Freed hostage gets wave of hate for saying Netanyahu to blame for Oct. 7
Kan pulls promo of interview at Liri Albag’s request, after pro-Netanyahu accounts call her ‘trash’ for pointing finger at the premier and saying he should ‘ask for forgiveness’
Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan, removed a promotional clip of an upcoming interview with released hostage Liri Albag on Monday, in which she sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after Albag requested its removal from the air due to a wave of hate she received from Netanyahu supporters on social media.
In the clip, Albag, who was released from captivity during the recent ceasefire, tells the interviewer that if she were to meet Netanyahu, she would tell him that she blames him for the failure of the October, 7, 2023, Hamas attack, during which she was taken captive.
“Because of you, I went through the worst thing a human being can ever go through,” Albag said about the premier. “You are to blame, and you need to fix what you did.”
Albag also said that she expects Netanyahu to “ask for forgiveness and promise that the rest of the hostages will be home soon.”
After clips of the interview were posted online and aired on Kan, a wave of hate and vitriol targeted Albag online, with pro-Netanyahu accounts calling her “a trash girl,” and suggesting to “send her back to Gaza.”
According to Channel 12, a large number of the hateful messages came from pro-Netanyahu Facebook groups, especially “Friends who love Benjamin Netanyahu,” a group with over 90,000 members.
Some accounts accused Albag of receiving money to bad-mouth the premier, and others accused her of seeking publicity, wading into politics and exhibiting arrogance.
Following the tsunami of online hate, Albag’s family requested that Kan pull the clip from their social media accounts, which the broadcaster quickly honored.
“The promo clip for the interview was removed at the request of the family,” Kan said in a statement.
The broadcaster added that, in line with Albag’s request, “the interview will be broadcast tomorrow as planned and in coordination with Liri and her family.”
After the promo clip was pulled, a source at Kan told Channel 12 that it wasn’t clear “how much it helped to take the clip down, especially since many other media outlets had already used it. However, honoring Liri’s request is more important than more views and likes.”
Netanyahu has largely shirked responsibility for the devastating Hamas attack, placing the blame on security chiefs who he says insisted that the terror group was deterred and blasting them for failing to wake him in the early hours of October 7 when troubling signs began appearing from Gaza, claiming he would have immediately instructed them to go on high alert.
Critics argue that Netanyahu, as Israel’s leader for some 15 of the past 16 years, is ultimately responsible, accuse him of enabling Hamas in Gaza as he saw it as useful in preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, and of downplaying multiple warnings from security chiefs in the months ahead of the attack that Israel’s enemies were emboldened by the internal division created by his government’s legislative initiatives.
