Cousin of slain hostage to Netanyahu: ‘Would you have also said Yoni came back from Entebbe?’

Gil Dickmann, cousin of slain Hamas hostage Carmel Gat, slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for touting the return of 255 hostages from Gaza, dozens of whom were killed during or after their abduction.

“When you say you brought them all back, you’re abandoning them to their death again,” Dickmann tells 300-odd protesters assembled for the weekly anti-government rally at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square.

Dickmann invokes the IDF’s audacious raid, 50 years ago today, to rescue Jews and Israelis who were snatched by Palestinian hijackers to Entebbe, Uganda. Commando Yoni Netanyahu, the premier’s elder brother, was killed in the Entebbe raid.

“Fifty years ago today, your brother Yoni Netanyahu… went out to rescue the Entebbe hostages and he was killed there,” Dickmann says, addressing the premier. “Would you have also said Yoni came back from Entebbe?”

“Yoni gave his life to save hostages. Benjamin gave up the lives of hostages to save himself,” Dickmann says to applause.

The protest, organized by the Movement for Quality Government (MGQ) anti-corruption watchdog, ends with “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, sung by Dickmann.

Speaking at the protest, MQG board member Michael Partem, a US-born attorney who moved to Israel in 1990, invokes another July 4 anniversary.

He reads a Hebrew translation of the 1776 US Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and so on — and declares: “We’re implementing the same rights… that were set by the revolutionaries of ’76.”

“We’re acting against a government that’s going in the precise opposite direction,” he continues, assailing the government’s judicial overhaul. “Instead of proceeding to complete our own constitutional predicament, it seeks, under cover of the overhaul, to scrap checks and balances.”