“When Israel is strong, others want to partner with us. You stand up and be counted, and you will see the difference. Don’t be afraid,” the Prime Minister urged.By JNSMore than two years after Hamas attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, “Israel has come out of this war stronger than ever before,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told attendees of a JNS event in Surfside, Fla., which drew hundreds of people on New Year’s Eve.“Stronger than ever before economically. What does strong mean? Well, we just signed a $37 billion gas deal,” Netanyahu said at the Shul of Bal Harbour, a Chabad congregation.“That’s strong. We just had Nvidia—they decided to have a massive investment in Israel, and we welcome it.”The Israeli premier told attendees that the Jewish state made alliances and peace with strong countries.“We have opened up opportunities for peace that have never existed before. In the first term of President Trump’s office, we did the Abraham Accords that brought four historic peace accords with four Arab states,” he said. “We’re committed to do more.”“It’s peace through strength,” he said. “It’s prosperity through strength.”Netanyahu spoke for about 15 minutes at the hour-long event. Sens. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Jay Collins, the Florida lieutenant governor, spoke after the prime minister.Alex Traiman, the CEO of JNS, was one of the speakers who introduced the prime minister.Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in New York, and Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York, also attended, as did Yechiel Leiter, Israeli ambassador to the United States, and Reps. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) and Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.).Leo Terrell, who leads the U.S. Justice Department’s task force on Jew-hatred, and Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi whom the U.S. Senate recently confirmed as the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, also attended.Netanyahu told the audience that it is important to be firm in the face of Jew-hatred.“I say to you, members of the Jewish community of the United States, the last thing you should do before antisemitic attacks, as they attack you—the last thing you should do is lower your head and seek cover,” he said. “That’s not what you should do. You should stand up and be counted. You should fight back.”The prime minister said that Jews ought to attack their attackers.“You should delegitimize your delegitimizers,” he said. “Nobody will fight for you more than you fight for yourself.”“When Israel is strong, others want to partner with us. You stand up and be counted, and you will see the difference,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”“Don’t cower. Don’t lower your head,” he added. “Speak up. Stand up. Fight back. That’s the important thing: fight, fight, fight. And then shall win, win, win with God’s help.”The event drew intense security, with helicopters, police boats, Miami-Dade police officers and the U.S. Secret Service protecting attendees.Netanyahu told the audience that the tragedy of Jewish history is being “exiled from our land.”“We lost strength, unity and resolve, and the consequences were horrific,” he said. “We were expelled from land to land, we suffered pogroms, we suffered massacres, culminating in the greatest massacre of them all—the Holocaust, in which a third of our people were lost.”“I say to the entire world: Never again,” he said. “Never again was last year, in which we demonstrated to the would-be destroyers of Israel, we shall destroy you. You shall not destroy us.”“Never again is next year and never again is forever,” he said.Netanyahu also addressed the body of the last remaining hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili.“We shall return him and we’re working on it right now,” the prime minister said. “He shall be back. The first one in, last one out, but he’ll be back.”Netanyahu told attendees that on the second day of the war, he said that Israel would change the face of the Middle East.“It was the bravery of our soldiers, the resolute stance of our people and the correct decisions that we took in the government that changed the face of battle and changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.He also cited the “friendship of the United States and the support of a president like no other: President Donald J. Trump.”“I appreciated the fact that at the beginning stages of the war President Biden came to us well. But President Trump has been unflinching, consistent. He never wavers,” Netanyahu said.“His gut, his heart—we don’t say ‘gut,’ we say his kishkes—his instinctive support for the State of Israel, his understanding of what is right and what is just.”“That’s been there from day one, and we have shown what happens when the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel have no daylight between them: Wonderful things. Wondrous things can happen,” he said.The post Israel emerged from war ‘stronger than ever,’ Netanyahu says at JNS event in Florida appeared first on World Israel News.