Father of hostage Eitan Mor stresses importance of bringing captives home but not at any cost

Zvika Mor, father of hostage Eitan Mor, speaks Wednesday with the Jerusalem Press Club ahead of a visit to Capitol Hill, regarding the importance of bringing home the hostages, but not making a deal with Hamas at any cost.

Mor, one of the members of the Tikva Forum of hostage families, is concerned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree to a deal that won’t have Israel’s best interests at heart, he says.

“When you’re going to buy a secondhand car, you want to see the car, to see it work and we don’t even have a list of who is alive,” says Mor.

“It’s been more than 70 days since we’ve heard anything and we’re very worried,” says Mor about his son, Eitan, 23, who had been working as a security guard at the Supernova desert rave on October 7. He was taken captive by Hamas terrorists as he was helping the injured and trying to hide the bodies of victims.

“We care about the future of Israel and war is the main tool to win this war, to eliminate Hamas,” says Mor, a father of eight who has been living in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba for the last 25 years. “We have to make Hamas surrender, we have to keep pushing Hamas until it asks for a deal.”

According to Mor, there are three groups within the families of the hostages: the Hostages and Missing Families Forum which is pushing for a deal; the Tikva Forum which does not want a deal at any cost; and the other families that aren’t heard from. The Tikva Forum, which he says represents about half of the 136 hostage families and “most of the people of Israel,” believes that the issue is not just about the hostages but the future safety of the entire state of Israel.

“We are sending our soldiers to fight in this war although we know that some of them will not come back,” says Mor. “If the hostages were the main issue, we could negotiate with Hamas. We want the government to let the IDF win this war, we want this war to be the end of all wars.”