In newly leaked audio, PM tells hostage families that Israel ‘didn’t lose’ on Oct. 7
Israeli TV plays recording in which Netanyahu says toll of attack was only a fraction of Holocaust, during meeting with freed captives and relatives of Israelis still held in Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a released hostage whose son is still in captivity that Israel didn’t “lose” on October 7 when it failed to stop the Hamas massacre, because “during the Holocaust, they committed ‘October 7’ 4,500 times every single day,” according to the latest recording from a tense meeting the premier held last week with released captives and family members of hostages still held by Hamas.
In the recording excerpts aired Sunday by Channel 12 news, Netanyahu can be heard speaking to the hostage families about the deal, but appeared to wish to focus mostly on the importance of Israel defending itself against threats from Hezbollah and Iran, though that was not the topic of the meeting.
“I want to tell you what I’m busy with,” Netanyahu tells the hostage families, the voices of whom were all altered by the network. “I am dealing with [preventing] the destruction of this country.”
“The big thing that became clear to us, and to you: We understand that, around us, there is a plan to wipe us all out. That Iran is coming to wipe us out. Coming to wipe us all out. Coming to wipe out — to rain hellfire down upon us, and wipe us out. It’s not an idea, it’s a plan. They want to carry out simultaneous incursions, first, from the areas they already hold, areas that we withdrew from and gave to them,” Netanyahu is heard saying, in apparent reference to Gaza and possibly the West Bank.
In response, one of the former hostages asked if he was saying that “the war is more important than the hostages,” to which the premier responds that maybe she “wasn’t listening” carefully enough to him.
He continues, telling the released hostages that the future of the State of Israel “is in question.”
“The entire existence of the state, the entire existence of Nir Oz, which is being rejuvenated, of Be’eri, of Tel Aviv, of Ra’anana, of Tiberias, of Haifa — everything, everything is in question,” he says. “I’m telling you the truth, that we can prevent it. We need to address this plan for the destruction of Israel.”
Pushed again by the attendees to return to the issue of the hostage deal, Netanyahu appears to lose his patience.
“We’re only talking about the deal,” he can be heard saying, before appearing to mimic those in favor of a deal. “If we make a deal everything will be resolved — Iran will stop, etc., etc.,” he says. “That’s crazy. Just delusional. There’s no other word for it.”
“Iran is planning our annihilation, Hezbollah is planning our annihilation, they’re in a ring around us and we’re saying we won’t go like sheep to the slaughter,” he continues, invoking a Hebrew phrase used to imply that the Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust.
One of the former hostages responds, asking if “that means I won’t see my son,” and another chimes in, saying that yes, that is “exactly what he wants.”
Netanyahu responds that it is “exactly the opposite” of what he was saying.
After the discussion turns to the issue of the hostage deal, one of the released hostages criticizes the frequent talk of “victory” against Hamas, and says that she “understands ‘victory this, victory that,’ but we already lost on October 7.”
“Let’s return the hostages, that’s how we’ll win,” she adds.
Responding to her, the prime minister insists Israel “did not lose. We said it was the worst event that happened since the Holocaust, and it is different from the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, there were 4,500-5,500 [October 7s] every day.”
“Here, after they did one day of it, we went in there and we’re beating those killers,” he adds.
The released hostage, whose son is still in captivity, shouts in response that she is “currently in a holocaust.”
“My son is there, I am in the Holocaust,” she exclaims. “I’d rather die than live here!”
According to the network, Netanyahu’s hostage envoy, Gal Hirsch, tried at one point during the meeting to quiet one of the freed hostages who said the premier “needed to protect us. He missed, he fell asleep on guard.”
“You’re trying to command me? So I won’t talk?” she is heard saying to Hirsch.
At another stage of the meeting, the same former captive asked Netanyahu why he wasn’t taking responsibility and “always turn it into Hamas,” which he avoided answering.
The recording from the meeting was the third to be aired by the network in as many days. In the recording released Saturday, the relative of a hostage held in Gaza asked Netanyahu if he or other Israelis understand that women are being raped while in terrorist captivity in the Palestinian enclave; in the tape played Friday, the prime minister is heard saying there is no deal currently on the table in response to the entreaties of the families and former captives that he secure the release of their loved ones.
Several of the hostages in Friday’s meeting held a press conference afterward, with one sharing that Netanyahu told them he would do everything he could to bring the rest of the abductees home, while others said they didn’t leave the meeting optimistic.
It is believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
The hostages were kidnapped on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
