The commanding officer of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Southern Command, General Yaron Finkelman, broadcast a radio message to the ground troops Tuesday as they prepared to embark on a wider mission within the Gaza Strip against Hamas.

The translation is as follows:

Stations of the Southern Command, attention:

We are going into the attack against Hamas and the terror organizations in the Gaza Strip.

Our objective is one: victory.

It does not make a difference how long the fight will be, how difficult. There is no result other than victory.

We will fight in professionally and powerfully, in the light of the values of the IDF in which we were trained, the first of which is commitment to the mission, and the pursuit of victory.

We will fight them in the alleys, we will fight them in the tunnels, we will fight them wherever it is necessary.

And we will strike the abominable enemy against which we stand.

My brother soldiers: the residents of Be’eri, Sderot, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, and the towns of the western Negev, and with them all the nation of Israel — everyone is watching us at this time.

Like me, they are relying on you, and they believe in you.

You are the generation of victory. 

Attention: embark on your missions, strike the enemy. Over and out.

On Monday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff of the IDF, gave a similar address to the front-line combat soldiers — male and female — in Gaza:

The IDF also announced Tuesday:

Over the last day, combined IDF combat forces struck approximately 300 targets, including anti-tank missile and rocket launch posts below shafts, as well as military compounds inside underground tunnels belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization.

During the forces’ ground operations, the soldiers had several engagements with terrorist cells that fired both anti-tank missiles and machine gun fire toward them. The soldiers killed terrorists and directed air forces to real-time strikes on targets and terror infrastructure.

The IDF also shared some video of the activities of the ground forces entering Gaza.

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 the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.