"The goal is the total extermination of Israel"

"We will pay a high price for this war with the lives of our soldiers, but we have no other choice," said Ariel Bulshtein, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's advisor in an interview with Magyar Nemzet. According to the official who was in Budapest this week for the Pro-Israel conference, the Israeli government is expecting a protracted war against the Palestinian terrorist organisation Hamas, while the entry of Lebanon's Hezbollah is also a cause for serious concern. The advisor added that terrorists are exploiting Israel's weaknesses and using civilians as shields against attacks.

Ariel Bilshtein, Benámin Netanjahu miniszterelnök tanácsadója (Fotó: Alapjogokért Központ) Forrás: Alapjogokért Központ

You arrived in Budapest a few days ago for the Pro Israel Conference and are travelling home to Israel in the evening. How did you experience the outbreak of the war?

- I think that all Israelis awoke to the sound of sirens that Saturday morning. In total, more than 6,000 missiles were fired on Israel from the Gaza strip that day. Hamas terrorists used this attack in order to divert attention from the more serious part of their operation. They had breached the border wall between Israel and the Gaza Strip, at multiple points and managed to de facto occupy 22 Israeli communities. Then they actually went from house to house, entered apartments looking for people, civilians, and they killed everybody that they could find. We still don't know the total number of dead as the count continues to this day. We can't even enter some of the houses because the terrorists planted explosives to kill anyone trying to help the people inside. There are many photos and videos of the massacres, which are reminiscent of the Holocaust. Entire families, from babies to the elderly, everyone was murdered. A pregnant woman was stabbed in the abdomen, and you can see in the photos that her unborn child was still inside her. Horrific. It took us about three or four hours to understand what was happening, the army was mobilized immediately. At first I decided against coming to Budapest, but I changed my mind because I saw that it was even more important to attend the conference and tell what had happened.

As a senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, what will the next days be like for you?

- We have no alternative but to destroy Hamas completely. Their barbaric, terrorist nature is nothing new to Israel, we have lived through many terror attacks, but the scale and savageness of the attack was still shocking. Hamas has thousands of rockets and is prepared to fight in civilian areas. For example, Hamas's military headquarters are in the city of Gaza, under a hospital, and they are taking advantage of the fact that Israel will not bomb a hospital. We will pay a high price for this war, with the lives of soldiers, but we have no choice. In addition, Hamas is being joined by other organisations, and in the last few days several members have tried to enter Israel from Lebanon. One day, for example, five terrorists tried to get in and were killed, but we unfortunately also lost some soldiers in the process. We are most concerned about the possible entry of Hezbollah. Hezbollah has transformed from a terrorist organisation into a large-scale army, which is much more powerful than the official Lebanese forces, and is de facto controlling the whole country, especially the areas in southern Lebanon close to Israel. They, too, are known for their barbaric methods, such as putting their rocket launchers in civilian houses, hospitals and mosques.

We can't predict whether they will join in, but as Iran's longer arm, it completely depends on Tehran, which has full control over it.

Iran is also supporting Hamas, including with weapons, which they are bringing into the Gaza Strip from the Sinai Peninsula, but they do not have full control over the terrorist organisation. However, Israel is ready to mobilize, and more than 400,000 people have showed up to the army, many voluntarily, without being called on. When we are threatened, we put aside everything: political, ideological, religious differences. For us, this war is like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined, our mission is first and foremost to win the war.

A Palestinian rocket fired from the Gaza Strip is destroyed by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system over Ashkelon in southern Israel on October 13, 2023 (Photo: MTI/AP/Cafrir Abajov)

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back decades. What is the reason for the current attack? What is Hamas's aim?

- Much of Western and Israeli society tends to analyze intentions and aims. Hamas does not try to hide its goal either, the terrorist organisation's charter is clear: the total extermination of the State of Israel. One of the lessons of the Holocaust was that if some crazy ideology proclaims that we are going to kill you, it is best to listen. Although Hamas openly proclaims this, Israel has blindly believed in the Western idea that we can find a compromise.

More than 1,300 Jews were killed in the current attack, a single day number unprecedented since the Holocaust. This is worse per capita than the 9/11 attacks against the United States, since we are a smaller country.

