Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday referred to Iran’s announcement that it would stop implementing some of its commitments under the nuclear agreement with the world powers, and said that Israel would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Read: Iran No Longer Committed to Restrictions on Enriched Uranium, Heavy Water
“On my way here, I heard that Iran intends to continue its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony on Mount Herzl marking Israel’s memorial day for the fallen IDF soldiers.
“We will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and we will deepen our roots even further in our homeland, as our forefathers did,” Netanyahu vowed, noting that “the events of the past few days have shown what our destiny is about. To uproot us from our land – our enemies have tried to do this time after time in the past hundred years, but they have failed.”
Netanyahu said in his speech that “our fallen loved ones were diamonds, human diamonds,” and, pointing to a recent clandestine security operation, said, “There are also invisible diamonds like Lieutenant Colonel M., whose life was cut short in the dark of night in the operation in Gaza.”
The Lieutenant Colonel was killed last November in an IDF clash with Hamas, deep inside the Gaza Strip,.
According to data published by the Defense Ministry, 56 Israelis were added since last Memorial Day to the list of the fallen, including 40 IDF veterans who died as a result of their past war injuries.
According to the DM data, the number of fallen warriors since 1860 in Israel stands at 23,741 men and women. The dead include the fallen IDF soldiers, as well as members of the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the police, the Prison Service, the members of the pre-state underground forces and soldiers who served in the British army’s Jewish Brigade.
