Herzog says he’s ‘shocked’ Israel has lost its focus on the hostages
President says country must ‘not lose eye contact’ with issue, as news cycle becomes dominated by government moves to fire top officials
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
The country has lost focus on the hostages held captive in Gaza, President Isaac Herzog lamented on Tuesday, as public attention appeared to shift toward controversial measures taken by the government over the past week.
“I am quite shocked how suddenly the issue of the hostages is no longer at the top of the priority list and at the top of the news — how can this be?” he said, speaking at the Defense Ministry Rehabilitation Department’s first international conference at Tel Aviv University.
“We must, throughout this entire time, not lose touch — as a nation and of course as a governing system — with everything related to bringing the hostages home, down to the last one.”
Herzog also argued that the law currently does not provide adequate support for freed hostages and their families. The government is advancing legislation to expand benefits for hostages who were abducted on October 7, 2023, and have since returned from captivity.
The government’s moves to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara have dominated the news cycle and have appeared to capture much of the public’s attention in the past week.
While mass, nationwide anti-government protests have consistently demanded the cabinet agree to a deal to release all 59 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip — including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF — activists have also turned their energy toward protesting the firing of Bar and Baharav-Miara and the government’s attempts to revive its controversial judicial overhaul program.
Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March.
A planned second stage of the ceasefire deal agreed upon in January was meant to release 24 living hostages, but it fell apart after its first stage, with Israel renewing the fighting in Gaza. The terror group had already freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
