The IDF will keep moving forward. We will keep working to achieve the aims of this war. And we will, ultimately, be victorious.
A year ago, the State of Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history. It was one of the darkest days in the history of the Jewish people, a day that will live in infamy and forever be etched into our collective memories. It was also a day of deep personal grief for thousands of Israeli families whose loved one were murdered in their beds, executed in the streets, massacred at a music festival, or taken hostage into the tunnels of Gaza.
The horrors of that day should never be forgotten. Nor should anyone forget that it was Hamas’s actions on October 7 that brought us to the current reality in the Middle East. Hamas started this war with the explicit aim of sparking a regional conflict.
For the Israel Defense Forces, it was a day in which we failed. We failed in our most basic task to protect the people of Israel. That is a burden every officer in the IDF will carry with them. We knew we had to take responsibility and that we must learn the lessons of that failure.
But there was something else we had to do that day: We had to move forward. We had to regroup, rebuild and reorganize. We had to immediately put in place a strategy that would allow us to defend our country and achieve the objectives set for us by the government—to dismantle Hamas and bring our hostages home.
