Gilad Erdan, serving as Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, condemned a brutal assault on Israel by Hamas militants. In an interview with Fox News, he described the attack as without precedent and likened it to a sequence of terrorist incidents that shocked the United States in 2001.
He framed the events as a defining moment, saying that the battlefield would be reshaped and that the old paradigm would be replaced. He pledged that those responsible would face a heavy price and stressed that such brutality against civilians must never be tolerated again.
On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists affiliated with the Al-Qaeda network hijacked four commercial aircraft in the United States. Two planes were aimed at major targets in New York City, including the World Trade Center towers, while another struck the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C. area. A fourth aircraft crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers thwarted the hijackers’ plan.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel and announced the start of a campaign called Al-Aqsa Flood. In response, Israel launched a military operation named Iron Sword in defense of its citizens and territory.
Earlier outbreaks of violence in Israel focused a spotlight on the south of the country, where the scale and speed of Hamas’s offensive created a sense of humiliation and shock that reverberated across communities and security institutions.