Bereaved father says he hopes he ‘cracked something’ in PM when imploring him to bring hostages home

Rabbi Elhanan Danino, speaking to Channel 12 news about the condolence visit that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently made to the family, after their son Ori was murdered by his Hamas captors on August 31, says he did not prepare in advance to level the bitter criticism he directed at Netanyahu.

“I didn’t prepare anything, I didn’t write it down…. We had kept our silence for 11 months… We placed our faith in the Holy One Blessed Be He. Why are we in this land and what are we fighting for — those were the things I spoke about in all my discussions, here and abroad. I always try to speak from the heart and not foster division, because what comes from the heart goes into the heart. I greatly hope that some of what I said went into the man’s heart.”

His interviewer notes that, at some points in the conversation, Netanyahu interjected to tell him he was saying things that were inaccurate.

“I’m not sitting where he is. I don’t see the full picture, that’s for sure,” Danino says. “But I wanted to bring the Jewish value, through the love of Israel” and to stress the “value of unity and connection.”

He says he wanted to highlight the imperative to maintain “the smile of my son… this heroic, holy boy who was murdered somewhere in Gaza, because he dashed and ran and tried to save the lives of others [on October 7]… That was Ori, all his life.”

“That’s what I was trying to say to the heart [of Netanyahu]: That he should understand that, outside, there is a nation that is waiting for those 101 hostages, to end this terrible thing. That’s what will put this nation back together — to bring them home, to finish this terrible nightmare. I owe it to the rest of the families. As the emissary of my son, I now try to bring together and unify the people of Israel, to try as much as I can to unify as many elements…”

You gave Netanyahu a very hard time, the interviewer suggests.

“I don’t think I said anything new,” Danino responds. “I told him what a lot of people think. To my sorrow, I said this as a bereaved father who has lost his first-born son… I feel that the Jewish value of responsibility for each other, of ‘all of Israel are brothers,’ has been lost… Why is the division continuing even during war, even when 105 people are [held hostage] there? Do we only unify at funerals… We have to smile at each other on the buses, trains and in the malls as well… Unity can’t only be for the army.”

It is put to him that Sara Netanyahu, who joined the prime minister on the visit, interjected that Danino was saying things to her husband that he had been told to say. “That’s nothing new,” Danino says. “I’m familiar with their responses… I thought they’d behave differently in a house of mourning… I wasn’t hurt… And I especially didn’t want to cause hurt. I said to him at the beginning of my remarks that I’m sorry if I’m going to say difficult things.”

Asked whether he thinks he managed to “crack some kind of wall” in Netanyahu, Danino says that he certainly did not surprise Netanyahu because they spoke by phone on Sunday, before the prime minister visited. “I greatly hope I managed to crack something in the wall… for the sake of the 101 families and for the people of Israel, who must, must unify and reconnect.”

In a later interview, also on Channel 12, Danino says he has been told that Israel has offered concessions in hostage talks and that, if they had been made earlier, “we would be in a different place. But we accept God’s verdict with love.

“I won’t deal with the past. I will gather my strength, and my family’s, for the sake of the future,” he says, including to work with lost Israeli youths who might need help, and thus try to perpetuate Ori’s smile, heroism, courage and capacity to unify.

Asked about those Israelis who oppose a deal to free the hostages, he says he is not a politician and that he “offered no advice” to Netanyahu. Rather, he wanted to highlight the need for Jewish values, and “especially the responsibility of Jews to one another.”