by Benjamin Netanyahu

About the author: Benjamin Netanyahu served as Israeli prime minister from 1996 to 1999.

What is at stake today is nothing less than the survival of our civilization. There may be some who would have thought a week ago [in early September 2001] that to talk in these apocalyptic terms about the battle against international terrorism was to engage in reckless exaggeration. No longer.

Each one of us today understands that we are all targets, that our cities are vulnerable, and that our values are hated with an unmatched fanaticism that seeks to destroy our societies and our way of life. I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation [of Israel] when I say: Today, we are all Americans—in grief, as in defiance.

In grief, because my people have faced the agonizing...