„What is happening in Israel is a combination of 9/11 and the Bucha massacre”

For the second day in a row, chaos prevails in Israel and the Gaza Strip, with increasingly dreadful footage of the war sparked by Hamas circulating on social media. The Palestinian terrorist group in the Gaza Strip fired thousands of rockets at Israel on Saturday morning as Hamas terrorists infiltrated the country. Israel immediately launched its military operation against the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians did not carry out the attack alone, but with support from Iran, Ambassador of the State of Israel to Hungary Yakov Hadas-Handelsman told Magyar Nemzet in an interview.

On Saturday morning Israel was attacked by the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. What was your first thought when you heard the news?

You cannot say that it was a complete surprise because if you live in this area, you are used to this kind of attacks. Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist organization, which is financially controlled, politically supported and motivated by Iran. Let us not forget the whole chain of subordination. Nevertheless, we were surprised by the scale of this attack. What we have here is a thorough organization which targeted innocent people. Most of them civilians, we have, until now, around 350 people who were murdered.

Hamas terrorists attacked them and literally butchered them. We have scores of people, babies, children, women, adults and old people who were abducted by Hamas and moved to Gaza.

And let's not forget the bombardment over half of Israel's territory. No country would tolerate what is happening, and we reacted accordingly. We were surprised by the attack, but time will come when we will investigate and see what happened, what went wrong. Our mission now is to drive out all those terrorists who are still in our territory. And then we will deal a blow to Hamas so that they won't be able to carry out such an attack in the near future.

How is this attack different from the other attacks?

The attacks are usually carried out by firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli settlements. This time this was only a decoy, because hundreds, if not thousands, of Hamas terrorists infiltrated into Israel's sovereign territory. They attacked around 25 Israeli villages, kibbutzim, and cities. They took hostages, and they just murdered them brutally. You can see those horrific video recordings showing you the misery of the people captured, how they treat them, how they abuse them, how they drag women and children.  An elderly lady, a Holocaust survivor was forced to hold a gun and make a V sign with her fingers before she was abducted and taken to Gaza. No one knows what happened to her, and we don't know the fate of many other people.  And this is what makes the difference, and we will have to deal with it accordingly. 

From our point of view, yesterday was a combination of 9/11 in America and the Bucha massacre in Ukraine.

aint no way😭 pic.twitter.com/lU4bxy99hG

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 7, 2023

Experts say that Israel was not prepared for the attack on Saturday. How could this happen?

Hamas has made it very clear that its goal is to eliminate the state of Israel. We were surprised by the volume and the timing of the attack, coming at the end of the Jewish high holidays, the last day of Simchat Torah, when many people are on holiday. We have recruited tens of thousands of reservists to drive terrorists out of Israeli territory and then strike Gaza. It's worth paying attention to what's going on on our northern front because today, Hezbollah tried to provoke Israel along the Lebanese border. We hope that the situation will not escalate, but if it does, we will call up all the reservists and fight on two fronts. By the way, Iran is behind these events. Why? There are many reasons, but I guess the main reason now is fear: with support from the Americans, a peace deal could be reached between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But now we are at war and we will win it.

What could be the reason for Hamas to time the attack now?  Could it have something to do with the Arab states normalizing relations with Israel, or with  the fact that all eyes are now on Ukraine?

Yes, all eyes are on Ukraine. And, yes, they don't like the fact that the Arab countries want to continue normalizing their relations with Israel. You see, the question is whether you want military and political stability, economic prosperity in the region, or you want to be subjected to tyranny, to theocracies, and terrorist states like Iran. Iran is the biggest terrorist state today, wherever there is something wrong being done in Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa, you will always find the footprints of Iran. If the Middle East is secure, flourishing and turns quiet, then this also brings security to Europe because the Middle East or Africa is the backyard of Europe, and especially of the European Union.  All the problems that could emerge from the Middle East have their implications on Europe, including Hungary, reducing security and prosperity, and the other way around.

Israeli forces immediately moved against Hamas. How has the Israeli operation progressed?

The first mission that we are going to complete is to eliminate all the Hamas terrorists who are still in the Israeli kibbutzim. We've managed to get rid of most of them, but there's still fighting going on in some settlements, including civilian areas, which have been under siege for more than 24 hours. The civilians are still there because you cannot evacuate them. They are hiding in their own shelters  – each apartment or house has its own shelter inside – waiting to be freed. Hopefully the fighting will be over soon and nobody on our side will be hurt. We already started operations in Gaza, the air force is bombing the military targets of the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the two big Palestinian terrorist organizations. It's going to be a hard war because when you fight a terrorist organization, it's even harder than to fight a regular war. If you talk about war between two armies, then the fighting is subjected to the basic rules of war. 

But when you fight against terrorists, they have no limits, they don't adhere to any rules of law.

Since yesterday, social networks have been circulating horrific scenes recorded by Hamas terrorist. They take advantage and abuse girls, children and old people. This is the kind of enemy we are facing, and I don't think that any sovereign country would have been able to tolerate this kind of attitude not for decades, but not even for one year and not even for one month. We have the right to defend ourselves and we're going to do it by all means.

What do you think about international reactions? Many people immediately condemned the attack by Hamas, including Hungary, but in the Arab countries and also in Germany, the Palestinians cheered in the streets.

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the Hungarian government and political establishment for their support. But what is happening in Europe is shameful because these people enjoy European generosity and they are welcome there. I saw those horrific scenes in Berlin's Neukolln district. This is the way they thank the host country, not only Germany but also other places. I think that people should understand that terror or anti-Semitism may start with Israel, with the Jews, but it never ends there. 

These are sickening phenomena, and countries in Europe should rethink their attitude towards this kind of ingratitude.

Well, concerning Arab countries, you can understand the reaction. In many cases, what they say in public is the opposite of what you hear about the situation behind closed doors. This is the difference between the democratic world and the world which is not democratic now. No one has better qualities to be a democrat, but it takes time to develop or evolve, and the Arab countries are still far from it. But as they say, Rome was not built in a day, and our development did not happen in a day either.

So hopefully in the future, Arabs will make the right decision, which means they will make the Western style choice not to be subjected to tyranny, terror dictatorships like Iran directly or via its puppets, the Hezbollah or Hamas. By the way, when we talk about Iran and how the Persian country is connected to everything which is negative,  we don't have to go as far as the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon or Yemen. You go 300 kilometers East and you reach the Ukrainian border, and they are there. What are they doing there? Helping Russia in its attack. Take another example: the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an Iranian activist who was sentenced to a total of 32 years in prison and 154 lashes for standing up for women's rights.

Cover photo: Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, Ambassador of the State of Israel in Budapest