And there is another important question: why did the terrorists choose Saturday? I have no clear answer. The preparation for a mass scale massacre takes a long time, perhaps they thought that they were now ready for it. They knew how to paralyze our border control technology, they knew how to get into fenced communities. They knew, for example, that when a person arrives in the village, the fence would automatically open. They probably also knew about the music festival where some 270 young people were killed. But there may have been other reasons. For example, we are on the brink of a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. It may have been on the orders of Tehran, that is another factor.

Egypt claims to have warned the Israeli government about the attack, but experts say Israel did not expect it. Did Hamas really manage to surprise Israeli intelligence?

- First of all, I can confirm that Israel did not receive any prior information from Egypt. These allegations come from the Israeli press, and official Egyptian sources have not confirmed that such information had been passed on to us. The reality speaks for itself: we were surprised by the attack and this is a tactical problem. We will investigate what happened to our special services, which are responsible for monitoring Hamas's preparedness and which also have sources within the terrorist organisation. In 2005, the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, handed over full control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and Israel withdrew from the area, along with the Jewish population. It was obvious that if we gave the terrorists what they wanted, they would not thank us and live in peace. Former Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres said at the time that the Gaza Strip would be the next Singapore because they do not want Israeli occupation. The other problem is the financial issue: if they do not have enough money, they will attack, because people need food, they need to pay the salaries of the military wing, so we have allowed at least Qatar to give them money. However, most of the money was used to build tunnels that could also transport tanks, some of which ended up in Israeli territory, near kindergartens and schools. Israel then spent three billion dollars on building underground fences, but we did not expect them to be breached with tractors. Today, there are calls from all sectors of Israeli society for the destruction of the terrorist organisation.

Evacuation of an area hit by Palestinian rocket attack in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on October 9, 2023 (Photo: MTI/AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)

What outcome does the Israeli government expect?

- We don't know how long it will take to totally destroy Hamas - days, weeks, months... . Certainly not years, but we will certainly need a lot of time. The terrorist organisation has used the last 18 years to arm the Gaza Strip, now our aim is to destroy their entire military and financial capabilities. Our first step was to attack financial channels, including banks, and then cut off all supplies to the Gaza Strip from Israel. Hamas's military strength cannot be compared with Israel's, they do not have the military capability that we have, but they exploit our weaknesses, like, for example, the fact that to us every human life counts, even those of the enemy. They use human shields and try to kill as many people as possible. They do not even care if civilians die on their side, because they can capitalize on it in the international media, saying that Israel is killing babies. They are also taking advantage of the fact that they have taken 150 Israelis hostage, including babies under one year old and elderly people aged 85 to 90. Israel most recently cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on civilians there to flee to Egypt. Anyone can leave who is not connected to the Hamas military operation. Another difficulty is that terrorist organizations do not bother with things like uniforms, making them difficult to distinguish among civilians. There are photos of the bodies of killed hostages stacked on top of each other, with people dancing on corpses - these are not Hamas terrorists, they are civilians.

On the other hand, we are receiving support from the international community, and in the case of Hungary, I can speak of particularly great level of support. I was just having a coffee and a young man came up to me, recognized my Israeli accent and said he saw what had happened in Israel and that it broke his heart.

There are clear signs that a new world order is emerging: Russia has attacked Ukraine, relations between Beijing and Washington are becoming increasingly tense, and now another war has broken out in the Middle East. What role do you think Israel will play in the region?

- Israel is a modest country, but is considered a powerful military force and faces many imminent threats. Beyond that, there are two superpowers rivaling each other, the peace of the past decades in Europe has ended with the war between Russia and Ukraine. For Israel, 2019 was the quietest year on record, with only three civilians killed by terrorists that year. Now, more than a thousand in one day. What our role will be in the regime change that is taking place in the world, I don't know, for now we have to focus on tomorrow and our neighborhood.

My thoughts are now with my family and friends, among the latter there are also those who are waiting orders at the Gaza border to enter the zone. Maybe I, too, will be there in a few days.

Cover photo: Ariel Bilshtein, advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Center for Fundamental Rights)