Families pan Netanyahu for leaving hostage deal out of address to Congress
Rallies across Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel feature calls for the government to reach an agreement to free captives, as relatives accuse premier of continuing to abandon them
Protesters gathered outside the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in the city on Wednesday evening to call for Israel’s government to agree to a deal that will free the hostages held captive in Gaza, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the Congress in Washington.
Anti-government activists, including several relatives of hostages, said Netanyahu’s speech fell short by not committing Israel to the terms of a deal aimed at releasing the over 100 captives remaining in Gaza.
Even though Netanyahu told Congress about the rescue of hostage Noa Argamani, and acknowledged the pain of the hostages, he “didn’t talk about one thing — the mandate for the deal,” said Eli Albag, the father of captive surveillance soldier Liri Albag.
“I saw that you spoke about unity between Israel and America — you didn’t speak about the unity of our people,” he said. “There is no unity.”
Albag and other speakers addressed a crowd at Hostages’ Square as a video feed of Netanyahu’s remarks to Congress played on mute on a large screen. Simultaneous protests calling for a ceasefire and hostage release deal were held in several places across Israel, amid anger from the relatives of hostages over what they say is Netanyahu’s prioritization of personal interests over the release of their loved ones.
In a highly charged address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday, Netanyahu pledged to achieve “total victory” against Hamas and criticized American opponents of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu — making his first trip abroad since the war started — made little mention of months of US-led mediation for a ceasefire and hostage-release. Yet his remarks, while combative, did not appear to close the door on a deal.
“Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home,” he said. “That’s what total victory means. And we will settle for nothing less.”
In a statement following the speech, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum decried the absence of any announcement of a finalized hostage deal, which some families had clung on to, despite it seeming increasingly unlikely in recent days.
“This evening, as the prime minister delivered his speech to Congress, thousands of supporters gathered in Hostages Square. They came to watch the broadcast of the speech and hear addresses from family members of the hostages, hoping to hear the prime minister utter the crucial words: ‘There’s a deal,’” said a statement from the Hostages Families Forum.
Delivering what she said should have been Netanyahu’s speech, Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is captive in Gaza, said the premier would have done well had he “placed the hostages as the highest priority, proving what Zionism and love for Israel is.”
“You are expected to say: ‘I announce on this stage that I will work to promote a deal that will return all the hostages, even if the price is ending the war. I will work in full cooperation with the mediators, I will dismiss any minister who speaks out against the deal.”
Omri Shviti, whose brother Idan was abducted from the Supernova music festival and is still in captivity told marchers gathered at Dizengoff Square that hostages remaining in Gaza “are not just suffering, they are dying,” referring to Netanyahu’s reported assertion that the captives “are suffering but they are not dying.”
“If you’re asking us to keep our hope,” he said addressing Netanyahu, “the only way to do that is to say just two words in your speech tonight in Congress: ‘There’s a deal.'”
Relatives of hostages in Washington for Netanyahu’s speech were also harshly critical of the speech and the lack of commitment for a deal.
“Netanyahu spoke for 54 minutes and he did not mention once the need to seal the deal and to sign the deal now,” said Gil Dickmann, cousin of hostage Carmel Gat, who was one of six people arrested for disturbing Netanyahu’s speech by wearing shirts calling to “Seal the deal now.”
Relatives of the eight American hostages being held in Gaza panned Netanyahu’s address to Congress as “political theater” in a joint statement.
“We were profoundly disappointed he failed to deliver the message we have been waiting to hear for 292 days: the hostages are coming home,” the families said. “He failed to present any new solutions or a new path forward. Above all, he failed to commit to the hostage deal that is now on the table even though Israel’s senior defense and intelligence officials have called on him to do so.”
Relatives of American hostages are slated to meet Thursday with US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu together, presumably following Biden and Netanyahu’s one-on-one meeting.
Adi Alexander, father of hostage Eden Alexander, said he spoke with Netanyahu at a reception following the speech, and was told by the premier that Israel was trying to squeeze more out of Hamas.
“The ball right now is on the Israeli side,” he told The Times of Israel. “And when we talk about Israel, we’re talking about one person, Benjamin Netanyahu. He needs to decide if it’s ‘yes’ right now, or if he wants to achieve a little bit more.”
But in Tel Aviv, relatives and others said a deal was needed as soon as possible, with time running out for the hostages.
The point was driven home by the granddaughters of hostage Alex Dancyg, who the IDF said on Monday had died in captivity.
Dancyg, a renowned Holocaust educator, was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on the morning of the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught. The IDF said he had died several months ago, and that the circumstances of his death was not immediately clear.
“Benjamin Netanyahu, the possibility of ‘absolute victory’ fell away the moment our grandfather was kidnapped from his kibbutz and there was nobody to stop it,” they told a rally at Hostages’ Square, referring to the premier’s oft-repeated promise to compl;etely dismantle Hamas before ending the fighting. “Our grandfather and all 120 hostages are victims of abandonment, we demand that you stop the cycle of bloodshed.”
Speaking to the Kan public broadcaster at the end of Netanyahu’s speech, Niva Wenkert, mother of hostage Omer Wenkert, said she hoped that, for his sake, Netanyahu would someday receive the same raucous applause he received in Congress back home in Israel.
“This will only happen only when my son — who has no time left — and all the other hostages are back home,” she said. “This is a speech that was addressed to the American nation. Your people are not yet able to applaud.”
Jacob Magid and Jessica Steinberg contributed to this report.
