Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem on Monday that the Sept. 9 strike on Hamas’s leadership in Qatar conveyed the important message that Israel wouldn’t hesitate to strike terrorists no matter where they may be.
Addressing questions about the Israeli airstrike at a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Netanyahu told a reporter from Maariv, who asked about the attack’s apparent failure: “I don’t accept the premise of your question which is that… the raid failed. It didn’t fail because it had one central message, and we considered it before we launched it, and that is: you can hide. You can run. But we’ll get you.”
This was important, he said, because if “terrorists think they enjoy immunity, they’ll do it again and again and again. And if you deny them that immunity, they’ll think twice.” Asked by another reporter whether Israel would cease further strikes on Hamas operating in foreign countries, Netanyahu emphasized that terrorists must not have immunity.
“The principle that terrorists should not have immunity wherever they are, wherever they may be, was not established by me,” Netanyahu said, noting that after the 1972 Munich Massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered, then-Prime Minister Golda Meir promised to “track down” the terrorists, “which is what we proceeded to do in the leading European countries.” (Read More)