IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot said, during his address at the state ceremony commemorating 50 years since the six-day war, that the biggest challenge facing the IDF since the 1967 Middle East War, is Israel’s northern neighbor, Syria. Eisenkot warned that the “lack of governance in Syria and the terrorist organizations operating in that country pose future challenges that Israel’s defense forces are dealing with today and will continue to deal with in the foreseeable future.”
Eizenkot, who also took the opportunity to praise former Israeli Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin, who served as the IDF Chief of Staff during the six-day war, declared that “The IDF’s mission has not changed in the last 50 years: protect the country, ensure the existence of the Jewish state and allow our citizens to dream of normality that would allow Israel to prosper and flourish.”