Hostage’s mother allowed back into Knesset, but must avoid ‘breaking the rules’
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana meets with Einav Zangauker, announces she can enter parliament to attend committee meetings; she strikes unrepentant tone, vows to continue tactics
A ban on entering the Knesset was lifted Tuesday from Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker and a prominent voice in the fight to secure a deal for the release of those held captive in the Gaza Strip.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana announced after the two held a meeting that Zangauker, who had been barred from the parliament building for over a week, would be granted renewed access, but warned that “breaking the rules” could result in another ban.
Zangauker, however, indicated she will not change tactics, saying in a statement after their meeting that she would “continue to voice the cries of Matan and the rest of the hostages in every place, including in this house, until they all come back.”
An outspoken critic of the government over its failure to bring her son Matan home after 15 months of captivity in Gaza, Zangauker was barred from entering the Knesset over what the Knesset Guard described as her disruption of discussions.
The day before her talk with Ohana, she had again been stopped from entering the Knesset building to attend committee sessions where families of hostages have frequently called for a deal.
Ohana said he held Zangauker a “good meeting” and stressed that she hadn’t been targeted for her anti-government activism.
In a statement, Ohana said the Knesset has shown immense flexibility regarding relatives of hostages and avoided imposing sanctions on them for behavior that “normally earns an extended ban from the Knesset.”
“This doesn’t mean there aren’t red lines, and these were sometimes crossed,” he said. “Only after repeated warnings were the violators banned.”
“We cannot judge a person until we stand in their shoes, and we aren’t.”
Barring access, he said, “is meant to guarantee the Knesset’s procedural rules… are upheld, so that the Knesset can continue to fulfill its role as the legislative branch and monitor the government. If [Zangauker] wants to continue sharing her thoughts, she can do so here at the Knesset as well, as she has done since the start of the war, without breaking the rules.”
In a statement after the meetings, Zangauker said, “I will continue to demand that decision-makers bring home my son Matan and all the hostages.”
“My Matan is alive, and if they don’t bring him back now he will die,” she said.
Zangkauker said she had told Ohana that “if it is possible to reach a partial agreement, it is possible to reach a comprehensive agreement” to free the hostages.
Zangauker was referring to the current hostage-ceasefire negotiations, which have largely revolved around a proposed three-stage deal in which “humanitarian” cases, including women, children, and the infirm, would be released first, followed by Israeli men of military age and then the remains of those killed during the October 7 onslaught or while in captivity.
Under those parameters, Matan Zangauker would not be released in the first phase of the deal.
Last month, Hamas released a propaganda video showing the first sign of life from Matan Zangauker, 14 months after he was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz alongside his girlfriend, Ilana Gritzewsky, who was released in late November 2023 as part of a weeklong truce deal.
In the likely coerced propaganda video, Matan said he and his fellow captives “die 1,000 deaths every day” and that he has seen how active his mother has been in working to bring him home.
The hostages were abducted from Israel on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Of the 251 hostages taken to Gaza that day, 96 remain in captivity, many of them no longer alive.
