At perhaps the most divisive and uncertain moment between the Biden administration and Netanyahu's government a year into Israel's multi-front war, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, offered public praise for the United States's wartime support.
Herzog spoke on Monday morning during the American Jewish Committee's October 7 Memorial Commemoration in Washington, D.C., beginning his remarks by speaking about the "geopolitical and human stories of this war."
He explained why, since October 7, Israelis have said this war is "existential" and not another round of hostilities.
"This is existential because what happened on October 7, and in the aftermath of October 7, is that we, the State of Israel, were hit hard to the point of bleeding, and our enemies, all our enemies in the region and globally, smelled the blood, sensed weakness and vulnerability and rose to hit us," Herzog said. "And their appetite to destroy us was fed by the October 7 massacre. This explains how we found ourselves fighting not only Hamas in Gaza but the whole Iranian axis."
This explains Iran's direct massive missile strikes on Israel, according to Herzog, as Iran would "never contemplate such an attack were it not for October 7 and its perception that Israel is weak and vulnerable and that they can get away with it."
Herzog said this perception also explains the unprecedented wave of antisemitism that erupted in the United States and around the world after October 7, "assaulting both the Jewish state and the Jewish people, denying the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and denying the right of the Jewish state to self-defense."
According to Herzog, Israel understood that if it did not prevail in its war, it would never be able to lead "normal life as a free nation" in its homeland, and "the people of Israel rose to fight back."
He added the story of this war is also the story of how Israelis are "gradually turning the tide, restoring our deterrence, dismantling the Iranian ring of fire that they built around us, and we are weakening that axis."
Herzog then went on to say Israel "did this all on our own" and asked no one to "fight for us."
"We invested blood, sweat, and tears of our own," Herzog said.
However, he quickly followed by saying he wanted to take the opportunity to say loud and clear that without the support of the United States, Israel would not have been able to reach this moment.
"The support we receive from our closest ally, which withstood the pressure of his war in material and political ways, is meaningful, and we don't take it for granted," Herzog said. "Support from the US administration, from Congress on both sides of the aisle, from the American people, and notwithstanding all the noise that we hear outside, the majority of the American people, I am convinced, stand with us."
Herzog said the American people understand what is at stake and that Israel's enemies are, for the most part, the enemies of the United States.
"They understand that if we win this war, we also serve the interest of the free world and the United States," Herzog said.
Addressing the hostages
Before Herzog spoke, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of dual US-Israel hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, addressed the AJC and slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for failing to prioritize the return of the hostages through leveraging Hamas in favor of a ceasefire agreement and for "asking for the world's support as a victim."
Dekel-Chen said while he doesn't know if the desire to deflect Israel and the world's attention from the stalled hostage negotiations with Hamas factored into Netanyahu's decision to escalate the conflict with Hezbollah, the escalation and its ripples into Iran and Yemen have made it even more difficult for the hostage families to keep the attention of the international media, community and global decision-makers on the hostage crisis, no matter the military and intelligence achievements of the past couple of weeks.
"Some of them spectacular," he added.
"I don't know if the Israel that we all knew before October 7 can ever return. I do know that Israeli society will never recover if the hostages don't come home, as many as possible, alive," Dekel-Chen said.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was also in attendance at the AJC event. He read a short prayer and did not make any other comments.