Likud MK David Bitan orders relative of dead hostage ejected from Knesset meeting
Chair of Economics Committee clashes with Hannah Cohen, aunt of slain captive Inbar Haiman, over her lengthy address; other lawmakers block his move to have her kicked out
MK David Bitan ordered a relative of a dead hostage whose body is being held in Gaza kicked out of a Knesset Economics Committee on Monday after she refused to stop speaking when she went beyond her allotted time.
During the meeting, chairperson Bitan chided Hannah Cohen, the aunt of Inbar Haiman, for speaking too long, saying she was “repeating herself” and that others needed to speak.
When she continued talking and yelling at him, telling him that he would “hear me again another 1,000 times,” he ordered her ejected.
“Bring the girl home and you won’t see me here again,” Cohen told him. Bitan eventually relented under pressure from other committee members and let her remain.
Haiman, 27, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, during the devastating attack on the south of the country led by the Palestinian terror group Hamas. She has since been declared dead by the military, though her body remains in Gaza.
It was not the first time Bitan, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, had clashed with hostage relatives. Several weeks ago he interrupted the testimony of Sari Gat, aunt of Carmel Gat, a hostage who was executed in Hamas captivity, and told her to “be quick.”
תקצרי – חלק ב': דוד ביטן ביקש להוציא מהדיון בוועדת הכנסת את דודתה של ענבר היימן ז"ל, אשר גופתה מוחזקת בידי חמאס.
קרדיט @KnessetT pic.twitter.com/CMisl4yyoU— ישראל היום (@IsraelHayomHeb) November 11, 2024
“Excuse me?” fumed Gat. “They are there for a year, I can’t be brief, don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand that people are in life-threatening danger?”
“Don’t shout at me,” Bitan responded. “You are repeating yourself.”
On October 7 last year, Hamas led a massive attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, including 360 slain at the Nova music festival. Thousands of terrorists rampaged murderously through communities, slaughtering those they found, and took 251 people as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
