Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a Jerusalem Day address at the Mercaz HaRav yeshivah on Thursday night to link Israel’s recent military campaign against Iran with the legacy of the Six-Day War and the Jewish return to Judea and Samaria.
Speaking at a festive gathering marking 59 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel had “broken the barrier of fear” during the war with Iran and reaffirmed the Jewish people’s historic connection to the biblical heartland.
“We held a Bible in hand, and the Bible was alive,” Netanyahu said, recalling the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. “The people of Israel live and the Land of Israel is their land; we returned to our birthplaces, we returned to our places, we returned to our land.”
Referring to Judea and Samaria, he declared: “This is our land and it will always be our land.”
Addressing rabbis, Cabinet ministers, lawmakers and students alongside his wife, Sara Netanyahu, the premier drew parallels between ancient Persia and modern-day Iran, saying Israel had once again overcome an enemy bent on the destruction of the Jewish people.
“At the moment of truth, we stood tall,” Netanyahu said. “We brought the war back to our enemies’ gates. We defended our existence with infinite determination.”
Referring to “Operation Roaring Lion,” the Israeli campaign launched on Feb. 28 against Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure, Netanyahu said the Jewish state had thwarted an existential threat.
“Had we not done so, Iran would have at least one atomic bomb today,” he said. “We rose like a lion, we roared like a lion, and we do not stretch our necks out to the slaughterer. That thing has ended in the history of our people.”
Netanyahu said Israel had returned all of the hostages abducted to Gaza during the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, “down to the very last one,” while also rejecting calls to halt military operations prematurely.
“There were those who said: ‘Get out, get out!’ We did not get out,” he said.
The prime minister credited Israelis with embracing a new spirit of confidence and initiative.
“The greatest thing we did was that we broke the barrier of fear,” he said. “We do not huddle in our own four cubits. We go out into the expanse. We initiate, we act, we attack, we crush our enemies.”
Netanyahu framed the current conflict as part of a centuries-long Jewish struggle for survival, sovereignty and redemption in the Land of Israel.
“We survived the upheavals of time—thanks to the struggle,” he said. “We established our state, thanks to the struggle. We maintained our independence, thanks to the struggle. We unified Jerusalem, our capital, in a miraculous defensive war 59 years ago, thanks to the struggle.”
‘Our mission is to ensure the eternity of Israel’
Netanyahu devoted a major portion of his address to the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), founder of Mercaz HaRav and one of the central spiritual figures of Religious Zionism, whose philosophy deeply influenced the post-1967 settlement movement in Judea and Samaria.
Citing a 1932 essay by Kook titled “To Add Courage,” Netanyahu described the Zionist enterprise as a difficult but sacred process of perseverance and redemption.
“Some of the diggers get tired and quit the work,” the prime minister said, quoting Kook’s description of “the weary of body and the weak of soul.
“But the one who does not despair, the one who clings to the path, the one who believes in the renewal and realization of the vision, is the one who will find pure and clear water in the depths of the well,” he continued.
Netanyahu said the message reflected his own worldview and leadership.
“This is also my way, as the prime minister of Israel,” he said. “Our mission is to ensure, with God’s help, the eternity of Israel.”
Connected the Kook and Netanyahu families
The premier described a personal and ideological connection between Kook and his own grandfather.
“This outlook is a connecting thread, one of many, between Rabbi Kook and my grandfather, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky-Netanyahu,” he said. “There was a very close connection between them.”
Netanyahu noted that Rabbi Kook delivered a eulogy for his grandfather and said the relationship between the two men was rooted in a shared belief that the Jewish people must reclaim control of their destiny in their ancestral homeland.
“Either the people of Israel will continue to wallow in the pains of the Diaspora, weak and beaten, or it will take its fate into its own hands, struggle for its liberation from the foreign yoke, and march upright on the soil of the homeland while drawing from the waters of Judaism,” Netanyahu said.
The prime minister also invoked the legacy of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and one of the leading spiritual figures behind the settlement movement following the Six-Day War.
“Shortly before the Six-Day War, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook cried out for the regions of our land that were not in our hands,” Netanyahu said. “Then came the War of Salvation, the War of Deliverance.”
Netanyahu praised Mercaz HaRav for shaping generations of Religious Zionist leaders and settlement activists.
“One cannot imagine the world of Torah in Israel without the Mercaz HaRav yeshivah,” he said. “Old and new merge in it, spirit and action, values and fulfillment.”
He concluded by expressing solidarity with the yeshivah and the people of Jerusalem.
“Together with my wife, Sara, we are always with you in heart and soul,” Netanyahu said. “A happy holiday to Jerusalem. A happy holiday to the people of Israel.”
