New Delhi, June 30 (IANS) Israeli Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, on Tuesday urged the international community not to surrender to terrorism. He was speaking ahead of the 50th anniversary of ‘Operation Entebbe’, the Israeli counter-terrorist mission in Uganda.

"We see that there is a constant attempt to abuse international norms and to harm the innocent in order to achieve, in a deceitful and malign way, political goals... And, I think it's a goal, both of India, Israel and the rest of the international community, not to surrender to terrorism," Ambassador Azar told IANS in an interview.

"We've been, in the last few years, in one of our harshest and longest wars in our history. This started all with a terrorist attack, a barbaric attack on October 7 and we had to make sure that this cannot happen again. That's why we initiated the campaign that was pretty comprehensive,” he added.

The Israeli Ambassador stressed that "Entebbe gave us the inspiration that we need to prove the world that terrorism can be defeated. I think that the lessons of Entebbe are being learned around the world up until today."

He noted that India and Israel continue to expand cooperation, having signed many agreements during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the country earlier this year. Now, he stated, the agreements are being implemented.

Azar mentioned that retired Major General Amir Baram, Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, visited India last week and advanced "very important" programmes related to upgrading mutual defence capabilities.

“I'm confident that as we continue working together, the solutions and the added value of that will be serving both Indian people and Israelis,” the Ambassador said.

Earlier, the Israeli Ambassador attended the '50 Years of the Entebbe Operation' event held at the United Service Institution of India in New Delhi

–IANS

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