Bereaved relative: Shin Bet chief defended removing Oct. 7 memorial by saying ‘enough time has passed’

Shin Bet chief David Zini defended his decision to dismantle a memorial at the entrance to the agency’s Tel Aviv headquarters commemorating employees killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught by saying that “enough time has passed” since the attack, according to a bereaved relative who participated in a phone call between Zini and victims’ families on Thursday, Channel 12 reports.

Zoli Mor — whose sister-in-law Smadar Mor Idan, a Shin Bet employee, and her husband, Roee Idan, were both killed during the massacre — tells the Hebrew network that he was stunned by Zini’s remarks.

“Only someone who is inside this story, inside this movie, can understand what it means to say ‘time has passed.’ There is no such thing as ‘time has passed.’ Three innocent children grew up here who saw their parents murdered before their eyes. One girl was kidnapped to Gaza for 51 days. How does a sentence like that come out of your mouth?” Mor says.

Roee and Smadar’s daughter Avigail, who was three years old during the October 7 attack, was abducted to Gaza and released nearly two months later during a temporary truce. Her two siblings survived the attack after hiding in a closet, and the three children were later taken in by Mor and his wife Liron.

According to Haaretz, which first reported Zini’s decision to remove the memorial, the Shin Bet chief also apologized to the families during Thursday’s call for the fact that they learned about the move from media reports rather than directly from the agency.