The Cradle,October 18, 2923 —Speaking at a mass rally in Tehran on 18 October, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned Israel’s bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and predicted the attack would lead to the collapse of the Israeli state.
“The end of the Zionist regime began with the attack on the hospital,” Raisi said.
“With every drop of blood of Palestinians that is being shed, the Zionist regime gets one step closer to collapse,” he noted.
On 17 October, Israel targeted the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza with a missile strike, killing at least 500 Palestinians.
The president described the history of the Palestinian struggle against Israel, noting that it began with rocks during the first Intifada, or uprising, in 1989 and has ended with missiles, which Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) now possess.
Raisi described the Palestinian resistance’s latest action, the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation, as a huge defeat for Israel.
“Besides Mossad, 6 other intelligence services support the Zionist regime” the president noted, adding that, “The Zionist regime cannot make up for its defeat with its crimes.”
On 7 October, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, launching thousands of rockets and sending thousands of fighters from Gaza to attack the surrounding Israeli settlements. Hamas fighters managed to capture over 150 Israelis and bring them back to Gaza to exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israel responded by closing the Gaza strip to water, food, and electricity, while launching a bombing campaign on Gaza that has killed some 3,200 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children.
Israeli leaders are threatening a ground invasion of Gaza, and have expressed their desire to expel Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt. Such an act of ethnic cleansing would exceed even that of the 1948 Nakba in which Zionist militias forcibly expelled 750,000 Palestinians to conquer they landed they wanted to establish the Israeli state.
The Iranian government issued a statement following the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing urging the international community to intervene to stop Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. “While condemning this heinous crime in the strongest possible way, the Islamic Republic of Iran urges the international community and the United Nations to take immediate action to stop the crimes of the child-killing, racist Zionist regime,” the statement said.