Hostage’s mom, ex-general slam PM’s refusal to compromise in Gaza, accuse him of giving in to far right’s ‘messianic delusions’

Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, and Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of kowtowing to his far-right coalition partners, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oppose a Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal.

Referring to current negotiations in Qatar, Einav Zangauker tells some 1,500 anti-government protesters on Tel Aviv’s Begin Road that Netanyahu must now choose whether “to bring redemption to the nation of Israel, or continue fighting for the messianic delusions of Smotrich and Ben Gvir.”

“I’ve already told Netanyahu, ‘You and the negotiating team have a single mandate — to reach a comprehensive deal and end this war,'” she says. “Netanyahu has deliberately and repeatedly sabotaged our loved ones’ chance to come home.”

“Shame!” she yells, and is echoed by the audience.

“My Matan is fighting for his life like a newborn baby who fights for air after the umbilical cord is cut,” says Zangauker, who received a sign of life from her son this week following the release of his former cellmate, American-Israeli captive soldier Edan Alexander.

Tibon, who rushed to Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, to save his son, Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon, says “Israelis don’t abandon their wounded” and should not “abandon hostages in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza.”

“That’s what I was taught in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit and the Paratroopers Brigade,” says the retired general, adding that in Nahal Oz he had “saved and rescued whomever I came across, because I’m an Israeli.”

“The reason the hostages aren’t home is the government of failure and destruction, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has thwarted all the agreements,” he contends, adding that the premier has done so as recently as this week.

“Netanyahu, the coward, has surrendered to Smotrich and Ben Gvir and said no to a hostage deal,” says Tibon.

He says all the remaining living hostages could have been home by Passover, last month, had Netanyahu not refused to proceed to the second phase of the last Gaza ceasefire, which would have required Israel to withdraw from the Strip — a red line for Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

Once a deal is made to get the hostages out, Tibon says, “we can deal with Hamas, with international support and a full consensus in Israeli society.”

Protesters light a bonfire on the street. Police quickly put it out. Protesters continue chanting: “The hostages are in Gaza for too many days, the blood is on the hands of the government of horrors.”