Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, Roey Gilad, has delivered a forceful defense of Israel’s military posture in the Middle East, asserting that deterrence not escalation is key to national survival.
Speaking about Israel’s ongoing confrontations with Iran and its allied militant groups on Happy FM’s Epa Ho Daben with Bismark Brown, Ambassador Gilad said the country’s strategy is not to change hearts, but to deny hostile actors the tools to act on their threats.
“If they want to keep on hating us, that’s fine. What we can do is to make sure that they will not have the weapon, they will not have the means to do it.”
He emphasized that Israel’s military objectives are consistent across its adversaries, “That’s our aim vis-à-vis Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.”
Gilad rejected the notion that Israel is the aggressor in these conflicts.
“We did not choose this war,” he said. “We didn’t choose the war against Hamas. We didn’t choose the war against Hezbollah. We didn’t choose the war against the Houthis. We didn’t choose the war against Iran. Those wars have been enforced on us.”
Drawing a historical parallel, the ambassador invoked the Holocaust as a defining lesson for Israeli defense policy.
“Six million Jews were slaughtered because they could not defend themselves.The whole idea of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces is that we need to defend ourselves. We shall not be slaughtered again as we were in Europe in the 40s.”
While acknowledging the human cost of conflict, Ambassador Gilad insisted that deterrence is non-negotiable.
“It is painful. It has a price. But we are not willing to go again to the same position,” he said. “We have to make sure that the enemy is paying a price which is most significant.”
