Though the Israeli prime minister’s statement lacked dramatic breaking news, it was a message that everyone at home and abroad needed to hear. Remember FDR’s fireside chats in WWII? Opinion.
Ruthie Blum, a former adviser at the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is an award-winning columnist and a senior contributing editor at JNS. Co-host with Ambassador Mark Regev of the JNS-TV podcast “Israel Undiplomatic,” she writes on Israeli politics and U.S.-Israel relations. Originally from New York, she moved to Israel in 1977. She is a regular guest on national and international media outlets, including Fox, Sky News, i24News, Scripps, ILTV, WION and Newsmax.
(April 21, 2025 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the nation on Saturday night was not merely justified; it was crucial. In fact, the only real criticism one can reasonably level at it is that he announced it two days in advance.
That misstep, given the tense and fragile national psyche, led to unrealistic expectations. Was a major hostage deal in the works? Had the Israel Defense Forces already struck Iran? The lead-up spurred hopeful speculation among Netanyahu’s supporters and caused his detractors to repeat their usual “anybody but Bibi” mantras.
Not that the content of his 11-minute video mattered to Channel 11, mind you. No, Israel’s national broadcaster, paid for by the public’s tax shekels, didn’t even deign to interrupt its regular programming to air it. Channels 12 and 13 pulled a different stunt—cutting off the clip in the middle, dismissing it as unworthy of a full viewing.
Never mind that Israel is still fighting a multi-front war. Leave aside the fact that its most important ally is engaging in talks with the very entity heading the campaign to annihilate the Jewish state, while striving for regional and global hegemony.
In the eyes of a very vocal, culturally powerful minority, Netanyahu is far more dangerous than the Islamic Republic and each of its murderous proxies. But ignoring what he had to say was as self-defeating as the protest camp’s overall attitude.
It’s true that his statement lacked dramatic breaking news. Still, it was a message that everyone at home and abroad had to hear.
He needed to signal that he has no intention of caving to calls to end the war before achieving all of its goals: freeing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that the denizens of Gaza never again pose a threat to Israel.
Though there’s nothing novel about his reiteration of these aims, he was compelled to counter the false narrative that’s been circulating about first freeing the hostages and later dealing with Hamas. On this, he set the record straight.
“Hamas is a gang of despicable murderers, but they’re not stupid,” he said. “They’re demanding binding international guarantees that leave no room for the illusion of a ‘trick’ that all the so-called ‘experts’ in the TV studios are trying to sell us. They have no idea how the international system actually works.”
He went on, “No one—certainly not the United States, not China, not Russia, not any other member of the Security Council—no one will cooperate with such a ruse, which would make returning to war impossible. We would have no legitimacy to do so.”
Yes, he added, “Look how quickly Israel lost international legitimacy for the most just war in our history—and this was after the Hamas monsters murdered over 1,200 of our civilians in a single day and abducted more than 250. Very quickly, the tide turned against us. The political pressure was redirected at us; we faced arms embargoes even from close allies; and even now we are dealing with accusations of genocide in the international arena.”
Indeed, he stressed, “There is no such thing as a fake commitment. If we commit not to fight, we will not be able to resume fighting in Gaza.”
Anybody who denies that reality is living on another planet. Worse, those repeating the ridiculous claim that all Israel has to do to “bring all the hostages home now” is agree to Hamas’s terms—retaining its reign in Gaza and forcing a complete pullout of the IDF from the enclave—have little or no consideration for the country’s interests.
None for the hundreds of fallen and wounded soldiers. You know, the ones who lost life and limb searching for—and rescuing a number of—hostages, while killing terrorists and dismantling tunnels.
Nor are such arguments helpful to the captives or their desperate families. On the contrary, the rhetoric fed to them has provided Hamas with a set of well-articulated talking points, which the terrorists have been plagiarizing to craft the scripts of heart-wrenching hostage videos.
Furthermore, while capitulation is unlikely to result in the release of every hostage, it definitely would end in the resurrection of Hamas and the emboldening of terrorists everywhere to emulate the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023.
Which brings us to the regime in Tehran, which is charging full-speed ahead toward atomic armament, despite protestations that its nuclear program is for “peaceful” civil purposes.
With the United States engaged in negotiations to prevent it from obtaining nuclear bombs, it was imperative for Netanyahu to insist that he hasn’t budged “a single millimeter” from his stance on the matter. Echoing President Donald Trump’s declaration, the Israeli prime minister repeated that Iran cannot be permitted to possess nuclear weapons.
This was the worrisome part of his speech. After all, the truth is that Iran’s entire nuclear program is perilous. And Netanyahu knows it.
Whether he tweaked his wording in order not to irritate the isolationists in the Trump administration pushing hard for a deal with the ayatollahs isn’t clear. What’s plain, however, is that Israel has two options.
One is to persuade Washington to assist in a joint military operation in Iran. The other is to go it alone.
The tone of Netanyahu’s address indicated that he’s cautiously counting on the former, but prepared for the latter. Israel’s security, if not survival, depends on it.
Those Israeli media who ignored his speech or cut it short should have listened.
