said, referring to the societal upheaval over the government’s judicial reform plan.

Bennett, who intends to run for prime minister in the next election, which must be held by Oct. 27, said that if elected he would establish a State Commission of Inquiry “according to law” to investigate the events of Oct. 7; how and why Israel’s government and security establishment “evaporated” in the first 24 hours of the attack.

(Israel’s coalition and opposition both agree that an investigation is necessary but disagree about how it should be formed. Bennett has taken the position of the opposition, that the president of the Supreme should select the investigative committee’s members.)

Although Israel and the Israel Defense Forces recovered, the Oct. 7 attack exposed a deeper strategic failure; that Israel relied too much on defensive measures, creating a false sense of security, Bennett said. It forgot the lessons of the past, which called for taking the fight to the enemy.

To prevent future attacks, he said, Israel must abandon the passive approach, which he claimed it is falling back into, and return to a proactive strategy of confronting threats directly and decisively.

As an example of the defensive mindset that had taken root, Bennett related how in 2014, when Israel discovered 30 terror tunnels entering the country, he pushed strongly within the Security Cabinet to destroy them to prevent a major attack. He encountered resistance from senior leaders, including the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet). He persisted until action was taken.

“Too many decision makers, not all, but many, failed to understand that beyond our borders, there’s millions of people that want to kill us,” Bennett said.

Speaking of the importance of the relationship between Diaspora Jews and Israel, Bennett said that after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and outpouring of antisemitism that followed, Israelis and worldwide Jewry understood that they can rely only on each other for their survival. “The way I see it, Israel, the State of Israel belongs to every Jew in the world,” he said.

Ending on a positive note, Bennett said Israel’s young generation is exceptional, having fought in Gaza and shouldered responsibilities that most young men and women never do.

Israel is not only producing extraordinary children, but more of them, he said. While other countries fail to reproduce at the minimal rate, Israel has struck on the formula for success: “Lots of children, multiplied by amazing children equals an amazing 50 years for the State of Israel.”

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