PM at memorial: ‘There is no existence without sacrifice,’

If Hamas chooses to escalate the situation in the South, they will pay an “unbearable price,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at a memorial service at Mount Herzl for the 68 IDF soldiers and six civilians killed four years ago during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

“I recommend that the rulers in Gaza choose quiet,” he said.

If not, he said, Israel will respond with “maximum sensitivity to the lives of our soldiers,” but also with “full determination to ensure our security and the routine of our daily lives.”

The prime minister said one of the goals of Hamas during the 2014 war was to isolate Israel internationally.

“Not only did that not happen, but the exact opposite took place,” he said. “Even Arab states, or leading states in the Arab world, identified with our positions, and I have a firm basis to believe that this would be even more the case today.”

Netanyahu said there “is no existence without sacrifice, there is none. That is the reality until humanity changes its stripes, until the visions of the prophets are fulfilled, until swords are beat into plowshares – we will have to grasp the sword, and there is a price.”

With that, Netanyahu added that Israel has strengthened its sword – in the air, on land, in the sea, in intelligence, in cyberspace, on offence and on defense.

“As part of the lessons of Protective Edge, Israel has had a breakthrough regarding the terrorist tunnels,” he said. “We are developing new technologies all the time that have significant impact on underground warfare.”

Netanyahu quoted the prophet Nehemiah – a leader of the return of the Jews to Zion from Babylonian exile following the decree of Cyrus the Great – who 2,500 years ago exhorted his soldiers to “fight for your brothers, your sons and daughters, your wives and homes.”

“That was the case then, as well as now,” Netanyahu said. “Protective Edge was a battle for our brothers, sons, daughters, wives and homes. This campaign was a continuation of the heroic chain through the generations of defending our homeland.”

Netanyahu noted that since the war in 2014, the western Negev – which currently is facing flammable kites and balloons from Gaza that are setting fields alight – has enjoyed unprecedented growth and development.

“Today as well, despite the difficulties and challenges, the communities are prospering,” he said, noting that those soldiers who fell during the war “gave us life.”

Netanyahu said the government is “making great efforts” to return the bodies of the two soldiers – Lt. Hadar Goldin and St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul – and the two civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, being held by Hamas.