Tel Aviv [Israel], January 4 : Israel's spy agency Mossad head David Barnea declared on Wednesday that anyone involved in the October 7 Hamas attack "signed his own death warrant," The Times of Israel reported.
This comes a day after Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut.
Speaking at the funeral of former Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, a supporter of Israel's ongoing declared mission to eliminate Hamas leaders, Barnea he compared the decades-long operation launched by the late spy chief to hunt down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
"Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the [October, 7] massacre, he signed his own death warrant," Barnea said.
The Times of Israel reported that the quote is a paraphrase of a famous one by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, who said in a 1963 speech: "Let every Hebrew mother know she has entrusted the fate of her [soldier] sons to commanders worthy of it."
"Today, too, we are in the middle of a war," Barnea said at the funeral. "The Mossad today, like 50 years ago, must hold to account the murderers who invaded the Gaza border area on October 7the planners and those who sent them."
"But we will get our hands on them wherever they are. Zvika [Zamir]'s spirit will accompany us in this mission," he said.
Barnea recounted how Zamir once told him the story of the mission to target the terrorists who conducted the 1972 Munich Massacre.
"I will never forget Zvika's message to us and to me: the murders in Munich were a defining event for him and for the people of Israel. The Mossad decided to take off its gloves and go on the offensive," he said.
Zamir, who died Tuesday aged 98, led the Mossad from 1968 to 1974, six tumultuous years that saw the organization and its straitlaced chief embark on the worldwide hunt for the Black September group terrorists following the Munich Olympics attacks; send commandos into the heart of Beirut in a daring operation; and attempt to sound a late-night warning bell on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1973 as Egyptian and Syrian forces prepared to mount the surprise attack that launched the Yom Kippur War.
The current war broke out on October 7 when some 3,000 terrorists led by Hamas burst through the border from the Gaza Strip and rampaged through southern regions, slaughtering over 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, amid brutal atrocities. Over 240 people of all ages, including small children and the elderly, were abducted and taken hostage in Gaza.
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