Knesset event fetes hostage families who supported government’s war policy

The Knesset on Monday held an event honoring families of those killed or taken hostage on October 7, 2023, and during the subsequent war in Gaza, limited to those who supported the government’s war policy. Families who took to the streets in weekly protests against the government throughout the war were not invited.

The event, organized by far-right Religious Zionism MK Ohad Tal, was described as “an event saluting those who raised the nation’s spirit during the War of Revival,” and included a video address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The premier and other members of the government who participated in the event praised the honorees — members of the Tikva and Gvura forums, who opposed deals with Hamas to end the war and release Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for the phased release of hostages.

The groups opposed the hostage-ceasefire deals reached in November 2023 and January 2025, but backed the October 2025 deal brokered by the US; the latter agreement mandated all hostages be returned at the same time, and was conceived of as part of a larger plan calling for Hamas’s disarmament.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who participated in the event on Monday, said that members of the forums “stood against voices calling for defeat and surrender, who weakened the nation and strengthened – despite the best of intentions – Hamas,” according to quotes in the Haaretz daily.

The far-right minister said those “voices” prolonged the suffering of the hostages.

The Tikva Forum, representing a minority of the hostages’ families, was a counterweight to the larger Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which headed weekly Saturday night protests calling for a hostage deal.

The Gvura forum’s posters, which depicted fallen soldiers and called for fighting Hamas “until victory,” were also a visible counterweight to the Hostage Family Forum’s iconic posters, depicting those held hostage in Gaza and called on the government to “bring them home.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum denounced the event, issuing a statement Monday noting that “the decisive majority of the hostage families were intentionally excluded from the event.”

“Their exclusion is part of an attempt to erase the memory of the great failure of October 7, and of the hostages’ struggle against their treatment by the government during the long period of captivity, in which 46 hostages were murdered,” it charged.

“It would have been appropriate to invite all of the hostage families,” the forum continued. “The return of the hostages, over two years, were moments of emotion and uplift for the entire nation of Israel.”

“Thanks to its determination to take to the streets week after week to support this moral and ethical struggle, 254 hostages were returned home, some for rehabilitation and some for a proper burial,” it said.

The forum concluded by noting that the body of one last hostage – police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili – remains in Gaza. “There will not be real victory and Hamas will not be defeated as long as it holds an Israeli hostage,” the group said.

Individual families that were excluded also responded to the event. Rafi Ben Shitrit, whose son Staff Sgt. Shimon Alroy Ben Shitrit was killed on October 7 while attempting to fend off Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, wrote on X: “There are first-class heroes and second-class heroes.”

Ben Shitrit is a member of the October Forum of bereaved and hostage families calling for a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Hamas attack. The government has resisted calls to set up such a probe, whose members would be determined by figures in the judiciary, and has moved to establish a politically appointed committee instead.

Hannah Cohen, whose niece Inbar Haiman was murdered on October 7 and her body held for two years in Gaza, wrote on Facebook: “It’s not enough that our girl was abandoned, murdered, and abducted – and returned in a coffin, two years later, the last of the women. You keep twisting the knife.”

Izhar Shay, whose son Yaron was killed battling terrorists during the Hamas onslaught, wrote: “The government of Israel and its representatives in the Knesset continue to discriminate blood from blood, pain from pain, bereaved from bereaved. I’m not insulted by you, Heaven forbid. I have contempt for you.”

Shay, who served as a Knesset member and as science and technology minister before returning to the private sector in 2021, noted that his family was also not invited to the state memorial ceremony for those killed on October 7.

“Read this again and internalize it: We are the family of a hero soldier who fell in battle, saving hundreds of people’s lives, on October 7, but this isn’t enough to invite us to the official state ceremony in memory of the fallen,” he wrote.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Haaretz it was legitimate “to honor certain people and bodies who, in our eyes, were on the right side.”

“There were those who, over two years, led a dangerous campaign of weakness and abandonment, which was irresponsible, and destructive… at the cost of spilled blood, and there were those who chose to give strength, to place the State of Israel at the top of their list of priorities, even though they had children across enemy lines,” he said.

The far-right minister added that the hawkish families, “who withstood tests that none of us could withstand,” gave the political echelon “moral validation.”

He called on Education Secretary Yoav Kisch to give the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honor, to members of the two honored forums.