The last two days have been some of the hardest of my life. As a leader, I bear responsibility

September 3, 2024   

The last two days have been some of the hardest of my life, and there have been quite a few hard days of mental anguish since the beginning of the war. The names, and the faces, and the families. Those I met and those I didn't. The sense of personal and national failure, and the loss and the missed opportunity. How much I wanted to hug John and rejoice with Rachel when Hersh returned home. How much I prayed not to disappoint these noble souls who only want to spread light and goodness with such captivating innocence. And like them, the rest of the abductees. And the knowledge that we were unable to bring them home, this knowledge, and the pictures and the painful obituaries of parents, siblings, and friends, all of these will accompany me until my last day. When I chose public life, I never imagined that I would be called upon to make such difficult and painful decisions. Decisions of life and death. Tormenting dilemmas that tear the soul apart. Between values ​​and goals and life and death. Decisions of war. But I am here. And it is on my watch. And I cannot escape the decisions and I cannot pass them on to anyone else. These are my decisions, and I sleep with them and wake up with them and carry their results engraved deeply on the tablet of my heart forever. Precisely at the end of this day when I acted decisively against surrendering to Hamas and awarding a reward to Sinwar for the brutal murder of our precious hostages, precisely at the end of this day when I acted decisively against harming society and the economy with an illegal strike that has no understanding of the rights and welfare of workers of any nation, precisely at the end of this day it is important for me to convey a non-decisive message. A loving message. A message of appreciation. True, there are cynical elements who exploit the real pain of the country's citizens, but it is important for me tonight not to talk about them, but about many more. Many of the citizens of Israel who went to bed on Saturday night with their stomachs churning and woke up to unbearable news. Their hearts have been bleeding for two days. Many of the protesters today in the streets are expressing real pain, pain that has a place. Even if I don't agree with you on the path, even if I believe we made the right decisions even though you think otherwise, I love you, my heart aches with you. And your cry is not carried into an empty space. It has a place in our people. We are dealing with a cruel enemy. We, the leaders, must bear the complexity between the personal and the national. Between the duty to our citizens for whom the state was not there, languishing in the tunnels in just a year, and between the duty to the rest of the citizens of the country, who expect us to protect them going forward and not repeat the mistakes of the past. And to you, my brothers in pain and sorrow, I say - as a leader, I bear responsibility. Responsibility for good, responsibility for evil. Responsibility for joy and responsibility for sadness. Responsibility for successes and responsibility for failures. Responsibility for right decisions and responsibility for mistakes. I feel your pain, I ache for you, I love you. Together in joy. Together in sadness. On the long road.