Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said Iran’s so-called “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is today’s version of “Hitler” and “should no longer continue to exist” after Iran hit a hospital with a missile Thursday.
As Breitbart News was first to report in English, after Israel’s Army Radio reported it in Hebrew, Iran hit Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva during a barrage of roughly 50 missiles, four of which landed.
Missiles also landed in the Ramat Gan area of Tel Aviv, and in the city of Holon, causing several dozen injuries. But the missile that hit Soroka caused the most shock, given the vulnerable nature of the target.
Miraculously, there were very few injuries, as the building that was hit by the missile had been emptied the day before, and all of the staff and patients at the hospital had managed to enter a basement bomb shelter.
Israel’s health minister, Uriel Busso, told the Jerusalem Post that the fact that everyone at the hospital survived was a testament to the importance of preparation, and the government’s success in encouraging it.
But he added that it was a “red line” to attack a hospital, especially one that serves a diverse local population of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. “This is a significant event for the state,” he added.
Katz was even more specific, noting that it was a grave violation of international law to target a hospital, provided the hospital is not used as a military site, the way Hamas uses Gaza hospitals (itself a war crime).
The Times of Israel reported:
Visiting the site of this morning’s missile strike in Holon, Defense Minister Israel Katz says Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “the modern Hitler” and “cannot continue to exist.”
He says that under the IDF’s war goals, “without question this man should not continue to exist.”
“A dictator like Khamenei, who heads a country like Iran and has made the destruction of the State of Israel his declared goal, this horrific goal of destroying Israel, cannot be allowed to continue or materialize,” he tells media.
U.S. President Donald Trump had reportedly vetoed an Israeli proposal several days ago to kill Khamenei, but the president stressed that the U.S. knew where Khamenei was hiding, and that he was vulnerable.
In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses the nation in a televised speech marking the Iranian New Year, or Nowruz, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Iran claimed that its target in firing at Soroka had been a military facility in an industrial park, which it falsely claimed is adjacent to the hospital (it is more than a mile away). The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strongly denied, in a statement in Farsi that was aimed at Iranians, that there is any military use to Soroka Medical Center aside from treating wounded soldiers, which is a protected purpose under international law.
Israel had not said exactly how it would respond to the attack on the hospital, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned tersely on X, in Hebrew: “We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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